NASLite Network Attached Storage

Will do...hope to get this built this weekend or next -- components arrive tomorrow! My guess is I'll be back with questions before I'm done

Thanks for this added input...did not think about that, but would not be too surprised. Do you remember where you saw this? Could not find anything with a simple forum search or Google search?

Fortunately, for now, I am planning to use simple NASLite daily sync/mirroring anyway...downstream if I go to hardware RAID and this is an issue, I guess I would need to buy new disks and re-use these disks for something else.

About the issue
search for TLER (time limited error recovery)
looks like the SE, SE16 and GP model range from WD has this issue
extra reading here

Thanks very much -- very helpful to know this issue is out there, and also good to know there is a workaround if needed (if I read the posting and follow-ups correctly).

You're more then welcome
Always happy to help a new NasLiter

keep us informerd will'ya

Just thought I'll chip in my 2 cents' worth on Truecrypt - great program!

If you have a peer file server PC (I use XP Pro) you can run Truecrypt on that and store the Truecrypt container file on the NL box. The XP box can then share the Truecrypt volume to multiple PCs. This way the encryption is only done in one place - the XP file server, and your storage on NL is secure.

If you had two NL boxes then use the XP box to periodically mirror one across to the other. rsync or whatever friendly backup program...

Well, I built my PC early this morning, but I've been battling most of the afternoon/evening trying to get NASLite up and running. Ran into may problems with USB thumm drives, CD/ISO's (did not realize I needed a, IDE-mounted cd drive), as expected my on board NIC did not work, etc...actually nothing has gone smoothly, but I slogged my way through all those issues.

I finally got NASLite to boot, connect to the network, can connect to it remotely. etc. But I have only been able to get my SATA drives recognized through one of the 5 on-board internal SATA ports(tried swapping drives and cables, tried lots of combinations of 150/300 speed(using jumpers on my hard drives), IDE/SATA settings in the BIOS, etc). Issues seems to be as follows: The MOBO BIOS allows me to configure the #5 SATA and the external eSATA port in IDE mode as a PATA device according to the motherboard manual, but for ports 1-4, when I use the BIOS menu to set the drive to IDE, it only allows something called Native IDE, which does not seems equate to PATA. (by the way, I assume I do not want AHCI?).

Any ideas what to try? I wonder if I need to go out and buy a 4 port SATA controller card, but not sure which one would work since I have SATA II disks, and all the ones certified in the NASLite hw reference manual are SATA I (1.5 GB/S). I could jumper the disks down to 1.5Gbs if needed. One possibility is this card (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816132013)...the description indicates it uses the Sil 3114 chipset that is listed in the NASLite hardware reference guide -- main drawback is that it would use my only remaining PCI slot. Will my drives downshift automatically to 1.5Gbs, or do I need to set the jumpers on the drives?

Any and all suggestions welcome...thanks...Dave

The drives should drop back to 1.5Gb/sec, no jumper setting needed. I have had the kind of fun you speak of in the past with mix-n-match PATA and SATA drives and it came down to the BIOS settings for the controller configuration for me and that is where I would concentrate. As far as setting up the drives in the BIOS, DON'T. NL has a very good drive overlay package built in that works just fine and you could be getting onto trouble because of conflicts with it and the BIOS. Try setting the drives in the BIOS to "none" or "0" and see where that gets you.

Hope that helps,

Mike

Thanks much, Mike...will try without jumpers, either with current on-board SATA, or with a new SATA-I controller card. One question on your reply above, not sure what you mean by BIOS settings of NONE or "0" -- I did not see anything in the BIOS that looked like that? Dave

That refers to the drive configuration menu and drive detection. In the old days you had to setup the drives in the BIOS so it knew how to address them. IE, Heads, Tracks, Sectors per track, even park track. I am not sure if the SATA drives even have this function available in which case just try setting the interface that the SATA drive sits on to none. Be sure that the SATA controller has all channels turned on though.

Just as an aside, running the drives at 1.5Gb/sec instead of 3.0Gb/sec will make no difference at all in overall performance since the disk is allot slower than the interface. It is all marketing.

Mike

davew

Download the motherboard manual from this site: http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Support/Motherboard/Manual_DownloadFile.aspx?FileType=Manual&FileID=18432

On Page 37 it shows (and explains) the "NONE" setting.

Georg

Mike and Georg -- thanks very much for these very helpful troubleshooting tips...I was still not able to successfully connect the drives using the on-board connectors #1-4, but some day I may revisit this.

On the way home from work today, I picked up a 4 port SATA-150 card at Fry's (a SiiG card that uses the Sil3114 SATARaid controller), and like the Intel NIC card, it worked right away. Fry's did not have a non-RAID SATA 150 card with a certified controller chip, so I spent $70 instead of the $20-$30 I would have spent at NewEgg if I was not eager to get this working. Everything finally went very smoothly once I got past that latest hurdle, and my new NASLite box is working great. Performance is far exceeding my expectations.

Thank you very much to everyone for all your help, guidance, and support this past week -- I will keep you posted on how things go, and I'm sure I will have more questions.

Dave