Also, something to consider is that the readynas, although touted as a redundant data device is not without occasional catastrophic problems. I had a power outage that outlasted the UPS and data got corrupted beyond repair although none of the hard drives were flawed. My second 500GB drive had no partition data after the power outage and I was unable to recover it using various utilities on XPPE, Hirens Boot CD, etc. Luckily I had hard backups of about 80% of the movies and shows. I was 2 weeks from the end of my warranty and they upgraded me to the NV+ since the NV is no longer manufactured. It was assumed that the firmware was corrupted but when I received the NV+ and installed the drives, the same problem recurred and was not an issue with the nas, but a data loss on my drives. Neatgear will do data recovery in cases like this but is fee based and probably not cheap.
lopaka Brian Weeden <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Right now I'm using the TwonkyMediaServer to serve content from my HTPC to my D-link DSM-520 and it works beautifully, as long as the whole browser election thing isn't disrupting the entire network. Would I be able to install that on the ReadyNAS? Or would I need an actual full windows install? The 520 is listed as supported on the Infrant Wiki but I found the D-link media server software to be horrible and the Twonky one much better. The ReadyNAS NV+ with no drives is about $900 on Newegg as a "sale" price. They are $1,050 on Netgear's site. Figure you need another $1200 for 4 1 TB drives. Pretty pricey for just a plain box, could build a full windows home server for that much. I have been using IP addresses to map all my shares for a while now as well and it works fine, except for random network-wide drop outs which I am pretty sure are related to browser elections. ----- Brian Weeden Technical Consultant Secure World Foundation On Mon, Feb 25, 2008 at 4:15 PM, Robert Martin Jr. wrote: > Thankfully I bought my ReadyNAS NV while Infrant was still in charge. Now > that Netgear owns them they raised prices on everything without actually > improving any of the technology. I paid $550 2 years ago and got upgraded to > an NV+ about a month ago when my NV started having problems. They cost twice > as much now ??? > > It generally works very well as long as you're using supported hard > drives. I serve media to 2 Xbox media centers, 2 computers and one network > DVD player (Avel Linkplayer2) > > I have run in to similar issues with the name resolution, so I only use IP > addresses when mapping drives and shares. I have no MAC experience so I > can't be much help there. > > I also have a DLink DSM-G600 but although it works well as a standard NAS, > the media server is not recognized by my network DVD player. The XBMCs can > use it fine by just mapping the shares. I believe the DSM-G600 only supports > a 500GB drive though, although some users have higher capacity drives > running fine. > > lopaka > > Brian Weeden wrote: I've posted here before about > this problem and really haven't solved > anything yet. For those that haven't heard my ranting before, the issue > with the Windows on a peer-to-peer network and browsing. If you have a > server that is actually managing a domain, that server will maintain a > list > of which computer name is associated with which IP address on the network. > So if I tell my machine to connect to "media" the domain server says "oh > that's actually 192.169.0.4" or whatever. If there isn't a domain > controller (ie the network is just peers) one machine will maintain the > browser list of all the mappings. If something happens, the computer will > force an election and the new machine will be the browser. > > Sounds great in theory but my experience it has been absolutely horrible. > Over the last few years I have had off and on problems, ranging from > simple > annoyances like not being able to see any machines listed under "My > Network > Places" to massive network slowdowns and inability to transfer even 20MB > files due to browser elections dropping connections. I have tried many > solutions with the current being to change the registry in all my machines > save one to never maintain the browser list and disabling the browser > service as well. The one machine which is my media server has that same > registry key set to "always" and has the service running. > > But recently I've found another issue - my wife's MacBook has started to > participate in this whole mess. A couple of days ago I was going through > the event viewer trying to figure out why the network had gone to hell and > saw an entry saying that the MacBook had denied access to an IP and forced > an election. Getting the MacBook to stop doing that is beyond my limited > OSX knowledge. > > So, now I'm looking for solutions. I need to rebuild my HTPC / media > server > and wanted to see if I could find a solution in that. I really want to > (try) and cut down on the power used so I was thinking of replacing the > whole thing with a NAS box and a small set top like an Apple TV or D-Link > box. I was doing some research and noticed that all these NAS solutions > support different filesharing protocols, like CIFS, SMB, AFP, NFS, etc. > What's the different between these and the normal protocols that are used > when you share a drive within Windows? Do they result in more efficient > use > of the network bandwidth? > > Why are the ReadyNAS boxes so darn expensive (almost $1000 on Newegg for > diskless NV+)? What are other good options? I need something that will > support at least 3 TB of storage (ie 4x 1TB SATA drives) in RAID 5 and > preferably something can I can daisy chain another to to hit my goal of 6 > TB > (ie 4x8 1TB SATA in RAID 5). > > Aside from setting up a domain controller, can anyone think of other ways > to > help with my problem of the master browser issue and overall poor network > performance? Would running a Windows Home Server box help at all? Or > would > a *nix server be better? I have some experience with *nix (specifically > Ubuntu)? > > ----- > Brian Weeden > Technical Consultant > Secure World Foundation > >
