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WARM? empty NAS boxen for $67.50

Zap

Zap

Elite Member
Here's the link from my CompGeeks opt-in spam:

HD363N 3.5" External Network HDD/FTP/Samba

Manufacturer's link

Basically, it is a NAS (Networked Attached Storage), though the description doesn't mention that particular acronym. It is a small box similar to all the USB hard drive boxes out there, except there's a network port in the back. After you set it up, basically it becomes a file server or FTP server on your network. My guess is that it runs some kind of embedded Linux since the file serving is done through Samba. Having an FTP server built-in can be handy if you want to, ahem, share files online. The box comes empty, and you just slap in whatever ATA HDD you want.

One major limitation is that it only supports FAT32 partitions. Why? Dunno. If it supported NTFS or EXT2 I'd probably buy one for myself as a household MP3 file server, but alas...
 
FAT32 makes it officially not hot, IMO. You've got to be able to store large DV projects or DVD images. Plus, the overhead for a large mp3 collection is horrible..
 
My Tritton T-NAS uses EXT3. And it supports Samba, Appletalk and straight Windows File Sharing, along with FTP.
 
I'm not sure how this is a whole lot better than just getting a $15 USB enclosure and shareing it off your computer. I understand that its stand alone (the only real "feature" I saw in it's feature section), but what are the real advantages to this solution over USB? j/w
 
> but what are the real advantages to this solution over USB? j/w

Small business or multiple-person house LAN storage. 2 people can read or write at
once, and with multiple machines you don't have to keep moving it around.

On a 100 mbit LAN speed should also be better for any machines with just a USB 1.x port, but slower than USB 2.
 
One of the major advantages is you do not need to format a true NAS with a specific platform a NAS is cross platform compatable.
 
Originally posted by: Shinare
I'm not sure how this is a whole lot better than just getting a $15 USB enclosure and shareing it off your computer. I understand that its stand alone (the only real "feature" I saw in it's feature section), but what are the real advantages to this solution over USB? j/w
Click to expand...

The benefit is the same one that makes network print servers and broadband routers worthwhile. The stuff can be used over a network without relying on a computer to be on 24/7.

Originally posted by: Odeen
My Tritton T-NAS uses EXT3. And it supports Samba, Appletalk and straight Windows File Sharing, along with FTP.
Click to expand...

Got any link to deals on these? :thumbsup:
 
Actually I think if you look at the details and do some searching, almost all the boxes use the same board with the same features, Argosy and Triton I think are just a couple of the names I have seen. Last I looked about $70 shipped was the best price from Froogle.com.

Not hot to me, price is nothing special, and these devices are getting better. Take a look at the more expensive for now, but I think much better SC101 in circuit cities ad. It has 2 drive spots and supports a block transfer mode. Complaint on the 363 is that its a lot slower than it should be.
 
The SC101 specs looks good, but it doesn't support Samba or FTP shares. Unless they've changed the specs recently, it required installation of a proprietary driver in order to access the share.
 
Originally posted by: cmv
Originally posted by: llars
It's *nix based thus it is not able to write to an NTFS partition.
Click to expand...

False: http://www.google.com/search?q=linux%20ntfs
That was true about 4-5 years ago maybe...
Click to expand...


Not exactly correct.

The actual facts are that you can nativly support NTFS in linux only for READING, not writing. So far the native test versions of NTFS for linux that support writing all have major issues. Why? Because MS doesn't open up thier specs for NTFS.

HOWEVER, there's a limited exception to this (and probably what you are turning up in your search). You can "wrap" the actual MS NTFS dll file in a wrapper in linux using a driver file that intercepts all file system calls, passes them through a wrapper into the MS dll file that fools the dll into thinkings its running on a windows system, and then everything works fine.

(I think there's also some expensive commercial software that can enable writing in NTFS in linux because they paid MS, but this defeats the idea of cheap NAS box)

Only problem with that approach is that you can't very well go distributing the MS NTFS dll file on a commercial item without MS's permission, which means large liscense fees which then would defeat the whole goal of a cheap NAS box (and odds are MS is not going to licsense thier files to be used in a wrapper in a commercial setting anyway).

