Cheap NAS project.

[Oldfatslob]

Last week I finally put together my very first NAS system. The problem was, I didn't want to spend too much. So I went online and searched for quite a while. What I found was the Linksys NSLU2, a handy little device that plugs into your network and allows you to plug your USB hard drives into it. Then I pondered what hard drive to use. Well, lucky me the huge honking 500 gigs are now cheap, so I got a Maxtor MaxLinePro sata drive from Newegg for around $140. One million run time hours between failures, now that I can leave on for a while. And to use it as a USB, I put it in an Apricorn ezbus dts, now that thing can use esata or USB. So I read some reviews about the linksys NSLU2, and some had reported problems with the NTFS not liking transferring larger files through the device, being linux based NAS and all, I formatted it in EXT3. EXT3 also has the benefit of setting up user permissions and personal folders as well as public shares. So I set everyone on my network their very own private folder including myself, and could even set size limits on the hard drive for each user, but I don't think I'll need to do that yet. But for some reason or another, my daughters computer can't access "Workgroup" and see the shares or other computers, not even her own. I first thought that it was because she was on a limited user account, but I couldn't even get into it when I logged in with my admin account, so that's still a mystery, but she can access the drive with the web interface. Now for the review. The device is cheap, but it's slow. I can transfer to other computers faster than I can to the device. But considering it's only around $80, it's cheaper than using a computer for the link, and cheaper still than all the other NAS devices I've found. Now I have learned that the device has been underclocked by Linksys by half it's potential speed, and after the warranty is over in a year, I'll Un-underclock it. It can be done by simply removing a resister. I found the info on NSLU2-Linux - Main / HomePage browse NOTE: THIS WILL VOID THE WARRANTY!!!

And there is modded firmware and extra software that can be installed on the device for extra features, but I don't need them.

It can't stream video very well especially through my wireless interface, but audio works fairy well, and pics take forever to load. But I have stored years of pics, audio, video, and downloads on the device, so anyone on my network can retrieve them if they need to, but being that it's so slow directly accessing the info through the network, it's better to just copy the files into a temporary folder for temporary use and then delete it when done playing with it. So, my conclusion is that the device is a good cheap way to connect a couple of hard drives to the network without needing for a computer to always be on, but don't expect blistering speed from something that cheap. If I ever need extra space, I can add another 500 gigs with another external enclosure and have my own terrabyte network attached storage. But for now, I'll be filling my half terrabyte.