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

Basq

^

It's possible but involves installing a version of Debian - see here!

TheChevron

Fook me that seems complicated.

Basq

TheChevron wrote: »

Fook me that seems complicated.

Unfortunately, it's not easy alright.

I'd say it's unlikely to be supported in a future firmware update too.

Scruff

does this need a disk in it to function or could i just connect an existing external usb hd to it and have that shared on my network, kinda like a pogoplug would do?

Sir Oxman

Scruff wrote: »

does this need a disk in it to function or could i just connect an existing external usb hd to it and have that shared on my network, kinda like a pogoplug would do?

External will work fine, I've an internal 1tb and a portable 500gb working fine.

manster

TheChevron wrote: »

Fook me that seems complicated.

More links here

http://wiki.sabnzbd.org/install-nas

raytaxi

How would this work if I put into attic with long ethernet cable would it affect the speed of it ? and would it be safe ?

Nollog

Basq wrote: »

^

It's possible but involves installing a version of Debian - see here!

Does it end up as a full(ish) debian able to install rtorrent and rutorrent?

I remember looking up infor about the bittorrent client it comes with, and it doesn't support rss filters from the tiny amount of info I could find.

jArgHA

Ordered a diskless one from Amazon for just under £40 last week, can't wait till it arrives (although there will be a 3-4 week wait ).

TheChevron wrote: »

Has anyone managed to get this working with usenet?

I have an astraweb ac and would like to download content directly to the NAS.

I am counting on it being able to run SABNzbd and Sickbeard, I thought it was possible without any O/S change to Debian...

I found the following guide which should assist in installing Sickbeard and SABNzbd on the machine:
http://goo.gl/Uflt1

Hope it works for you, I'll report back here how it goes for me once I get the NAS.

Scruff

Sir Oxman wrote: »

External will work fine, I've an internal 1tb and a portable 500gb working fine.

sure but will it wok ok with the internal one removed?

28064212

Scruff wrote: »

sure but will it wok ok with the internal one removed?

Yep, no problem

EDIT: I know because I have one, and booted it up without any internal drive

jArgHA

28064212 wrote: »

Yep, no problem

EDIT: I know because I have one, and booted it up without any internal drive

Sorry just to totally confirm this as I was about to order a 1GB 3.5" SATA drive but sounds like I may not need to.. If I have existing Portable USB 2.0 Hard Drive, I can plug this into the NSA310 and use instead of an internal drive?

I read somewhere in the thread, that when you plug in drive it initially formats it, does this also happen when you plug in USB drive without any internal drive installed?

28064212

jArgHA wrote: »

Sorry just to totally confirm this as I was about to order a 1GB 3.5" SATA drive but sounds like I may not need to.. If I have existing Portable USB 2.0 Hard Drive, I can plug this into the NSA310 and use instead of an internal drive?

I read somewhere in the thread, that when you plug in drive it initially formats it, does this also happen when you plug in USB drive without any internal drive installed?

Internal drives are formatted (not automatically, you have to create a volume on it), external ones aren't.

johnwd

Hi,

Thanks Basq, Ordered one of these - sounds like a really useful piece of kit.

Hope someone can answer this query: I have XBMC installed on a few PCs and also on an ATV2 all get their media files from a "main" pc that I hope to replace with this device. I set up a MySQL database on the main PC that then serves content and content information to the other devices (as per lifehacker sync advice). Has anyone had experience of doing something similar with this device and can anyone tell me if I will be able to install MySQL on this device and use it in a similar way?

Apologies if this has been asked before, but I searched the thread and I don't think it has been.

Chet T16

MySQL can be installed from the admin menu and iirc uses phpMyAdmin

MayoForSam

I'm tempted by this as I need a NAS to store media and stream to 3-4 devices around the house.

Can the media server for this box stream .mp4, mkv, etc. as I currently use TVersity server running on my main PC for streaming/converting for my Xbox 360? Or will I need an ATV or a media center with XBMC installed to play various file formats?

johnwd

MayoForSam wrote: »

I'm tempted by this as I need a NAS to store media and stream to 3-4 devices around the house.

Can the media server for this box stream .mp4, mkv, etc. as I currently use TVersity server running on my main PC for streaming/converting for my Xbox 360? Or will I need an ATV or a media center with XBMC installed to play various file formats?

I can't answer your question I'm afraid but can't the XB360 take XBMC ... I know it was originally developed for the Xbox (XBMC = x box media centre). PS3 is seemingly a no-no though unfortunately (delighted for someone to prove me wrong on this!!).