In fact, when you use the wrapper, it doesn't even include the MS dll file, you have to copy it yourself from one of your own windows installs, otherwise they'd run into legal issues.

So, all cheap NAS boxes either use the linux filesystem (like ext-3) or they use FAT32, which has a 4 gig maximum file size and uses more overhead.

So both of you are partly correct.



As for the overhead, it depends if you have lots and lots (tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands) of small files, or you have a few large files. On average a FAT32 system overhead is about 16k per file, wheras the NTFS overhead is about 2k per file (I'm talking about the per file overhead of the "allocation unit" sizes here). If you want the math details about it and how to find this out for yourself, let me know.

Anyway, if you have say 1,000 files on a hard drive, the typical NTFS overhead is going to be 2 megabytes. The typical FAT32 overhead would be 16 megabytes.
If you have 100,000 files on a hard drive, its going to be 200 megabytes for NTFS and 1.6 gigs for FAT32. Now if its a 200 gig hard drive, this probably wont matter all that much to you.

As for the 4 gig max size for a single file, this may or may not matter to you. Many programs split up large video files into smaller sizes so that it wont matter regardless of file system. Like on a typical dvd, you'll notice the maximum vob file size is about 1 gig. So normally this should be ok. Odds that if this is a problem, all you have to do is off to a NTFS file system to complete some final steps to merge files into a larger one.
 
Originally posted by: mercanucaribe
Anyone who says "boxen" undoubtedly weighs more than 230lbs and has a beard.
Click to expand...

Hey! I resemble that remark. Well, not a beard, but I haven't shaved in a few days. 🙂
 
The SC101 supports the block transfer modes of SAN, which seem a lot better than just typical NAS stuff.

Some boxes may be fussy about the UDMA level of drives, maybe just fussy in general with some drives.

I don't really know enough to be sure of any of the details, but I can tell its not quite ready for me to buy.
 
Originally posted by: Odeen
Originally posted by: mercanucaribe
Anyone who says "boxen" undoubtedly weighs more than 230lbs and has a beard.
Click to expand...

Hey! I resemble that remark. Well, not a beard, but I haven't shaved in a few days. 🙂
Click to expand...

Hey, a beard is a beard, whether it hangs down to your belly button or if it's barely dark enough to be a 5 o'clock shadow.

Yes, I weigh about 230 pounds and have a 5 o'clock shadow, why do you ask?
 
I have two of these NAS enclosures (no beard hence no boxen for me).

Anyway, the device has a few issues. First, I put 120 GB drives in them and had no problems. Network setup was easy and so I was able to move files to and from the device at network speed without a hitch. However, they do seem to have an issue waking from "sleep" mode. I had hoped to have nightly backups go to these devices but I kept getting error messages from the software. After trying it myself after some period of inactivity, I found that I had to power cycle the thing to make it "wake up". So, one of these now holds audio books and the other holds family photos...things we can put on manually.

They are small and I was able to just plug them into the network and they just worked, even on a linux machine, but the sleep issue is annoying.

Hope this helps!

 
Originally posted by: mercanucaribe
Anyone who says "boxen" undoubtedly weighs more than 230lbs and has a beard.
Click to expand...

BTW, where does that reference come from anyways?
 
Originally posted by: Zap
Originally posted by: mercanucaribe
Anyone who says "boxen" undoubtedly weighs more than 230lbs and has a beard.
Click to expand...

BTW, where does that reference come from anyways?
Click to expand...


I think it comes from some German slang or some such. I think boxen in german means boxes.
 
from Wikipedia...


Irregular Germanic plurals
The plural of a few Germanic nouns can also be formed from the singular by adding n or en, stemming from the obsolete weak declension:

ox oxen (also oxes in metaphorical sense)
cow kine (archaic/regional)
eye eyen (rare, found in some regional dialects)
shoe shoon (also rare/obsolete)
child children (with the original stem extension -r-)

The word box, referring to a computer, is semi-humorously pluralized boxen in the Leet dialect. Multiple Vax computers, likewise, are sometimes called Vaxen, but multiple Unix systems are usually Unices.


That is all the time I have for now...I need to go and work on my Unices....


 
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