ZyXEL NSA310 1-Bay NAS Media Server (With 500GB HDD) - €90.37 delivered [Dabs.ie]

The Sparrow

nedd wrote: »

I am loving my one. Got Plex installed and it is working perfectly. Remotely adding torrents from my Android phone. My wife is even using it a little.

Did you follow a guide for getting Plex installed? Got this a few weeks ago and have barely had anytime to do anything with it.

So if anyone has any advice/ guides for how to get the best of it, please share!

nedd

There are a couple of steps required to get Plex working.

1st, install FFP: http://zyxel.nas-central.org/wiki/FFP_as_zypkg
(basically download web_prefix file and put it in folder \<nas>\admin\zy-pkgs\ go back to package page and refresh. You can then install FFP and Transmission.)

2nd, assuming you have a bit of Linux knowledge, SSH onto the NAS and use this guide to install Plex:
http://forum.nas-central.org/viewtopic.php?f=249&t=7603
(This guide is simple enough really. One point to note, this will downlaod version "0.9.7.12.407" of plex. This is a little old. I installed that version and then a day or two later I did the steps for the upgrade, about 5 posts below)

3rd, log into plex and point it to your Movies and Tv, leave it for a couple of hours to build your catalogue.

That said, I have some knowledge of IT and Linux and I was able to dedicate some time to getting it running. I wanted a media player and content downloader and with a little messing I have it set up exactly how I want it.

Other people can set it up as is and have exactly what they are looking for.

References:
Official Zyxel forum:
http://forum.zyxel.com/viewforum.php?f=35&sid=2d2604f5ce880dd587e5e3213547e66d

This forum is good for hacking the box:
http://forum.nas-central.org/viewforum.php?f=249

German Support forum, they have better support for customising the NAS:
http://www.zyxelforum.de/

The Sparrow

nedd wrote: »

There are a couple of steps required to get Plex working.

1st, install FFP: http://zyxel.nas-central.org/wiki/FFP_as_zypkg
(basically download web_prefix file and put it in folder \<nas>\admin\zy-pkgs\ go back to package page and refresh. You can then install FFP and Transmission.)

2nd, assuming you have a bit of Linux knowledge, SSH onto the NAS and use this guide to install Plex:
http://forum.nas-central.org/viewtopic.php?f=249&t=7603
(This guide is simple enough really. One point to note, this will downlaod version "0.9.7.12.407" of plex. This is a little old. I installed that version and then a day or two later I did the steps for the upgrade, about 5 posts below)

3rd, log into plex and point it to your Movies and Tv, leave it for a couple of hours to build your catalogue.

That said, I have some knowledge of IT and Linux and I was able to dedicate some time to getting it running. I wanted a media player and content downloader and with a little messing I have it set up exactly how I want it.

Other people can set it up as is and have exactly what they are looking for.

References:
Official Zyxel forum:
http://forum.zyxel.com/viewforum.php?f=35&sid=2d2604f5ce880dd587e5e3213547e66d

This forum is good for hacking the box:
http://forum.nas-central.org/viewforum.php?f=249

German Support forum, they have better support for customising the NAS:
http://www.zyxelforum.de/

Cheers... I've no knowledge of Linux but this is as good a time as any to learn!

ongarite

I have the 2 bay 325 version of this NAS and my tranfer speeds are maxing out my 100mb LAN connection at around 10-11MB/sec
Maybe the extra CPU power & RAM of the 325 version helps? What FW are you running on your unit?

iPhone.

Running mine through a Gigabit router and getting 39 to 40 Mb transfer speeds.

lucast2007us

Hey guys wanted to get the NSA 310 and wanted to buy a 3TB HD with it what HD would ye recommend as there is so many to choose from! Should I go with red or green?

WeleaseWoderick

OK! Need a bit of help here!

I had to reset my router that the NSA310 is connected to and since then, the NAS isn't visible on my network.

I have tried resetting the NAS itself and also reinstalling the Starter Utility but nothing seems to be getting it to show up.

Any ideas?

28064212

WeleaseWoderick wrote: »

OK! Need a bit of help here!

I had to reset my router that the NSA310 is connected to and since then, the NAS isn't visible on my network.

I have tried resetting the NAS itself and also reinstalling the Starter Utility but nothing seems to be getting it to show up.

Any ideas?