SteM

johnwd wrote: »

I can't answer your question I'm afraid but can't the XB360 take XBMC ... I know it was originally developed for the Xbox (XBMC = x box media centre). PS3 is seemingly a no-no though unfortunately (delighted for someone to prove me wrong on this!!).

XBMC was designed for the original Xbox, it is not supported on the Xbox360 though.

Access

Thanks to Basq and the rest on here... have had this for the past 2 or 3 months now... it fecking amazing with xbmc!

One thing that has me a bit stumped though... i currently have a WD 3TB drive internally in it with all my media. I am a bit scared of losing this if the drive ever failed, so i want to buy another WD 3TB Here(no enclosure - just the drive itself and i want to connect via the esata socket on the back of the Zyxel.

I obviously need a esata to esata cable to connect the second drive but do i need to buy some sort of 3.5inch esata hard drive enclosure to house this second drive from the likes of ebay? does the enclosure need to have its own power supply or does the hard drive receive its power from the Zyxel through the esata cable. Sorry for the noob question but am stumped on this!

unklerosco

http://www.amazon.co.uk/IT-735-Enclosure-External-Tool-free-Assembling/dp/B000V8KQE6/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&qid=1353886654&sr=8-11

Thats what u need, just bought two of them myself... They come with the power supply and esata cable.

Access

unklerosco wrote: »

http://www.amazon.co.uk/IT-735-Enclosure-External-Tool-free-Assembling/dp/B000V8KQE6/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&qid=1353886654&sr=8-11

Thats what u need, just bought two of them myself... They come with the power supply and esata cable.

Thanks for that info... it looks good but concerned about reviews of it having no fan and getting hot?

unklerosco

Access wrote: »

Thanks for that info... it looks good but concerned about reviews of it having no fan and getting hot?

Wouldn'y be a massive concern to me but there are cases out there with fans.. I've two of the usb3 versions of the ones above and think for the money they're great

manster

Thinking of getting a 3TB disk

Cheappest I found was from Dabs (apart from Amazon who won't deliver).

Anyway, one of the comments on Dabs was

"3Tb drives need a different protocol for formatting. If you follow the defaults when you install the 3Tb, you end up with 2Tb drive and some large unassigned space. Perhaps you can re-format, but in my case this was too late. Here is the story: "The drive has to be reformatted as a GPT-formatted drive instead of an MBR-formatted drive. The old standard MBR partition tables can't describe a drive of over about 2.13 TiB. You can convert only empty, unpartitioned disks (raw drives or empty MBR drives) to the GPT format."

So anyone with experience of this or should I steer clear and get a 2TB disk?

Access

manster wrote: »

Thinking of getting a 3TB disk

Cheappest I found was from Dabs (apart from Amazon who won't deliver).

Anyway, one of the comments on Dabs was

"3Tb drives need a different protocol for formatting. If you follow the defaults when you install the 3Tb, you end up with 2Tb drive and some large unassigned space. Perhaps you can re-format, but in my case this was too late. Here is the story: "The drive has to be reformatted as a GPT-formatted drive instead of an MBR-formatted drive. The old standard MBR partition tables can't describe a drive of over about 2.13 TiB. You can convert only empty, unpartitioned disks (raw drives or empty MBR drives) to the GPT format."

So anyone with experience of this or should I steer clear and get a 2TB disk?

Did you not read four posts up? :rolleyes:

I use a WD 3TB - no probs - full 3TB available. The Zyxel will format it to its own standard when it is installed into it.

I had a choice of seagate and WD... after reading the reviews, WD faired way better. Cheapest doesn't mean best.

P.s. amazon will deliver... just use parcel motel with the N.I. address.

Nedved85

I just bought a 3TB drive :
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004RORMF6/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00

and the Zyxel:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004BE6MVW/ref=oh_details_o01_s00_i01

Just wondering is it ok to put in two different haddrives into it?

I have a spare 2TB 3.5in extenal HDD which i was gonna open up and stick in along with the 3TB, no RAID just two independent HDDS.

28064212

Nedved85 wrote: »

I just bought a 3TB drive :
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004RORMF6/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00

and the Zyxel:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004BE6MVW/ref=oh_details_o01_s00_i01

Just wondering is it ok to put in two different haddrives into it?

I have a spare 2TB 3.5in extenal HDD which i was gonna open up and stick in along with the 3TB, no RAID just two independent HDDS.

Yeah, no problem. I have the NSA325, and have a 500GB in one bay and a 1TB in the other.

