Be Excellent To Each Other

Hello, I've had a search on BBEX and there have been a couple of similar topics recently but nothing addressing my exact NAS requirements, and I'm having a hard time gleaning the information I want from online reviews and manufacturer specs.

I'm after a reasonably priced (under £500) 2TB NAS solution, in the form of 2x1TB drives that are mirrored with RAID-1.

I don't want any dodgy Linux file systems and/or on-device operating systems, just something that can be mapped as a normal Windows mapped drive from all the PCs on my network.

I'll manually back my stuff up with batch files, and whilst I appreciate RAID isn't a backup solution, it will actually be holding the second (and third) copy of the data in question, so when I kick off a transfer to the NAS I'll already be sure there are no accidental deletions and suchlike.

I don't want to have to have a bit of software running on every PC, which a lot of devices seem to require, but I can't determine whether or not the software is recommended, or required, from reading reviews and/or specs.

This one seems to tick all the boxes - http://www.ebuyer.com/product/160644 - except reviews always go through installing all the WD software, I can't work out if I can just have the thing sat on the network as a basic NAS without having client software cleverly trying to back everything up all the time.

Advice and recommendations appreciated!

So all you want is a NAS box, nothing special about it at all? No torrenting, media sharing, just a file area you can drop stuff onto, right?


It will almost certainly run a version of Linux, but you'll still be able to add it as a mapped drive.

It'll serve two main purposes:

1) A 'final' backup of my data. I already hold one copy on a USB external hard drive attached to my PC, which is in itself a copy of what's on my PC's internal hard drive, then the NAS will a copy of that - my PC's hard drive is the 'master' data set, and I then manually kick off a robocopy batch file of that to the USB hard drive, and want to be able to do the same with the NAS, hence I just want to see it as a standard mapped network drive, with the NAS hardware handling the RAID-1 mirror side of things.

2) A shared folder for MP3s, family photos and videos, and so on - which needs to work as a standard Windows share which can be mapped to. My second PC currently serves this purpose which is a nuisance 'cause Mrs Atrocity has to turn it on whenever she wants to access the MP3 collection, pictures and what have you. Can you share folders out in the same way from a NAS running Linux? I really have no experience of these things at all.

Also, purpose No 3 now I come to think about it, a shared folder that Mrs Atrocity can copy all her stuff from her laptop to that she wants to back up, as it's currently a bit of an ad hoc arrangement for her, which could do with being formalised a bit.

If the box itself runs Linux, how does a Windows client address it? Is this what you need software installed on the PCs for?

Linux is a black hole to me, my organisation is 100% Microsoft through and through so I know bugger all about Linux. (Yes I know Linux is better for a lot of things, but I don't make the decisions on what we buy.....)

They usually work like a Windows PC for network drive mapping.

The DNS-323 (for example) Gaywood and me have ones of runs Linux*, but presents a Windows-style share. You use a web UI to configure what shares it presents, along with user rights, and then in Windows you map it as normal.

Of course it does a lot more than that, but you don't have to use it. Two drive bays, and it supports SATA drives up to 1.5TB, in various RAID configurations (including 1).

It's also got a USB port on the back, into which you would be able to plug your external disc and have it automatically do a backup. Out of the box, I think. But Gaywood's bound to know more about that.

* As Grim... said, if it's a NAS, it's almost guaranteed to be running Linux.

Every such device you buy will be Linux, but you don't need to care. As Grim... and Bik said, you just fire up the web GUI, make shares, and they will appear on the network. The wire protocol used between two Windows computers, SMB, is very well supported by Linux (by a piece of software called Samba), and has been for a very long time.

As a possible alternative to the DNS-323 (which gets a solid recommendation from me), consider the Linksys ReadyNAS. I don't know if they are as easy to hack as the DNS-323 but they do have nifty in-place drive extension stuff the DNS lacks. Say you have two 1Tb drives in it. You want to upgrade to two 2Tb ones. With the DNS, you need to back it up, insert the new drives, and restore the backup. The ReadyNAS is supposed to be able to insert one disk, you wait, then you insert the other and it preserves data.

Of course, if you didn't trust that process you'd have to backup anyway -- and you're only using the thing to store backups in the first place so you likely don't care.

All of these devices typically come bare of disks, incidentally, so you can fit whatever you want.

Not out of the box, you'd have to haxx0r it to do that (not that this is a remotely scary thing to do).

If you hack it, you can do loads to it. Run a web server, run torrent downloads on it so you don't need to leave a PC on. Run a UPnP server to stream audio and video files from the NAS to a PS3 or 360 without needing a PC to be switched on.

Hmmmm that sounds pretty agreeable then, are these Linux NAS boxes easy to configure and look after? I'm balls-out already when it comes to stuffing my head with new IT crap so really don't want to have to learn more code or stuff like that just to get a NAS up and running, obviously I'm happy with the basics, but I don't want to find myself typing commands into a Linux shell, for example.

