Has anyone ever used . . .

[RWIndiana]

NASLite? I downloaded it the other day to turn my obsolete P-II computer into a nice little file server with a couple hard drives I had laying around. So all it cost me was a few minutes to get it set up! It's great for turning basically useless hardware into a FTP, NFS or SMB file server. I downloaded the SMB version. Supposedly, you can use the largest hard drive we have available today, stick it in a 486 (with PCI LAN card), and it works just fine because the software bypasses the bios limitations of the old hardware. I was wondering if anyone else has used NASLite and if you like it?

 

[Jake the Dog]

No I haven't used it sorry but it will have me interested if I can find out if it supports NFS shares with a "nolock" attribute. The readme file they call a manual mentions nothing of the sort nor does the nfs-utils site on sourceforge. Would you know?

 

[Tea]

Interesting product. I'd rather you could boot it off hard drive though. Watch this space?

 

[RWIndiana]

Sorry Jake for my ignorance--I don't know what nolock feature for NFS is. I'm guessing there would be complaints about something like this if it was not supported. But that's only an uninformed guess.

I think NASLite is something to watch anyway. It sounds like they are going to release a new version soon, though it could be as large as 5mb. I too wouldn't mind the ability to boot off a hard drive, so maybe a 5mb version is the way to go.

 

[Handruin]

It's funny you mentioned NASLite, I found their site a couple weeks ago. I have not yet used it, but they've done what I've been wanting to do for some time now. Sometime last year I had a mission to find something exactly like NASLite. I was not able to find anything open source (or free) and began resorting to browsing e-bay for cheap NAS alternatives. There's a thread in here somewhere about my findings of used quantum snap servers. I never ended up buying them because of their cost, but I still desire a NAS solution for home. I just recently took advantage of a dell deal for a poweredge server SC420 for $249 with free shipping. 2.5GHz celeron with 512 MB DDR2 and PCI Express, and SATA. I upgraded the drive from 40GB to 80GB for an additional $10 (seemed worth it to me). I wanted a simple machine, even if it isn't a rocket. 2.5 GHz is more than fast enough for a NAS device for 2 to 3 users.

I plan on developing my own implementation of NASLite. My vision is to have something similar to the implemenataion of smoothwall. You simply put a CD-ROM in the drive, and you configure the system via web. I'd like it to support SATA so that you can add external SATA storage as your needs grow. I have plans further than this, but care not to share just yet.

I will probably try NASLite on my new machine in just a few weeks just to see how they implemented NAS on a floppy. I'll have more input at that time.

 

[Handruin]

OK, it was more than a year ago when I began looking for a NAS device.

 

[ddrueding]

I recently got one of these it rocks.

The only problem is it uses a format other than NTFS or FAT32, so you can't use the USB drive directly with a PC after the mandatory format. Network speeds were OK, though I didn't run proper benchmarks before I gave it to my GF. It manages streaming DIVX ok.

 

[Fushigi]

I recently got one of these it rocks.

The only problem is it uses a format other than NTFS or FAT32, so you can't use the USB drive directly with a PC after the mandatory format. Network speeds were OK, though I didn't run proper benchmarks before I gave it to my GF. It manages streaming DIVX ok.

I've got similar support in my Netgear router. Up to 26 drives via USB hubs, supposedly. And I believe it uses FAT32.

Personally, while the idea of NASLite (and Smoothwall for that matter) is intriguing, I don't think I'd want to devote a whole PC with it's incumbent issues (power consumption, heat output, questionable reliability, footprint, etc.) to such a function when, for home use, integrated solutions like my Netgear router & dd's Linksys appliance do the trick nicely. A partial case can be made if the PC can also run a distributed computing client, but barring that I'll stick with my appliance.

 

[Handruin]

Much like smoothwall, I don't think the market is aimed at the appliance level consumer (not implying anything). My hope would be to provide software to a small to mid sized company who requires a more flexibile solution than a netgear or linksys solution. Your router may support 26 drives, but at what performance level? How about the linksys, what performance does it offer?

If you take my dell example ($249), that's not much to spend on a PC to devote to a NAS. I'd guess you might spend equal, if not more on a linksys or netgear solution.

 

[Fushigi]

At 100Mb Ethernet or any WiFi, the performance difference will probably be too small to notice as USB2 is faster than either. If you're running Gb Ethernet, then your Dell will likely take the performance crown.

Certainly I was commenting WRT a consumer solution since RW didn't mention this being for a business. For a business, I'd recommend any of the inexpensive NAS type appliances that are available, potentially including a row-your-own like NASLite on your Dell. I'd prefer something with a decent backup solution built-in or as an optional add-on.

Different products for different markets.

 

[Mercutio]

Just to clarify, Fushigi, USB disks on those netgear routers do have to be formatted with whatever format Netgear needs. I don't know what format that is (maybe FAT32 for all I know), but there's stuff in the documentation about needing to format the disk.

 

[RWIndiana]

I think the power consumption on a NASLite server would mainly be by the hard drives since there is no need for CD-ROM, monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc.. This is the perfect home backup solution for tight-wads like me. A lot of good tesimonials from small business owners too about this product. What I would really like to see is automatic backup and the support for more than four drives, including RAID and SCSI. It sounds like this is still a work in progress and they are likely adding support for this type of thing in the next version. I'm planning to use mine for backup of my digital photos and use a simple batch file to make a mirror drive.

 

[Fushigi]

Just to clarify, Fushigi, USB disks on those netgear routers do have to be formatted with whatever format Netgear needs. I don't know what format that is (maybe FAT32 for all I know), but there's stuff in the documentation about needing to format the disk.

It uses FAT32 according to my manual. There is no format function in the firmware.

 

[Handruin]

At 100Mb Ethernet or any WiFi, the performance difference will probably be too small to notice as USB2 is faster than either. If you're running Gb Ethernet, then your Dell will likely take the performance crown.

Certainly I was commenting WRT a consumer solution since RW didn't mention this being for a business. For a business, I'd recommend any of the inexpensive NAS type appliances that are available, potentially including a row-your-own like NASLite on your Dell. I'd prefer something with a decent backup solution built-in or as an optional add-on.

Different products for different markets.

Even with WiFi or 100Mb, I suspect you might notice if you hub'ed 4 USB drives...but again, most likely you'll only have one, maybe two, so my point is low.

Now if linksys would release one of those devices with 4 SATA connections out the back, then they'd have a nice little appliance.

 

[Mercutio]

OK, I was looking at docs for a Linksys NSLU2 when I wrote that. Now that I am awake (for once), I recognize that.

The NSLU2 uses ext3, by the way.