NASLite Network Attached Storage

It seems to me that the USB Flash drive is the weak link in the system. There it is, hanging out there where it can be damabed or broken... and USB Flash drives can, eventually, fail.

How can I backup the USB Flash drive after installation is complete? I'd like to be able to make a byte-by-byte copy (the equivalent of an ISO) of the Flash drive, which I could later use if necessary on another computer.

I wouldn't care if I did this on the NASLite machine, or if I had to shut down the NASLite machine and temporarily move the Flash drive to a Windows box.

Suggestions?


(Incidentaly, I found a 3' USB extension cable, plugged the cable into the USB port on the NASLite computer, ran it into the computer case through a back panel shot, pulgged the USB key into the cable and taped the USB key to the bottom of the case, inside the case, thus getting it out of the way to prevent physical damage.)

Why don't you get a Internal USB Card Reader and a Compact Flash card?

Nothing poking out the case and no wires.

I used a internal USB header that come with my Asus board.. unscrew the bracket... plug in the 5 pin header to the mb and the usb key to the usb port. My NAS boax only have 2 cables: power n ethernet.

You should be abld to use any tool that will image a hard drive to backup the USB key. Also you can just unplug the USB key and leave the box running, image it, and reinstall it. I have had no problems with doing that. The NAS software only reads the key on boot I believe.

Mike

I remove the USB key after the system has booted up and put it in a safe place.

Good idea, siaopao. I had an extra USB header, took one USb socket off of it and used the inside header, taped the USB key to the bottom of the case to keep it from flopping around.

Under windows 2K/XP you can use any of the following freewares:
1) GUI:
Roadkil's Diskimage
http://www.roadkil.net/DiskImg.html
Dubaron's Diskimage
http://dubaron.com/diskimage/
2) command line:
dsfo/dsfi part of the DSFOK package:
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~nulifetv ... /freeware/
any Win32 dd port like this one:
http://www.chrysocome.net/dd

Under linux, you have dd...

jaclaz