You do have the option of formatting them as two independent disks, or as just one large 5TB disk (JBOD). Personally, I went for the two independent disks. JBOD is slightly more convenient, but if just one of the drives fail, you lose all data on both drives

Access

This is pure murphys law... what can go wrong will go wrong!...

I arrived home from work to find the NSA310 with a red led lighting the HDD indicator on the front panel.

I take it from the manual this is indicating a hard drive error/failure. I wouldnt mind, but the hard drive is a WD caviar green 3TB and it less than 3 months old.

It says in the manual that the NSA will scan for bad sectors and restart when done. It looks like there was a power cut here at some stage today.

Should i leave it scan away till tomorrow or whenever? The NSA is pinging okay as per the instructions in the manual but seems busy in the browser when IP is entered (no login screen etc.) - I did remove the NSA hard drive, and the Zyxel operated as normal with out it. The drive is now back in it.

I have a backup of everything on the NSA, but that backup is 3 months old and i have added a fair bit of media since then.

What should i do? any way of data recovery via a usb enclosure etc with the NSA hard drive placed in it?

Im stumped.

EDIT: I have managed to see the admin screen now... its showing status as "Down" when i click on the sata volume it gives me the options on the right to edit volume/scan volume/delete volume.

But when i go to scan it shows "failed to scan" after a few seconds.

Have i lost this whole drive and all its data? anyway to recover from this?

Thanks.

jArgHA

Access wrote: »

This is pure murphys law... what can go wrong will go wrong!...

I arrived home from work to find the NSA310 with a red led lighting the HDD indicator on the front panel.

I take it from the manual this is indicating a hard drive error/failure. I wouldnt mind, but the hard drive is a WD caviar green 3TB and it less than 3 months old.

It says in the manual that the NSA will scan for bad sectors and restart when done. It looks like there was a power cut here at some stage today.

Should i leave it scan away till tomorrow or whenever? The NSA is pinging okay as per the instructions in the manual but seems busy in the browser when IP is entered (no login screen etc.) - I did remove the NSA hard drive, and the Zyxel operated as normal with out it. The drive is now back in it.

I have a backup of everything on the NSA, but that backup is 3 months old and i have added a fair bit of media since then.

What should i do? any way of data recovery via a usb enclosure etc with the NSA hard drive placed in it?

Im stumped.

EDIT: I have managed to see the admin screen now... its showing status as "Down" when i click on the sata volume it gives me the options on the right to edit volume/scan volume/delete volume.

But when i go to scan it shows "failed to scan" after a few seconds.

Have i lost this whole drive and all its data? anyway to recover from this?

Thanks.

You would probably be better off asking this over in the Computers & Technology forum as it is a general Hard Disk issue as opposed to something specific to the NSA 310.

jArgHA

jArgHA wrote: »

Ordered a diskless one from Amazon for just under £40 last week, can't wait till it arrives (although there will be a 3-4 week wait ).



I am counting on it being able to run SABNzbd and Sickbeard, I thought it was possible without any O/S change to Debian...

I found the following guide which should assist in installing Sickbeard and SABNzbd on the machine:
http://goo.gl/Uflt1

Hope it works for you, I'll report back here how it goes for me once I get the NAS.

Just to follow up on this earlier post, I received my NSA 310 a week or so back and have since installed a 1TB drive, copied over existing media to it, and installed SABNzbd, Sickbeard and Couchpotato successfully.

The guide I linked to above is not the best to be honest, I needed to read between the lines a bit to finally get everything setup but it is possible.

If anyone else is doing the same setup and having issues, I may be able to help out.

raytaxi

I see this is now down in price to 33.96 at the moment.

Dozen Wicked Words

raytaxi wrote: »

I see this is now down in price to 33.96 at the moment.

Whereabouts?

mcgovern

dooferoaks wrote: »

Whereabouts?

I guess he means here, it's the diskless version, and not sure if just anyone can order from it, never tried myself. It's also before VAT. Works out at just under €50 with VAT and delivery.

Can't find it for that price anywhere else anyway.

raytaxi

Sorry its amazon.co.uk its Stg and includes vat here's the link http://www.amazon.co.uk/ZyXEL-1-Bay-Network-Storage-Closure/dp/B005LDM09U/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1354489195&sr=8-1
It lists at higher price but its cheaper direct from amazon

Daniel S

raytaxi wrote: »

Sorry its amazon.co.uk its Stg and includes vat here's the link http://www.amazon.co.uk/ZyXEL-1-Bay-Network-Storage-Closure/dp/B005LDM09U/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1354489195&sr=8-1
It lists at higher price but its cheaper direct from amazon

Is it worth €43? Thinking of getting one.

fergiesfolly

So I took the plunge and bought ZyXEL NSA310 1-Bay NAS Media Server.
Can anyone recommend a good, reliable 2-3 tb drive.

slave1

fergiesfolly wrote: »

So I took the plunge and bought ZyXEL NSA310 1-Bay NAS Media Server.
Can anyone recommend a good, reliable 2-3 tb drive.

