NASLite Network Attached Storage

Greetings All,

I'm a brand new NAS user (I've only ever shared my Windows Folders on the network before).

We have four PCs (and now a NASLite-2 CDD server) in our house - one in the family room, and one in each bedroom. We share music and TV shows across the network.

I recently added a 300G external USB 2.0 HDD to the NASLite machine and it works fine, but twice a week or so it stops reading the newer files on the external disk and when I reboot the disk doesn't show up in the storage area (#3)

If reboot NASLite and then turn off/on the USB Drive while the machine is off for a second it then shows up in #3 again. Then I do a #6 (check and repair the File System). It always shows Illegal or Duplicate blocks.

When it's finished repairing (20 minutes later) everything is fine again.

Did I do something wrong? Is there a setting that I can change to prevent this error?

Thanks for your help!

Darren.

My guess is that the drive overheats or otherwise goes offline and requires you to cycle the power before it goes back online.

I think it’s also important to note that USB is not a good vehicle to move data through, but for the sake of convenience, we often overlook that. You can find this message right in the kernel messages (syslog) output during hardware initialization:

Now with that out of the way, here are a few things that you may want to consider:

- Make sure the USB cable you are using is shielded and as short as possible, especially if you are using USB2.
- Make sure the connectors are clean and in good contact on both ends.
- Do not disconnect from the NAS or powercycle while the filesystem is mounted and shared. That alone will ensure an unclean filesystem.

Ok, so the hardware that I'm using is an older PIII and it doesn't have SATA built in - all of the larger drives are now SATA. So, I thought that USB would be the best way to do this.

(BTW, I was using a shielded 3' USB 2.0 cable) and the drive was working flawlessly in XP).

So, knowing that USB is not the way to go, I went out and bought a SATA PCI card for my PIII and plugged it in, hooked up the drive that was in the USB case and booted NASLite.
The BIOS screen recognized the drive, but NASLite doesn't list the drive as available, just the IDE drive that was in my case from the start.

How do I make NASLite recognize the SATA card? (I tried upgrading to 2.05 but that didn't make any difference).

Help?

Darren.

Ok, I'm learning. The SATA board that I bought is not on the list of supported hardware - therefore it is not supported. (You know, Windows is looking attractive again).

So I'm going going back to an older IDE drive that I have in my Windows box and putting the SATA drive in its place. I don't have any more IDE spots in my NASLite box, so I want to take the CD drive out and put my HD in its place. I read somewhere that you can boot NASLite from a USB pen drive using a kicker floppy disk.

Is there a *simple* set of instructions on how to load my NASLite 2 CDD image on to a pen drive and boot from a kicker floppy?

Thanks for your help in advance,

Darren.

from the NASLite-2 CDD documentation:



But it doesn't say *how* to boot using a USB pen drive. Please, can someone help a struggling noobie out?

Thanks!
Darren.

NASLite-2 CDD is not designed to boot from a USB pen drive. It will however boot from an USB-attached CD-ROM drive.

Ok - so just to summarize:

o USB Drives are not a reliable way to store data (corruption is almost guaranteed)
o Only select SATA controllers are supported
o even though the docs say that NASLite-2 CDD can be booted from USB it doesn't mean all USB drives, just USB CD-ROM drives
o I'm pretty much rooked.

It would have been nice if there was a 30-day demo of this program so I didn't need to put down cash before finding out that my system isn't compatible with NASLite-2 CDD.

Does anyone know if there's any way that I can trade my copy of NASLite-2 CDD for the version that _will_ boot from a USB pen drive?

Aaaarrrgggghhhhh,
Darren.

Darren,

NASLite-2 CDD is designed to boot from a CD as the documentation clearly states. That includes SCSI, USB or FireWire CD-ROM drives. Nowhere does it imply that it will boot from USB flash. NASLite-2 USB is designed to boot from USB flash. I think that all documentation and product descriptions are clear about the intended target of each product.

As far as the reliability of USB drives, NASLite is as reliable, if not more so, as any other system capable of storing and retrieving data from an USB disk. The technology however is not well suited for NAS applications due to the limited bandwidth available through the USB transport and the questionable quality of many $20 USB enclosures.

The documentation section provides a manual and a hardware compatibility guide that cover the capabilities of NASLite-2. It is there to allow folks such as yourself to research the OS and it’s ability to run on your hardware. It also provides a good basis on determining what additional components will be best suited to enhance that hardware. There is really not much more we can do to facilitate successful deployment given the nature of the product.

The point here is that we have no control over the hardware people try to run NASLite-2 on. We can only provide the necessary documentation that will allow people to best match their hardware to NASLite-2. I think we have done that as well as provide this forum to serve as a resource to enhance that research.

The 30-day trial thing that some are so hot about, NASLite-2 is an OS and not an application. We can’t keep a definitive chronological record of a live-cd/usb based OS since there is no point of reference. Each boot is clean out of the box. The only way that we can offer a “test drive” is via a crippled version and for that purpose we have concluded the floppies to be sufficient.

I hope all that makes sense.

It also states that it can boot from USB. It does not say "USB CD-Rom drive".




That simply is not true. The USB disk that I plugged into the NASLite box had been running 100% reliably on my WinXP box for months before I retasked it.
I couldn't get it to run for more than a day before the File System became "unclean" on NASLite. Then it would do weird things like losing files or reporting bad block things.



Ya, ok, fine. How do I know what chipset is inside my machine or SATA card? I can barely get my network to run (and had to phone a friend to get that finished). I just want a simple system that will serve files on my network. Once I get it configured I don't ever want to touch it again (like my network).
I'm not a dummy, but I don't want to spend months learning about NASes to get this to work - it was supposed to be a weekend project using recycled hardware and this wonderful thing I kept reading about - Linux.

From my experience Linux is not ready for prime time.



Ok, so without a 30-day trial is there any way that I can convert my license from a CD based install to a USB PEN DRIVE based install?

Darren.

Is there any built in anti virus that can protect pen drive? I mean there might be a built in anti virus that can stop getting pen drive infected while on a virus attacked PC.
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Not that I have seen.

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