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Thread: Simple NAS Appliances

  1. #1

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    Simple NAS Appliances

    A decade ago there were a lot of NAS devices out there for people who didn't want to delve into some sort of network admin hobby. These seem to be scarce now though, and most products seem to be small Linux boxes with some ramshackle software dumped on them.

    A neighbor was interested in something like this but wanted a solution as close to "zero administration" as possible.

    The main goal was to serve ripped music CDs and video DVDs on demand through a home theater system when the Internet is down. That's a bigger problem for people who live outside big cities I suppose, even more so in these days of lockdowns and caution. People can get cabin fever fast with no Internet for just a few days.

    I finally found a cheap alternative. Easy to use though with limitations (only handles one drive up to 2TB max, and a optional printer on the second USB port). But if you can live with 720p or less that's still a lot of movies and TV.

    It is possible it might support a 2nd drive via the printer port. No mention of this in any documentation though and I haven't attempted that yet.

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    To evaluate it I strapped one to a WD 2TB USB "My Passport" drive I had bought on sale for $39.99 US. I'd purchased the USR 8710 uShare on sale for $29.99. They were both normally $20 more each, and the uShare is now harder to find.

    I guess these are going out of fashion.

    So far it seems to be easy to set up and use and works well. Simple web-based admin UI that did not fall into the trap of using Macromedia Flash. It can be a server for printing, Samba/SMD, WebDAV, and UPnP/DLNA streaming. Also can be used as a BitTorrent client autonomously if you are into that sort of thing.

    A cheap, tiny, easy to use alternative.


    What else is still out there like this?

    Why are they a rare and vanishing breed now?

  2. #2
    MS SQL Powerposter szlamany's Avatar
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    Re: Simple NAS Appliances

    That is a very cool device!

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  3. #3
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    Re: Simple NAS Appliances

    Quote Originally Posted by dilettante View Post
    Why are they a rare and vanishing breed now?
    Consolidation is probably a small factor, but everything going cloud is likely the main reason.

  4. #4

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    Re: Simple NAS Appliances

    Quote Originally Posted by OptionBase1 View Post
    Consolidation is probably a small factor, but everything going cloud is likely the main reason.
    That might be the key. Perhaps the market has shrunk too far to be sustainable for the consumer electronics giants.

    I have something similar on my own network that was made by Verbatim. It has a metal case, 1TB internal hard drive, 3 USB ports, and an eSATA external drive port as well. Cost me about $100 US 12 years ago. Still works, but it uses Flash on its admin pages (Flash is dead in 2021) so once it needs administrative attention it's toast:

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    Back panel, 1 more USB port and a "Quick Copy" button on the front.

    Perhaps I can work out a sandboxed Flash-enabled browser to keep it going a while.

  5. #5
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    Re: Simple NAS Appliances

    Quote Originally Posted by dilettante View Post
    Perhaps I can work out a sandboxed Flash-enabled browser to keep it going a while.
    If you haven't checked out the thread below, it might be worth a look. There are a few workarounds to get Flash to still work.

    https://www.vbforums.com/showthread....diisable-Flash

  6. #6

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    Re: Simple NAS Appliances

    Tried using the CFG file. Works Great, thanks!

  7. #7

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    Re: Simple NAS Appliances

    BTW: Many recent routers have a USB port that can accept a hard drive as well as support for sharing. Often these provide SMB file sharing, FTP on older devices, DLNA media sharing, and sometimes WebDAV on newer devices.

    That way all you need is a USB hard drive.

    This might be one reason these simple NAS devices are disappearing from the market.

    A cheap router with everything else disabled might be an alternative if you don't want to use your existing router and/or you already have a printer plugged into its USB port for sharing. Setup might be tricky though, you might first have to have a PC plugged into a downstream ethernet port, then enable external access via the WAN port... which once in use becomes a LAN port connecting to your "real" router's downstream LAN ports.

    But some routers, like this TP-Link model, have 2 USB ports you can use:

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    Last edited by dilettante; Feb 28th, 2021 at 12:00 PM.

  8. #8

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    Re: Simple NAS Appliances

    Looks like the router-as-NAS option is a good one. The little USR device I described above only takes 1 drive up to 2GB.

    My TP-Link Archer router can beat that:

    2. Capacity

    Supports at most eight partitions in theory, if the hard drive has more than eight partitions, it just load the first 8 partitions. (On the same drive, the total capacity of each partition cannot exceed 2TB on WR842, WR1043, WDR3500, WDR3600, WDR4300; If there are different hard drives connected via an USB hub, in theory it can identify a maximum capacity of 8 * 2TB. Similarly, the other models with USB function like Archer routers, the total capacity of each partition of usb drive cannot exceed 5TB).
    So I could use 2 USB drives of 20TB each, as long as I partitioned each one as 5TB partitions x 4. You can also use a USB hub to attach multiple smaller drives, up to 8 of them.


    Pretty cool, but note that none of these are high-performance NAT alternatives. A dedicated NAT box supporting RAID configurations, installable software, etc. is an entirely different animal. But I was looking for simple, low administration alternatives for home use: mainly music and video streaming via DLNA.

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