Besides which, I don't actually find learning about computers fun any more, a career in IT has managed to remov the joy from that for me, these days, I just like things to work.

Can you see any problems with the Western Digital unit I linked to in my original post? It seems pretty keenly priced for a populated 2GB box, and also has no fans as it has two low power drives in it, which is handy as it'll be in the same room as me (small whiny fans piss me off). I'm not bothered about raw performance as backups just take as long as they take, and after the initial copy it'll be incrementals anyway.

Thanks for the answers, most illuminating

You shouldn't have to touch the 'insides' of them.

What Grim... said. I can only speak from experience on the DNS units, but you don't get a shell or anything by default; just a web GUI that allows you do create shares and configure some extra services (like DHCP, an iTunes file server, and a UPnP server). You don't need any knowledge at all.

The Western Digital unit sounds highly similar, and it almost certainly is.

I can't speak directly on that WD RAID NAS WOO CAPS thing, but I've had an old model, non-raid MyBook World Edition gently fileserving in the corner of the room for the last six months with no problems whatsoever. Automagically show up as a drive on macs, easily mappable to from windows. I like it.

Samba = greatness. It's what the Xbox uses AE. We talked about this before on that other forum

Very simple to use. Macs use it too.

Well I've taken the plunge and ordered the WD unit linked to in my OP.

Typical eBuyer and their delivery.

FREE DELIVERY ON THIS ITEM!

Proceed to checkout....

Oh right you live on the Isle of Man, we've changed our mind, that'll be £20 delivery and you can't have the thing until fucking Thursday.

In all fairness it's a standard 'get fucked for living on the IOM' type arrangement, but eBuyer are more irritating than most at getting all the way to payment before deciding to stick the knife in.

play.com still manage to do free delivery to the IOM, so what's that all about then, eh?

Drobo though. What's that about?

Overpriced stuff for Mac heads and others with more money than sense. It looks like it works very well though -- the in-place array expansion is lovely, and they now have an official support structure for third-party add-ons like torrent servers and suchlike. I'd have one if money was no object.

I've also got a DNS-323. Other than the onboard media server not wanting to talk to my FunSquare and needing me to hunt down the relevant version of TwonkyMedia it's been great.

Hello again!

My NAS is here but I have a problem, I can't connect to any locked down shares from my main Windows 7 PC. Booooo!

As promised the Linux-ness of it is well hidden behind an intuitive and well ordered web browser based control panel (accessible via IP address from any web browser on the network), got it all set up and running no problem, all PCs on the network can see it and get into the default Public share OK, so I then went about setting up private shares, one for me and one for Mrs Atrocity.

Mrs Atrocity's went fine, set her up a user account on the NAS, created a folder share for her (all done through the web control panel), mapped to it from her laptop, got challenged for her username and password which I entered, this was accepted, job done!

Then did exactly the same thing for my own share, and I can't fucking get into it! Or rather, I can't get to it from my Windows7 PC. If I map to it from my second PC (Win XP) or from Mrs Atrocity's laptop (also Win XP), I get challenged for my username and password, enter them, and I'm in, so the share is there and it's working OK.

However, when I try to get into it on my Windows 7 PC, I get challenged for a username and password, and it's having none of it - screenshot attached.

I can't help but think it's something to do with the way Win7 is trying to authenticate, by default it's trying to pass a domain name as well, which obviously isn't required, so I have to put the leading \ in to get it to drop the domain prefix, but even with the correct non-domain username and password it won't have it. (Obviously it fails as well if I leave the domain name in there.)

On the WinXP machines it's just a basic username and password that it sends, no domain fuckery by default.

Any ideas chaps?

I had the same issue with my Xbox. XP saw it fine and it all worked. Vista? can't find it and the Xbox can't see the PC any more.

Check firewall.

Can you tell from the NAS documentation what authentication it supports? It's entirely possible that the Win7 box is trying to use Kerberos with NTLM disabled and the XP box will happily use NTLM.

Is your Win7 box actually in a domain? Have you tried using MYBOOKWORLD\Alex as the username, so it knows you want to use a local account on the remote box?

Check what though? It's connecting as a basic Windows networking share, and it can resolve the share name fine, it's specifically at the username and password stage that it's binning me out.

EDIT - Turned off Windows Firewall completely just to check, no change.

Not in a domain, all in the same workgroup though. The NAS box happily joined my home workgroup, all PCs on the network treat it as a Windows workgroup member no problem.

I tried mybookworld\alex and \\mybookworld\alex no difference.

Can I enable NTLM on Win7?

Can you see it in 'network' on the Win7 box?

Win7 doesn't support NTLM at all. I'd expect the NAS to support Kerberos or at least NTLMv2 though, which Win7 does support - as it must be CIFS compliant.

Yep it's in there.

