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[sheddyian]

I recently ordered myself a bargain NAS enclosure for a SATA hard disk.  You fit your Hard Disk (not supplied!) inside, plug it into the power and the network, and you have storage available on your network 24/7.

It's got an SMB client (so it works with Wondows), uPNP, FTP and even a bittorrent built it.

And it was under £13 new from eBay!

http://r.ebay.com/9hKGN3

It arrived today.  So far seems very good.

Cheapest I could find an equivalent product was around the £40 mark (though happy to be proved wrong if you know better).

3 points to bear in mind :

o There's no hard disk, you provide your own.  What do you expect for £13?
o It's only 10/100.  Doesn't do gigabit ethernet.
o The supplied PSU has a European plug on it (this is pointed out in the eBay listing).  You won't be able to fit a UK plug to it as it's a moulded PSU unit with Euro plug built in, but you could plug it into an adaptor, or find another 12v 2amp PSU (as I did)

Curiously, the box is 95% German, the manufacturer is German, the PSU is evidently for German market but the instruction leaflet is in English!

So far it's working well, will update if I find any problems.

Ian

[roseway]

Definitely a bargain. Nice find!

[kitz]

Does indeed seem like a good deal.

[sheddyian]

So far, it's working ok. 

Gripes so far : the power LED on the back (green) and the access light on the front (blue) are very bright!  The access light is on all the time, blinking off when accessed.  Might cover them with bits of black insulating tape!

Being 10/100, it's a bit slow.   23Gb of data took well over an hour to copy, and when I left it copying the rest of my TV recordings (130Gb) from my XP PC, Windows wasn't even giving an estimated completion time - left it copying overnight.

Will see how it works with the Raspberry PI as a media centre later on.

Ian

[sheddyian]

Earlier I burnt a DVD with files some stored locally, some on the NAS. 

IMGBURN had to keep waiting to refresh the buffer when reading from the NAS via Samba, with the write speed set to DVD 8x.  The verify pass suggested that the read speed from the NAS unit via Samba was around 4,700KBytes/second.  I might do some better tests later on, although this was real world.

Just tried a simple command line FTP get of a large file, and that comes in at a more respectable 7,269Kbytes/Second.

So performance is hardly blistering, but for £13? 

Ian

[roseway]

I would say that with a NAS device, speed isn't usually terribly important. It depends on what you're using it for of course, but the speed is quite fast enough for things like media streaming, and if you're using it for backups you can do those when you're not actually sitting at the PC, or set them going and get on with something else while the backup works in the background.

[sheddyian]

I would say that with a NAS device, speed isn't usually terribly important. It depends on what you're using it for of course, but the speed is quite fast enough for things like media streaming, and if you're using it for backups you can do those when you're not actually sitting at the PC, or set them going and get on with something else while the backup works in the background.

Completely agree.  I'm currently streaming SD video from it to my TV via a Raspberry PI, works perfectly!  Won't need to leave the PC on all the time now 

Ian

[oldfogy]

Not the same as the one you have but I've been using one of these for some time now and have to admit would not be without it now.
Iomega StorCenter ix2-200 4TB Network Storage. Although when I first had it the obvious benefit was because of my home network but since then streaming through a WD Movie Player is since a god send.

They have been cropping up on Ebay and selling for around £160 but have not been seen recently, except for this expensive one.
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=230908000122&ssPageName=ADME:B:SS:GB:1123

[sheddyian]

My bargain may have been too good to be true.

All was well yesterday, I'd even tested the built-in BitTorrent client by downloading the latest Raspbian Wheezy image for my Raspberry PI, all went speedily and without hitch.

Left the NAS switched on overnight.

Had things to do this morning, but when I went to look at it around 3pm, I couldn't connect to it.

It's all still powered up, router shows LAN link is up, but web interface not responding, and can't access via Samba.

The metalwork of the USB port at the back of the NAS was unpleasantly hot to touch.  (I'm not using the USB)

Power cycled it, but still can't get connection to it.   

Will have a proper look at it later.

Ian

[oldfogy]

One thing I noticed with mine just the other day was even if the NAS Box software was turned off, I could still access it through the 'Network' setting in Explorer.

Obviously not knowing which software you are running, do you, or have you tried a re-start?

*************
Edit.
Just noticed your other post with regards to the router, any chance that is causing the problem.

One thing I feel I have to say is that I don't see why people have to start upgrading firmware when:
a, The item is working properly.
b, The item has not even been tested properly.

[burakkucat]

The metalwork of the USB port at the back of the NAS was unpleasantly hot to touch.  (I'm not using the USB)

That reads rather ominously. 

[sheddyian]

Today I received the UK to Schuko http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schuko adaptor I'd ordered a few days back, so I was able to use the power adaptor with the 2 pin German plug that was supplied with the bargain NAS unit.

And I'm pleased to say it's all working again! 

So it looks like the UK power supply I'd used has packed up, or has gone over/under voltage at least.

Will leave the NAS running for a few days and see what happens, but at the moment it's running perfectly with the power supply that came with it.

(and the Schuko adaptor I'd chosen from Amazon is nice and chunky too, was quite concerned about the safety of some of the "travel adaptors" I'd seen.  This one is fused (I fitted a 3 amp) and seems nice and solid and it all plugs together without wobble.)

Ian

[roseway]

Excellent.

[burakkucat]

And I'm pleased to say it's all working again!