Cisco-Linksys Storage Link for USB 2.0 Disk Drives NSLU2
by Linksys
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Cisco-Linksys Storage Link for USB 2.0 Disk Drives NSLU2
Customer Review: Good product... requires some technical knowlege for setup.
Summary: 4 Stars
I bought the NSLU2 because it was a cheap and relatively easy way to use my existing external drives in an NAS configuration. The first thing I did was update the firmware which was relatively straightforward though it did require me to use the much feared LINKSYS "Erase All" program. However, I had no problems with the update and got the little NAS up and running relatively quickly.
Since the NAS claims to support standard NFTS formatted USB drives, I just plugged in my drives which I'd been using with Windows XP. This configuration was quite troublesome and the drives were constantly dropping data and requiring frequent re-booting. After a little research I realized that I would be far better served reformatting the drives as EXT2.
I backed up my data and used the NSLU2 to format the drives and then started again. After doing this, I found the NSLU2's performance to be excellent. It took me a number of hours to transfer about 200GB of data back on to my drives, but once complete, I found the SLUG to be more than capable of serving up my files to any of my three laptops around the house.
Then I started playing with the FTP server and web access. Adding users to the NSLU2 was straight forward but be aware that once you do this, you'll have to add each of your Window's users as NSLU2 users in order to access your mapped drives. The FTP works well and the HTTP interface is excellent if you need to retrieve data while away from home. I use a free DNS service to alleviate any problems associated with the Dynamic IP provided by my ISP.
All said, after a few hours (days?) of tinkering, I'm very satisfied with my NSLU2 as a home based NAS that I occasionally access remotely. My technical experience is moderate and I'm sure someone who is more experienced could do much more with this little NAS. It gets four stars instead of five because it's a challenge to set up for someone with very little experience. However, once it gets going, it will stream music or video, serve up files, and generally is a great home NAS.
Customer Review: Excellent home/SOHO solution especially for backups.
Summary: 5 Stars
Overall: its the first home backup/storage solution I've found that is fully automated, reasonably priced, and easy to administer. Others have noted the limitations of this device, nonetheless it serves admirably as a home backup solution or shared file server. I have mine running overnight backups for all the machines in my home, and I'm very happy with it.The Storage Link is more flexible than the comparable Netgear product (which integrates a single USB port into a wireless router) as you can connect it to any existing router or switch in your network, as well as hang more than one disk off. (And if you need masses of storage, just get another one and connect it to another spare ethernet port.) It is also significantly cheaper per GB than conventional NAS disks such as those from DLink. Performance is more than acceptable for a network drive, although an initial full backup of my largest drive (100MB) did take a full 24 hours to complete! Fortunately, subsequent incremental backups run a lot faster. In any case, I don't think any other NAS drive would be faster, since the network is the bottleneck.
Extensive admin features, accessed via a web browser (familiar to owners of other Linksys devices) allow you to set up private password-protected partitions for different users, so you can protect work files from your kids or ensure that nobody deletes your precious backups to make room for music downloads! There is also a built in backup utility that is basic, but adequate for simple regular scheduled backups. If you are feeling brave you can also make attached disks visible over the Internet for remote access.
If you plan to use this in conjunction with a Maxtor OneTouch disk, beware: the OneTouch feature will not work over the network. For backups you'll either have to use the Storage Link's built in utility, or backup software. The Maxtor 250 I bought came with Retrospect - however, you default Install doesn't give you option to install Retrospect alone. You'll need to browse the \bin directory on the CD for the installer for Retrospect (but at least its there!)
Customer Review: Absolutely versatile! (after a little research) 5 Stars
This gizmo is the best nas available for such a low price. Some people complain about you have to afford the cost of a external usb drive, but actually is not so expensive if you consider that you can even recycle and old pc hard drive buying an usb enclosure some times for less than $15.00The amount of different features is amazing. The bad is the almost absolute lack of proper documentation from the manufacturer. No wonder why so many people complain about this product. I had to do a lot of research in the web before realizing the amazing capacity of this little device. I use it with ease as a single database for may home wireless network, host a little website and, since I replace the Linksys firmware for Unslung, I installed Twonky media server and now it serve music, pictures and videos to my music and media players and serves remotely my pictures, music and video to my friends and family via ftp! I have it configured to automatically back up all my files in a secondary external usb hard drive and works great! Is incredible. This is my best sources of knowledge:
nslu2-linux org
*I wrote it wrong in purpose to avoid censorship. You just need to replace the last space with a dot and you'll have the right web address
You can also visit the Linksys Community Forums and look for NSLU2.
