Advice on a networked external hard drive please :)

[nashienet]

I have a 500 gigabyte Western Digital My Book at the moment, but theres no network port, just USB.  I'd really like to have a network drive so that I can easily transfer files from my windows pc and then instantly have them accessible by the Neuros OSD.  It seems to me that a networked external hard drive would be the best way to do this.

I've looked at a few but some of them have terrible reviews like this:

Western Digital My Book 'world edition'

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B000MSVNM4/ref=s9_asin_title_1-1966_p/202-0552231-3545455?pf_rd_m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=1KHJ8N9VRPNPYS1D80S3&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=139042391&pf_rd_i=468294

This one looks ok but I have never heard of the brand, anyone here used one of these:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B000LRIXF6/ref=s9_asin_title_2-1966_p/202-0552231-3545455?pf_rd_m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=1KHJ8N9VRPNPYS1D80S3&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=139042391&pf_rd_i=468294

Any advice or recommendations would be appreciated.

I finally started recording from my cable box onto the Neuros yesterday, I was very pleased with the results! Woo hoo!

[budwzr]

Just share the external USB drive and you're all set. Windows sees it as a local disk no different from your main hard drive and shares it the same way.

[greyback]

Quite a few people have a D-LINK DNS323, which "Kzeon" reports is working with his OSD:

http://forums.neurostechnology.com/index.php?topic=8128.0

Why not send him a PM and ask him what he thinks of it?
-G

[nashienet]

Just share the external USB drive and you're all set. Windows sees it as a local disk no different from your main hard drive and shares it the same way.

Correct me if I am wrong but to do what you are suggesting would mean connecting the usb drive to my windows pc and then sharing it.  That means I'd have to leave my pc on everytime I wanted to access a file from it.  I don't really want to do that.

What I want is the ability to transfer files onto an external drive via drag and drop in windows and then be able to access it on the neuros. I figured having a networked drive independent of any pc would be the best way of doing it.

I thought the LaCie drive would be picked up easily as a network drive by the neuros - what are the potential problems? why might it not work?

[greyback]

Lacie are a good brand name, I'd not worry there.

I also notice it supports uPnP, which the OSD supports, so I should just work (with recent firmware).

A few people are having a difficulties in making their OSD connect to their NAS. Windows file sharing (SMB/CIFS) is a Microsoft proprietary standard. Open source people have reverse engineered it so linux based machines (like the OSD) can use it, but there still a few small compatibility problems that get in people's way.

It's very unlikely, but those NAS without uPnP might have a problem connecting to the OSD. At the moment this is being investigated by Neuros as two people are struggling with this issue. Fingers crossed it'll be fixed soon, but until then that's the situation.
-G

[sadiekiller]

I have that LaCie drive. it works perfect with the OSD, but the network transfer speeds are kinda slow. I have the first revision of them tho, so it might be better now. LaCie is generally a good brand to trust. They are pretty much the same drives as the Western Digital ones, just with a metal case.

[scracha]

See  -  http://forums.neurostechnology.com/index.php?topic=7956.0

No problem with Infrant/Netgear ReadyNAS and I've been using it for months.  Also tested with a Synology DiskStation DS207.  Should imagine it'll work with other Synology Disk Station products or the SMC Tigerstore too (not had time to test it).

[budwzr]

I have a SimpleTech NAS with no UPnP and it works fine.

[JoeBorn]

I use a linksys NSLU2 FWIW, it has an open source replacement firmware, but I'm using the stock firmware.  It has no internal storage so you just plug your USB drives into it.  It's reasonable, I haven't had a lot of trouble with it, but I haven't been able to do some things like rename the drives, etc so it's not super user friendly.  Basically it does seem to get the job done.

[nashienet]

Thought I'd recap and state that the LaCie hard drive worked a treat and I am now very happy with my setup - the only thing I'd change is the fact that my router doesn't have gigabit ethernet which is my own fault - I should have read the reviews

Anyways - I posted some pics of my setup on my blog:

http://nashie.net/articles/?p=5