I got a few of these a few weeks back and all good so far

johnwd

Finding this a sweet bit of kit but the noise that the fan makes is a bit grating. Do others find this? Anyone replaced it with a less noisy fan - and if so where did they source it.

SteM

If I have files stored on this and take the HDD out of it, will the files be readable if I insert the HDD into a spare SATA enclosure does anyone know?

manster

If anyone has got this to actually work with Sabnzbd and Sickbeard please drop me a PM. Following the instructions http://goo.gl/Uflt1 but can't connect over ssh using Putty running ver4.40 of the firmware. Cheers.

Access

SteM wrote: »

If I have files stored on this and take the HDD out of it, will the files be readable if I insert the HDD into a spare SATA enclosure does anyone know?

No as it is in EXT 3 or 4 format... (linux format)

If you put it in a sata enclosure and plug it into a windows pc/laptop... it will ask you to format the drive (in other words windows wont read it at all)

There is also a chance that if you remove the drive from the unit and power the unit on again during the drive being out... that when you put the drive back into the unit it will want to reformat it.

I know this from experience over the past month!

Is your drive/zyxel giving you trouble?

SteM

Access wrote: »

No as it is in EXT 3 or 4 format... (linux format)

If you put it in a sata enclosure and plug it into a windows pc/laptop... it will ask you to format the drive (in other words windows wont read it at all)

There is also a chance that if you remove the drive from the unit and power the unit on again during the drive being out... that when you put the drive back into the unit it will want to reformat it.

I know this from experience over the past month!

Is your drive/zyxel giving you trouble?

Cheers for that. Yeah, the drive was working fine the night before last, got up the following morning and it was unreachable on the network and acting very strangely. It looked like it was in some sort of constant booting cycle. I thought I was going to loose all my files. I reset it this morning and lost all my setting but at least I have admin access back. Will have to look into an external esata drive for backups asap.

Access

SteM wrote: »

Cheers for that. Yeah, the drive was working fine the night before last, got up the following morning and it was unreachable on the network and acting very strangely. It looked like it was in some sort of constant booting cycle. I thought I was going to loose all my files. I reset it this morning and lost all my setting but at least I have admin access back. Will have to look into an external esata drive for backups asap.

Can you access your media on the zyxel or is it showing up at all now?

I would recommend to anyone who has a NSA310 a tip i was given by a member on here and also when i was on the phone to zyxel customer service in the UK when my zyxel failed and the internal drive went down (the zyxel forums are useless IMO, hence why i rang them instead)... Dont bother with a raid setup is what i was told... just have a spare NTFS (windows formatted) hard drive of the same storage amount or your internal hard drive attached (so if you have a 2TB in the zyxel, have a spare 2TB external usb hard drive plugged into the usb port or the esata port on the rear of the zyxel) and using the zyxel file browser, copy over everything to it whenever you want to backup.

I use a 3TB hard drive in an Icy box esata/usb enclosure for backup now. I backup using usb as i dont trust the esata connection to the zyxel (it has given me errors sometimes during file transfer)

Im currently doing a weekly backup... but will make that a fortnightly backup as i dont usually add much media onto it now.

The advantage of doing this is that if the Zyxel fails or the internal hard drive fails/goes down, you have a handy one to one mirror of all your media and files on an external usb hard drive ready that can run on any windows pc/laptop and can be used to transfer files back to the zyxel when you would get it back up and running.

Also, you dont need to create a volume of any sort in the zyxel for the external drive... it will just show up when plugged into the zyxel usb/esata port and like i say, using the file browser you can copy over all the media and files from your internal drive.

Just for reference, using the usb lead to my external drive, it takes about 10 hours approx to do a complete copy of the 900gb of media i have on the zyxel.

It does everything i want it to do and it was a brilliant price. But i have had it fail on my in a big way already and sometimes when i want to access it, it also seems unreachable on the network and acting very strangely every so often too.

Brilliant bit of kit, but it keeps me on tender-hooks every so often!

mp3ireland2

Access wrote: »

No as it is in EXT 3 or 4 format... (linux format)

If you put it in a sata enclosure and plug it into a windows pc/laptop... it will ask you to format the drive (in other words windows wont read it at all)

There is also a chance that if you remove the drive from the unit and power the unit on again during the drive being out... that when you put the drive back into the unit it will want to reformat it.