Do you know the IP address of the 310? If you do, open Windows Explorer and type

\\<ip-address>

into the address bar

Solaris10

WeleaseWoderick wrote: »

OK! Need a bit of help here!

I had to reset my router that the NSA310 is connected to and since then, the NAS isn't visible on my network.

I have tried resetting the NAS itself and also reinstalling the Starter Utility but nothing seems to be getting it to show up.

Any ideas?

just type "nsa310" in firefox address bar without " "

nsa310

Oat23

I got mine yesterday, just setting it up now.

RSS Feeds: Is anyone else having problems with ShowRSS? I have tried entering the URL for my feed, but when it tries to download anything from it I get errors on the torrent download screen and it says 'torrent file invalid'.

Access

Oat23 wrote: »

I got mine yesterday, just setting it up now.

RSS Feeds: Is anyone else having problems with ShowRSS? I have tried entering the URL for my feed, but when it tries to download anything from it I get errors on the torrent download screen and it says 'torrent file invalid'.

Showrss takes some of its torrents from pir@te bay... that might be the issue since its now blocked.

Oat23

Access wrote: »

Showrss takes some of its torrents from pir@te bay... that might be the issue since its now blocked.

TPB is working fine on UPC.

TheDriver

Click on blog on Showrss website and you will get explanation. The NSA family are having trouble with magnets from the default crowd so you must change the settings, global settings and torra as the cache.

Basq

ShowRSS hasn't worked for me for about a month now.. must sort it alright!

WeleaseWoderick

28064212 wrote: »

Do you know the IP address of the 310? If you do, open Windows Explorer and type

\\<ip-address>

into the address bar

Solaris10 wrote: »

just type "nsa310" in firefox address bar without " "

nsa310

No luck with this unfortunately. Still not accessible from my pc and also not available when trying to stream media to my Boxee.

28064212

WeleaseWoderick wrote: »

No luck with this unfortunately. Still not accessible from my pc and also not available when trying to stream media to my Boxee.

Doesn't sound like it's connected to the network tbh. Can you ping it? Open a command prompt window and type:

ping [I]<ip-address>[/I]

Can you access your router's interface and check whether it's showing up as connected?

quarryman

Question on power/standby.

Mine seems to stay on 24/7 even if my PC is off. Is there a way for it to go into standby after a period of time? The background noise of the fan can get annoying if I'm not using it.

TheDriver

there is a setting near the bottom of the menu for power management where you can set when it starts up or shuts down. I set mine to shut off at 2am each night which is handy because I just head off to bed and it won't be on 24/7

quarryman

TheDriver wrote: »

there is a setting near the bottom of the menu for power management where you can set when it starts up or shuts down. I set mine to shut off at 2am each night which is handy because I just head off to bed and it won't be on 24/7

I noticed that. But it still defeats the purpose of it being a network drive, ie. I might actually need to access it at 2am one night...

What I really want is that it goes to standby after a period of time (and wakes up when I access it) rather than me declaring when i expect to use it.

28064212

quarryman wrote: »

I noticed that. But it still defeats the purpose of it being a network drive, ie. I might actually need to access it at 2am one night...

What I really want is that it goes to standby after a period of time (and wakes up when I access it) rather than me declaring when i expect to use it.

The drives spin down after 15 minutes by default.

You could also power it off whenever you want, and use Wake-On-Lan to wake it when you need it

Access

28064212 wrote: »

The drives spin down after 15 minutes by default.

You could also power it off whenever you want, and use Wake-On-Lan to wake it when you need it

28064212 is spot on... the drive spins down after 15 by default... this can be changed in the settings.

The noise of the fan you are hearing is always going to be on as the fan is separate to the hard drive and is on always... it just spins faster or slower dependant on the temp of the inside of the zyxel.

The zyxel is built to run 24hrs a day. with the hard drive spun down, the zyxel only uses about 3 to 5 watts running. with the hard drive spun up it uses about 17 to 25 watts. (checked with a power meter I have)

You are talking about a ballpark figure of 8 to 20 euros a year electricty costs to run it for a year... so I won't be powering mine off as there is no need to.

The zyxel forums are a brilliant place to get help on this machine.

Users on the forums have swapped out the fan in the zyxel for a silent one, altered the rubber feet to minimise vibration/noise and some have gone to the extreme of drilling multiple 5mm holes in both sides to increase airflow... but to be honest the drive in mine runs well within its temp limits so I don't think I would be doing that.

