Evening all - just picked up a NAS box dirt cheap.

I can set it up and configure a drive as JBOD (for now) but I can't see it as a network drive or folder. Surely the windows firewall can't be blocking it if I can access the web interface to set it up?

I really don't know my way around network admin, and I was going to grab a Synology box, but this was so very tempting.

Can someone point me in the right direction?

Regards
Dave

Can you ping it?

Can you attach using the ip address, instead of the given name?

Which OS are you using to connect? XP is notorious for not picking up names, 7 and 8 are much better in that respect.

If you are using Windows, try \\192.168.0.2\shareName in Windows Explorer, replace 192.168.0.2 with the address of the NAS and shareName with the name you gave the share.

Hmm, this might be a user fail...

I can see the folders when I have the NAS connected to the ADSL Modem router, but can't see it at all when connected directly to my PC's ethernet port.

Are you connecting it to the pc with a crossover cable and assigning static ip's on both sides?

I thought modern ethernet ports didn't need crossover cables? (I'm talking about the one on my Z68 mobo)

It "should" be auto sensing. But you will need to assign static IP-addresses on both sides, either that or one of the devices will need to be acting as a DHCP server.

Switches usually don't but PC to PC often does + it's better to use them so you can manually set speed & duplex

+ you'll still need IP addresses

Thanks guys.

Now where did I put that crossover cable...

I foresee an expedition into the loft, or Maplins.

My PC has an IP of 192.168.1.3 set via DHCP by my router, and the default IP of the NAS is 192.168.1.100 - Do I just assign those two manually in the setup or do I need to set a different IP for the PC?

Also, the NAS supports link aggregation - so, if I hook up a second crossover to the other port, presumably that will double the link speed?

If the link light is green and your laptop shows network connected, the cable is working.

I doubt if your PC or router support link aggravation.

So I can't just shove a second NIC in there and bridge the connections?

Which interface has that IP address? I'm guessing that's on your wifi and the reason you want to directly cable a NAS is for wired speed?

If so you need to manually assign the IP address and you probably want to put it in a different range with no default gateway. If you have two network cards in the 192.168.1.x range and one is used as a point to point connection for a single device, your computer will get terribly confused and traffic will go out the wrong data hole on a regular basis.

That model of NAS has a built in DHCP server, so you can set it to serve up an alternative scope of something like 10.10.10.x and your nic will pick up a viable IP address to connect to it - but you will also have to change the IP Address of the unit - so make sure you have a plan for that which doesn't cut off your access at a bad time.

Incidentally, it also has a 4 port switch built in, so you shouldn't need to worry about crossover cables
http://www.thecus.com/product.php?PROD_ID=5

Yes, that's right.

It does have DHCP on the NAS, so I'll have a look at that.


No, the switch is only on the RouStor variants of the N5200. Mine just has the WAN and LAN ports.

The rough plan I would suggest is to get that cable and connect it.
Disable your wif adapter
Set a static on the wired card of 192.168.1.10 / 255.255.255.0 and no gateway or DNS
Then connect to the NAS and set a DHCP scope of 10.10.10.10 to 10.10.10.20 or something. netmask /24 or 255.255.255.0 (these are the same thing). That's really all the options you need in this configuration.
Change the NAS IP address to 10.10.10.1
Then put your wired nic to automatically acquire
Then re-enable your wifi after that is all verified.

Then your shares should be up on \\10.10.10.1\sharename

Thanks for that, I appreciate it.

I'll have a look tonight, if I can find a crossover cable.

Perfect!

That worked like a charm, thank you.

I'm backing up my data at ~ 40-45MB/s, which is thereabouts the posted limit for this box. It's not as fast as USB 3.0 but it is a 5 bay raid capable server.

Thank you all for your input.