I know this from experience over the past month!

Is your drive/zyxel giving you trouble?

Would installing linux on the pc and booting to that work?

Access

mp3ireland2 wrote: »

Would installing linux on the pc and booting to that work?

Yeah, but its messy IMO

SteM

Access wrote: »

Can you access your media on the zyxel or is it showing up at all now?

I would recommend to anyone who has a NSA310 a tip i was given by a member on here and also when i was on the phone to zyxel customer service in the UK when my zyxel failed and the internal drive went down (the zyxel forums are useless IMO, hence why i rang them instead)... Dont bother with a raid setup is what i was told... just have a spare NTFS (windows formatted) hard drive of the same storage amount or your internal hard drive attached (so if you have a 2TB in the zyxel, have a spare 2TB external usb hard drive plugged into the usb port or the esata port on the rear of the zyxel) and using the zyxel file browser, copy over everything to it whenever you want to backup.

I use a 3TB hard drive in an Icy box esata/usb enclosure for backup now. I backup using usb as i dont trust the esata connection to the zyxel (it has given me errors sometimes during file transfer)

Im currently doing a weekly backup... but will make that a fortnightly backup as i dont usually add much media onto it now.

The advantage of doing this is that if the Zyxel fails or the internal hard drive fails/goes down, you have a handy one to one mirror of all your media and files on an external usb hard drive ready that can run on any windows pc/laptop and can be used to transfer files back to the zyxel when you would get it back up and running.

Also, you dont need to create a volume of any sort in the zyxel for the external drive... it will just show up when plugged into the zyxel usb/esata port and like i say, using the file browser you can copy over all the media and files from your internal drive.

Just for reference, using the usb lead to my external drive, it takes about 10 hours approx to do a complete copy of the 900gb of media i have on the zyxel.

It does everything i want it to do and it was a brilliant price. But i have had it fail on my in a big way already and sometimes when i want to access it, it also seems unreachable on the network and acting very strangely every so often too.

Brilliant bit of kit, but it keeps me on tender-hooks every so often!

It's showing up now so I can access everything I need.

Cheers for the tip. So I can connect a spare external 2tb drive (which I have already) via USB and backup all of the files to it every few weeks, music one week and video the next. I need to set something up, I'm nervous having all my files in one place.

random.stranger

mp3ireland2 wrote: »

Would installing linux on the pc and booting to that work?

No need to install it, you could always run it from a live cd or usb.

WeleaseWoderick

What would be the fastest method of transferring all my files from an external hard disk to the NAS? Just connect by USB and copy & paste?

jArgHA

SteM wrote: »

..So I can connect a spare external 2tb drive (which I have already) via USB and backup all of the files to it every few weeks, music one week and video the next. I need to set something up, I'm nervous having all my files in one place.

Make sure you use the Zyxel file browser to back stuff up to the USB drive and do not do it through Windows Explorer. If you use Windows Explorer it will copy everything to your PC first, before copying back to the USB drive attached to NAS - needless to say this is a *lot* slower.

The Zyxel file browser is accessible through the internal webpage (http://your-nsa-ip-address) - then click on the icon that looks like a home symbol at top right, and then choose file browser from the menu on following page.

Access

jArgHA wrote: »

Make sure you use the Zyxel file browser to back stuff up to the USB drive and do not do it through Windows Explorer. If you use Windows Explorer it will copy everything to your PC first, before copying back to the USB drive attached to NAS - needless to say this is a *lot* slower.

Agree totally, using the zyxel file browser is the fastest way of doing it... files take seconds instead of minutes to transfer this way.

iPhone.

WeleaseWoderick wrote: »

What would be the fastest method of transferring all my files from an external hard disk to the NAS? Just connect by USB and copy & paste?

according to Zyxel support they recommend the following method

If you want to transfer a lot of data between the NAS and a PC
Attach the NAS to your router and switch on - let it get an IP address from your router.
Switch on PC and let it get an IP address from the router.
Disconnect the RJ45 patch cable at the PC.
Disconnect the RJ45 patch cable from the router that came from the NAS and reattach to the PC.
They will be then be able to see each other and transfer files, theoretically at Gigabit speeds if you have a gigabit network port in your pc to match the Gigabit port on the NSA310. (It will in practice though be much slower than Gigabit as the controller on the NSA310 isn't the fastest but still probably the 'fastest' transfer method of all other options.)