Also for the person who was unable to reach their NSA after a reset of the router... I'm sure that was covered earlier in the thread... it is also a common problem on the zyxel forums... mainly something to do with another device having the same ip address as the NSA and conflicting. Might be something as simple as that? try checking the ip address connecting on your router.

quarryman

Access wrote: »

28064212 is spot on... the drive spins down after 15 by default... this can be changed in the settings.

The noise of the fan you are hearing is always going to be on as the fan is separate to the hard drive and is on always... it just spins faster or slower dependant on the temp of the inside of the zyxel.

The zyxel is built to run 24hrs a day. with the hard drive spun down, the zyxel only uses about 3 to 5 watts running. with the hard drive spun up it uses about 17 to 25 watts. (checked with a power meter I have)

You are talking about a ballpark figure of 8 to 20 euros a year electricty costs to run it for a year... so I won't be powering mine off as there is no need to.

The zyxel forums are a brilliant place to get help on this machine.

Users on the forums have swapped out the fan in the zyxel for a silent one, altered the rubber feet to minimise vibration/noise and some have gone to the extreme of drilling multiple 5mm holes in both sides to increase airflow... but to be honest the drive in mine runs well within its temp limits so I don't think I would be doing that.

Also for the person who was unable to reach their NSA after a reset of the router... I'm sure that was covered earlier in the thread... it is also a common problem on the zyxel forums... mainly something to do with another device having the same ip address as the NSA and conflicting. Might be something as simple as that? try checking the ip address connecting on your router.

Ah. In that case I'll just leave it on. I assumed the HDD was running when it was "on" and that the fan running was associated with that.

thanks fort the info. I'll check out the forums too, might help me solve the transfer speed problems.

WeleaseWoderick

28064212 wrote: »

Doesn't sound like it's connected to the network tbh. Can you ping it? Open a command prompt window and type:

ping [I]<ip-address>[/I]

Can you access your router's interface and check whether it's showing up as connected?

It wasn't showing as connected but through a combination of resetting the router, the NAS and trying a new cable, it is back working now!

Cheers!

apeking

Access wrote: »

28064212 is spot on... the drive spins down after 15 by default... this can be changed in the settings.

The noise of the fan you are hearing is always going to be on as the fan is separate to the hard drive and is on always... it just spins faster or slower dependant on the temp of the inside of the zyxel.

The zyxel is built to run 24hrs a day. with the hard drive spun down, the zyxel only uses about 3 to 5 watts running. with the hard drive spun up it uses about 17 to 25 watts. (checked with a power meter I have)

You are talking about a ballpark figure of 8 to 20 euros a year electricty costs to run it for a year... so I won't be powering mine off as there is no need to.

The zyxel forums are a brilliant place to get help on this machine.

Users on the forums have swapped out the fan in the zyxel for a silent one, altered the rubber feet to minimise vibration/noise and some have gone to the extreme of drilling multiple 5mm holes in both sides to increase airflow... but to be honest the drive in mine runs well within its temp limits so I don't think I would be doing that.

Also for the person who was unable to reach their NSA after a reset of the router... I'm sure that was covered earlier in the thread... it is also a common problem on the zyxel forums... mainly something to do with another device having the same ip address as the NSA and conflicting. Might be something as simple as that? try checking the ip address connecting on your router.

Have you a link on how to change the fan?? Would be interested in this.

Oat23

Basq wrote: »

ShowRSS hasn't worked for me for about a month now.. must sort it alright!

If you get yours working, let me know. I've tried changing the settings but I can't get it going

Jilm

Oat23 wrote: »

If you get yours working, let me know. I've tried changing the settings but I can't get it going

TheDriver wrote: »

Click on blog on Showrss website and you will get explanation. The NSA family are having trouble with magnets from the default crowd so you must change the settings, global settings and torra as the cache.

This works.

It will also download torrents that previously failed to download, so keep an eye on it unless you want several GB of old TV episodes.

TheDriver

just go to settings in top right and change global to torra. Then go to feeds and copy the one without magnets. that should work.

Basq

TheDriver wrote: »

just go to settings in top right and change global to torra. Then go to feeds and copy the one without magnets. that should work.

Cheers..done that now.