I use windows xp in all my computers, so all I needed to read and write -yes, write- files from and to any of my EXT3 format usb external disks connected directly through a usb cable to any of my laptops, is to install Ext2IFS_1_10c.exe that can be downloaded for free from several web sites. Just do a google search and you'll find them.
It works great with Windows NT4.0/2000/XP/2003 operating systems. Thanks to the built in samba server, there's no way to notice that the file format is not NTFS. No limitations!
Customer Review: Wonderful, inexpensive project box!
Summary: 5 Stars
The Linksys NSLU2 is an inexpensive Network Attached Storage server. Essentially, it's a tiny box with an Ethernet port and two high-speed USB connectors. You connect it to your LAN, attach one or two external USB drives to it, format the drives and configure the shared storage using the built-in web server.
If this was all the NSLU2 was capable of, it would already be a wonderful little tool. I strongly disagree with another reviewer who recommended a Xinet NDAS drive as a replacement: the big benefit of the NSLU2 (or rather the drawback of the Xinet) is that you don't have to load any unreliable third party software on your computer to access it: it uses the ubiquitous SMB protocol supported by Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Turtle Beach Audiotron, etc... a proper file server protocol capable of handling concurrent access from multiple clients.
But that's only the beginning, because the NSLU2 happens to be running Linux, which makes it an ideal target for all sorts of projects. If you go to tomsnetworking.com's "how-to" section, you will find a series of articles written by Jim Buzbee giving step-by-step, clear instructions on how to hack the NSLU2 to unleash its full potential. I turned mine into an iTunes music jukebox; you can also run other server protocols for any number of tasks.
In conclusion, this is a great, reliable, inexpensive and easy to configure NAS box.
It's a great value even if you only use it as intended; and it's also a wonderful little always-on server project box for the wannabe hacker, with lots of info and help out there. Very highly recommended to all.
If you're interested in the NSLU2's hacking potential you should also investigate the Buffalo Kuro box. It's twice the price of the Linksys device, but its manufacturer fully supports development on it.
Customer Review: Innovative and useful but could use improvements
Summary: 4 Stars
I've been using this item for about a month. I think it actually deserves somewhere between 3 and 4 stars... considering the cost of the item, I give it 4. My comments: (1) Uses Linux file system. Not compatible with NTFS format. In Windows environment, can not go between direct USB connection and NSLU2 device without reformatting drive (with exception of the next point). (2) Despite what the docs say, many smaller Fat32 hard drives work just fine for me in the Disk2 port. I've gone up to 8 gig here. Does not have to be Flash memory. (3) Device will not boot reliablly for me when it is configured for DHCP. Often it gives up and resets its IP address to factory default. This can be a real pain (see item 4). I have found that using a fixed IP address for it seems to work fine. (4) Caveat: Initially, device can only be accessed from a 192.168.1.xxx IP subnet. For example, if your router/dhcp server uses 192.168.0.xxx (as mine does), you'll need to manually set a fixed IP address for one of your PC's just so you can _reach_ the NSLU2 to set it up. Then you can set it to the fixed IP address of your choice. (5) The device, or perhaps I should say the overall strategy moreso than the device itself, is relatively slow when compared to direct USB 2.0 connection to a computer. I tested the same 60g USB 2.0 drive first as an NTFS drive on my PC's USB 2.0 port, then with the drive connected to the NSLU2. Using an idle 100 mb ethernet LAN, I reformatted the drive as required and copied about 10 gigs to it. Copy times seems to be 5-10x slower this way for large amounts of data. Much slower than direct USB2 connection in my experience. Copying a few gigs of data can take an hour instead of only the few minutes via direct USB2.