Has anyone used 'Windows only' NAS boxes? 1

[elsenorjose]

I have a spare 200GB hard drive I'd like to set up in a NAS enclosure so I don't have to have one computer running all the time just for file sharing. I've seen a few, very affordable, NAS enclosures but they all say "Windows/Mac" but very few of the really inexpensive ones say they support Linux. I might not know enough of the specifics but why would they NOT work with Linux? If they are in essence a DHCP client, my OpenSUSE box should see it and access it correctly, no? If I format the drive FAT32, both my Linux and Windows boxes should be able to read and write, correct?

Does anyone have any experience with this?

Thanks.

 

[thedaver]

Ummm.... irrespective of the win/mac/linux question, I'm confused why a dedicated NAS box running all the time is different from connecting the drive to Suse and leaving *that* machine running all the time. Did I miss a detail in your description?

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[elsenorjose]

Power consumption? A NAS box won't be sucking up 400W of juice. Also, the fact that running a PC just to share files is something of overkill. Also, the fact that I'm constantly putzing around with my systems and nuking them, repartitioning, reinstalling OSes, etc. forces anyone else using the share to wait for me.

Reasons like that mainle.

 

[zeland]

Power consumption? A NAS box won't be sucking up 400W of juice.

Neither does a PC. Just because a PC has a 400W PSU, doesn't mean its drawing that much power from the get-go.

running a PC just to share files is something of overkill

A NAS is essentially a PC. I've toyed around with an IOMEGA some time back. It had a P3 processor with 256MB RAM running Windows Server 2003 and a 250W PSU.

I'm constantly putzing around with my systems and nuking them, repartitioning, reinstalling OSes

When you decide that a machine is a dedicated file server, you don't go "putzing around" with it anymore.

--== Anything can go wrong. It's just a matter of how far wrong it will go till people think its right. ==--

 

[elsenorjose]

A NAS is essentially a PC. I've toyed around with an IOMEGA some time back. It had a P3 processor with 256MB RAM running Windows Server 2003 and a 250W PSU.

I don't think we're talking the same thing here. This is not a PC:

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[gdvissch]

Not the filesystem is important (eg FAT32, NTFS, ext2) but the way you access it.

If it works with Windows, it means it works with SMB (or CIFS).

If your linux box has an smbclient, you will be able to connect to it (to map a network drive).

NAS boxes supporting UNIX (Linux) also offer the NFS protocol to talk to it.

G.

 

[elsenorjose]

Thanks G. My Linux box does have an SMB client. Good to know I should be able to map to it.

 

[jshurst]

Also check this out, it is an awesome NAS

http://www.freenas.org/

J