Here's a screenshot for anyone who's unsure:

Oat23

For some reason it didn't work when I tried it last time, but it started downloading now without changing anything on ShowRSS

Is it possible to set it up with individual feeds that save to different directories? I've tried changing one of my feeds save location but it is changing it for all of them too. I'd like Top Gear to save to /TV Shows/Top Gear and Dexter to save to TV Shows/Dexter etc. Not a big problem anyway, it'll only take a minute to move them.

the_syco

Question; can you use both USB and ethernet at the same time? Would be using it as an external HDD to the android mini-PC, and would need to connect to it from my PC via ethernet (current cheapo box is ethernet or usb, so is not the best).

I see the version without the drive is only about a tenner cheaper

28064212

the_syco wrote: »

Question; can you use both USB and ethernet at the same time? Would be using it as an external HDD to the android mini-PC, and would need to connect to it from my PC via ethernet (current cheapo box is ethernet or usb, so is not the best).

No problem using USB and ethernet at the same time, but I'm not certain you can use it as an external USB HDD. Someone else will tell you better.

the_syco wrote: »

I see the version without the drive is only about a tenner cheaper

Not the same product. The NSA310 only has one bay, the NSA320 has two bays

TheDriver

I have the NSA325 on RAID1 which is nice for peace of mind for all the family pics and videos along with torrents.

iPhone.

TheDriver wrote: »

I have the NSA325 on RAID1 which is nice for peace of mind for all the family pics and videos along with torrents.

Just make sure you also keep a backup of your most precious photos/documents/files offsite too, somewhere like a cloud based storage facility is handy like dropbox etc. or with one of your relations or friends.

apeking

Where do you get a copy of latest firmware? Mine is running 4.51

jabberwock

http://www.zyxel.com/us/en/support/download_library.shtml

ThomasAlan

nedd wrote: »

I am loving my one. Got Plex installed and it is working perfectly. Remotely adding torrents from my Android phone. My wife is even using it a little.

Sorry if this is covered elsewhere in the thread but how do you add torrents from your Android phone?

jabberwock

ThomasAlan wrote: »

Sorry if this is covered elsewhere in the thread but how do you add torrents from your Android phone?

not sure what he has set up but I am using dropbox even on from home PC

johnybean

Running out of space on the internal drive of my 310 and was hoping to get an external 3TB drive and connect it to the rear usb port. Does anyone know if I will be able to "pool" the two drives in jbood format without losing the 2 TB of info I already have on the existing internal drive?
Also, can FFP be done retrospectively without losing any info?

johnwd

Hi, I got one of these about 9 months ago and I've been putting off upgrading the firmware because I get a warning which I think is telling me that I'll have to set up everything the way I like it again when the upgrade is done. Can anyone who's done a firmware upgrade tell me whether I'm right or not? Many thanks, Johnwd

nedd

ThomasAlan wrote: »

Sorry if this is covered elsewhere in the thread but how do you add torrents from your Android phone?

This wasn't a straight forward process. I took some configuring, here is what i did:

Disable Download Service
Install Transmission from package page.
Install DyDNS from package page.
Set up no-ip.com free account.
configure DyDNS on the nas with no-ip account. (this will let you remotely access your home connection)
configure port forwarding on your Router to route port 9091 through to the nas. (9091 is the port used to view the Transmission admin page)
Install Remote Transmission on your android phone and configure it with your DNS alias from no-ip.

Done! And as easy as that. :-)

As I said it's not a process for beginners but if you have the patience to get it done it is great.

SteM

johnwd wrote: »

Hi, I got one of these about 9 months ago and I've been putting off upgrading the firmware because I get a warning which I think is telling me that I'll have to set up everything the way I like it again when the upgrade is done. Can anyone who's done a firmware upgrade tell me whether I'm right or not? Many thanks, Johnwd

I tried to upgrade to the latest firmware 2 days ago but the upgrade got stuck at 55% so I had to restart the box, luckily nothing was lost. Haven't bothered trying again since then but it seems to be a common problem from the quick Google search I did.

My understanding is that when you upgrade the firmware you have to reinstall the packages that you had installed. That is all as far as I know.

WeleaseWoderick

Does anyone have a decent guide for getting Plex installed on this?

nedd

this is the guide I used.

http://forum.nas-central.org/viewtopic.php?f=249&t=7603

You have to install FFP first. follow this guide to get that working:

http://zyxel.nas-central.org/wiki/FFP_as_zypkg

jabberwock

the "easier" version, imo. Saves you having to install extras on to the Nas itself.

