From: gene martinez on
pattyjamas(a)gmail.com wrote:

>Would like to find router to attach External Hard disk to that
>consistently works?
>
>I do not want to spend more than $300 give or take $100.
>My goal is to find a decent router for home use that also has a USB
>input or perhaps an Ethernet input for an external hard drive. I have
>a 500GB external USB/Firewire Hard Drive and would like to connect it
>to a router so all computers can access it. Probably as a mapped
>drive. I do not want to have to leave one computer on as a pass-
>through (kind of like Printer sharing).
>
>However perhaps I am wrong but most reviews I read say that such
>routers with Media Support do not work consistently, are slow, and so
>on..
>
>I just want to use it to store some backup files to that are about
>1.5GB in size. Will probably not use for streaming video but might for
>streaming music.
>
>Thanks for advice on this. Else I will just stick with what I have ad
>forget this entire idea...
>
>Currently have a few PC's running XP, Linksys Wireless Router WRT54GS
>and 2 54MBps (supposedly) Powerline modules with Ethernet connections.
>Would connect yet to be purchased router to other end of Powerline to
>extend access to downstairs of house.
>
>Sincerely
>Patty


Take a look at the Linksys NSLU2, this will allow you to connect (2)
usb drives to an ethernet network. Sounds like what your looking for,
it's NOT wireless....
From: gene martinez on
pattyjamas(a)gmail.com wrote:


>
>Thanks so much.
>Had some pretty bad reviews on Newegg. I do not think there is a good
>solution out there unless you set up your own File and Print Sever
>with an old PC or something. Even the Buffalo Linkstation has issues.
>Issues like not compatible with Vista, freezes up, loses data, cannot
>access, uses its own formatting system etc...
>

The one I have is older and yes it uses it's own format, so you can't
use the usb drives on a pc if you wanted too. The newer ones have
changed the way they format so you can use them with pc's if you want
to. I also have Vista and it can see my (2) drives OK. The other nice
thing is, if you want to, you can access your drives (if you needed a
file or doc) over the internet, if you set it up.... I haven't had any
trouble with the NSLU2 unit, one of my 500mg drive went south, but
that was a drive problem...
From: riggor on

"gene martinez" <njkat(a)eclipse.net> wrote in message
news:47f56293.54206996(a)news.netcarrier.net...
> pattyjamas(a)gmail.com wrote:
>
>
>>
>>Thanks so much.
>>Had some pretty bad reviews on Newegg. I do not think there is a good
>>solution out there unless you set up your own File and Print Sever
>>with an old PC or something. Even the Buffalo Linkstation has issues.
>>Issues like not compatible with Vista, freezes up, loses data, cannot
>>access, uses its own formatting system etc...
>>
>
> The one I have is older and yes it uses it's own format, so you can't
> use the usb drives on a pc if you wanted too. The newer ones have
> changed the way they format so you can use them with pc's if you want
> to. I also have Vista and it can see my (2) drives OK. The other nice
> thing is, if you want to, you can access your drives (if you needed a
> file or doc) over the internet, if you set it up.... I haven't had any
> trouble with the NSLU2 unit, one of my 500mg drive went south, but
> that was a drive problem...

I have two first generation 250GB Maxtor One touch drives connected to my
Linksys NLSU2. No problems.

The latest firmware will let you use one of the 2nd port with NTFS or FAT32,
but I think the 1st port must use a disk formatted with EXT3 format - which
is Linux, not anything proprietary to Linksys.

It's nice because it has a web server so you can forward port 8080 to it and
get to it from the outside world, as well as a built in FTP server as well -
that once you forward the port - is accessible from the outside world.

It has some nice features around backups ....


From: Jeff Liebermann on
On Fri, 4 Apr 2008 07:20:46 -0700 (PDT), pattyjamas(a)gmail.com wrote:

>Not sure how they accomplish NTFS and other vendors seem to have
>problems with it.

Same way as the other NAS solutions. Linux with NTFS support. See:
<http://www.linux-ntfs.org/doku.php?id=ntfs>
for details. Linux boots to a small EFS partition for the operating
system and storage management. The rest of the disk is for storage
and is partitioned for NTFS.

Be careful as to how many of the features of NTFS your selected NAS
storage box supports. For example, the original Buffalo Linkstation
ran NTFS, but without any of the security features. The external USB
drives could read NTFS, but could not format NTFS. The later
Linkstation Pro was much faster, but didn't support NTFS. Make a
checklist of requirements.



--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl(a)cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558