And yes, I'm using CIFS as the file system on the NAS, which I guess means it does support at least NTLMv2.

OK. Run up secpol.msc on the Win7 box.
Navigate in the treeview to Local Policies -> Security Options
Scroll down the right-hand panel to "Network Security:LANManager Authentication Level". It's probably set to "Not Defined". Change it to "Send LM and NTLM. Use NTLMv2 Session Security if Negotiated".
Log off and on again, and retry.

If that doesn't change anything, go back to the same place, and go into "Network Security: Restrict NTLM: Add remote server exceptions for NTLM Authentication" and add in MYBOOKWORLD. Log off and on again and retry.

That's about all I can suggest at this point - my knowledge of how Windows 7 handles CIFS isn't yet brilliant.

Tried both those, made no difference I'm afraid

Very much appreciate your help though, 'cause I'm totally stuck!

To rule out serverside configuration error, have you tried connecting to the Mrs' private share with her username and pwd from the Win7 box?

All their documentation talks about using their client tool - are you using that or just bypassing that and doing it manually?

I can't get to either protected share from my Win7 PC.

I can get to either protected share from both the Mrs' laptop (XP), and my XP PC.

UPDATE - I have another laptop upstairs (yeah I know, lots of computers in this house) which I put Win7 onto earlier in the week, it CAN connect to either of the protected shares no problem as soon as it's given the username and password. (Don't know why I didn't try it before TBH.)

So it's not fundamentally a Win7 issue, it's a difference between my Win7 PC and the Win7 laptop upstairs, which is bizarre, 'cause both builds are only a week old and are the same MSDN release with all updates applied, and I've not started to muck about 'under the hood' wither either of them......

I'm really stumped now.

Odd, the Win7 laptop upstairs seems to handle the logon a bit differently, it gives the option for alternate credentials, which my main Win7 PC doesn't seem to.

These screenshots are from the laptop upstairs, and show the 'alex' protected share opening no problem. (The 'vicki' share opened no problem in the same fashion.)

I had a similar problem at first, which turned out to be password-related - the usernames were the same, so XP would only pass my Windows password, which was different to the NAS one. Even though it was prompting me.

Have you turned Simple Sharing off? It's probably equivalent to something above, but it's always the first thing I turn off in Explorer.

Has the NAS got the latest firmware (1.07)?

This thread suggests Live Sign In Assistant can screw up security settings enough that Win7 can't talk to the DNS-323. Have you got it installed? Also being in a homegroup, whatever that is.

Problem solved!

I was kind of missing the snappiness and simplicity of XP anyway, and all my fruit machine emulators work properly again now as well.

what is the difference between a cheap and expensive nas.

I just thought to try my Win7 against my NAS - automatically opened my private share, asked for and succeeded with charl's credentials on her private one. *shrug*

This NAS any good?

Being able to do extra stuff and copying speed I've read. Doing anything over wireless is painful what ever you do, so I've attempted to wire as much as possible to get good copy times. Also the Ethernet power adapters aren't great at copying files (at least not in my house). I've got myself a Netgear Duo thing. Works pretty well and has Linux\Unix (one of them) on and you can add free little extra tools for it.

I have a Bit Torrent client running on it and it streams music and stuff around the house to my egg box. Also pretty good with power usage.

I have had a few problems with the first one I had but that was down to the the external power supply and not the main unit.

I added the 2x1TB and it pretty much set it self up automaticly to full redundancy.


5 (top) banana(s) so far.

The price.

other than the price, I take it has something to do with features?

What's a NAS?

And build quality, reliability, brand, etc. All the usual normal things why some products are more expensive than others.

The National Autistic Society. Or a rapper. Or Network-attached Storage, which at it's simplest is a hard drive that plugs into your network, making the files it holds accessible to any other computers on that network.

Network Attached Storage.


Looking the Netgear and teh D-link are similar prices. for the 0HDD or with 1HDD.

£209 for the DNS-323 with 1 Tb HDD seems quite cheap..


I did mean funtions Myp

This

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Netgear- ... S-(2x500GB)-Inc-FREE-500Gb-HHD-Inc-in-the-Box

or

http://www.play.com/PC/PCs/4-/9753175/D ... oduct.html


Would have helped if I had put these on my previous post!!

You can get the netgear empty and just fill it with what every drive you want... that reminds me I should claim my free 500GB drive.

I was going to buy it with 500gb and claim one free

Trueee.

I have a something made by DLink that I dunno what it is, but it plugs into the USB and has something else on the other end to plug stuff into. What, I dunno. Next time you come over Kov, you can have it. it's in the loft.

Sure that's not a Linksys NSLU2?

You are correct. It isn't a Linksys NSLU2

I had a quick read through the thread and couldn't see if this had been asked and answered but can these NAS thingies be used for media streaming to a 360 or does that need special software on the PC?

itsallwater has already said he uses his for streaming to his 360.