Leave download service active
Link Nas to your dropbox account
Set up dropbox on your phone
Have torrents save to the new zDownload folder that was made when you linked your Nas to Dropbox
Every few minutes any torrent in zDownload is sent to your Nas download service
When it's transfered the file name is changed to XXXXXX.torrent.downloading
When it finishes it's renamed in dropbox again. XXXXXX.torrent.uploading
Set up the Nas to do the upload section - XX time or % or whatever you need.

The download service is no speed demon. By default it doesn't hog bandwidth for me at least.

nedd

jabberwock wrote: »

the "easier" version, imo. Saves you having to install extras on to the Nas itself.

I tried this when I first updated the firmware to 4.6 and had nothing but problems. Dropbox downloaded the same torrent thousands of times and then the download service attempted to start each of them. And more than 50% of the downloads I attempted using the download service failed halfway through, forcing me to re-download.

It became the bane of my life and made me lose faith in my NSA325. :-)

The fact that I am techy minded and don't mind getting my hands dirty led me down the customisation path.

That said, if jabberwocks solution is working for him and I assume others then that is the way to go.

jabberwock

aye ymmv.

Since dropbox fixed the linking to the NAS, it's been plain sailing since.

Ste-

I've used both methods on the NSA320 and find transmission remote works far better. Yes dropbox an tell you if it's downloading,uploading or whatever but transmission gui gives you everything you could want! far far better but a bit harder to setup.

FastFullBack

Basq wrote: »

Another tip I only discovered recently..

Was always of the opinion you needed to add torrents via the web interface but simply mapping a file share of "//NSA310/download/torrent" (not in front of it right now but something similar) and dragging and dropping torrent files into it automatically starts it downloading.

Very handy!

I did this for the first time this morning. Used my android to find a torrent and copied it in. Confirmed that it started downloading and went off to work. Got back this evening to find that I had 9000 items in my inactive queue of the download service. I checked my torrent folder and the torrent file I dropped in had duplicated 9000+ times. I got them deleted but the 9000 items in my inactive queue are still there. They are now slowly dropping off as they come into the active tab and then fail and move to the error tab.

I can't access the inactive tab as it just freezes up.

Anyone ever seen this? Image attached.

EDIT: Tried rebooting and when I logged back in the inactive tab was back up to over 9000 items. And a few minutes later the files started duplicating again in torrent folder. Very odd. I can now access the inactive tab but I can't pause or delete the 9000 items.

johnybean

FastFullBack wrote: »

I did this for the first time this morning. Used my android to find a torrent and copied it in. Confirmed that it started downloading and went off to work. Got back this evening to find that I had 9000 items in my inactive queue of the download service. I checked my torrent folder and the torrent file I dropped in had duplicated 9000+ times. I got them deleted but the 9000 items in my inactive queue are still there. They are now slowly dropping off as they come into the active tab and then fail and move to the error tab.

I can't access the inactive tab as it just freezes up.

Anyone ever seen this? Image attached.

EDIT: Tried rebooting and when I logged back in the inactive tab was back up to over 9000 items. And a few minutes later the files started duplicating again in torrent folder. Very odd. I can now access the inactive tab but I can't pause or delete the 9000 items.

This is just a guess but did you copy the file to the nsa/admin/download/torrent folder or might you have stuck it in the zdownload folder by mistake. The only time I have seen the multiple repetition of files issue is the brief stint I had using the Dropbox app, I would copy over a torrent file and it would make 100's of copies so I just disabled Dropbox again.
Hope this helps

FastFullBack

johnybean wrote: »

This is just a guess but did you copy the file to the nsa/admin/download/torrent folder or might you have stuck it in the zdownload folder by mistake. The only time I have seen the multiple repetition of files issue is the brief stint I had using the Dropbox app, I would copy over a torrent file and it would make 100's of copies so I just disabled Dropbox again.
Hope this helps

Thanks Man.

I'm almost certain I put the torrent file into \\nsa310\download\torrent but your reponse made me go check the dropbox folders. The zDownload folder is on my dropbox account, doesnt seem to be anywhere on my nsa admin folders. Anyway I checked in the dropbox folder (\\nsa310\Dropbox\FromDropbox) and voila; 14,000 copies of the same torrent file. Deleting them now. Hopefully that works.