While I’m definitely not new to having NAS, I’m new to having a drive array and definitely new to having this many options in a GUI for as simple a thing as (I’d hoped to have for) a NAS…
What I want (I don’t think this is asking a lot):
FTP (I am using DynDNS and it’s configured correctly to get me to my router)
media storage for videos, MP3’s
security for local network access from two computers (Win 7 admin full control, all sub accounts read-only)
remote access (haven’t been able to get this working)
reasonably quick read ability
It’s configured for RAID-5. Ultimately I plan to use Windows Media Center to access the media on the drive. Read speed is soooo slow, even though both my box and the WD are connected to the same gigabit switch. I haven’t even messed with FTP configuration. I have mapped the drive successfully to Z: using WD-Link on my local hardwired machine; I also have a wireless laptop from which I have not been able to map the drive via WD-Link.
While the capacity of this drive is in fact 4x1TB, that’s about the only expectation of this hardware that has been met so far. Any help getting this array to do what I need it to would be great!
As far as your speed requirements are concerned: forget it. Even on a Gigabit network with only one single consumer, the Sharespace seldom exceeds a read speed of 10MB/s
Write speeds are even worse (max. 1-2 MB/s when writing many small files)
FTP is easy: just enable FTP in the GUI of the share.
Security (read-only for users) is done in the user config: just create a user, then switch over to the share management. That should show you your users on the left hand side and Read, No access and Read/Write on the right hand side. Now you can just select the users and switch them over to the “read only” column. Save + you are done.
I do the same thing you want with my 4 TB NAS (RAID-5). I can easily access the movies stored in “Public/Shared Videos” by means of my TV. So that works fine, too.
My Music is on a special share called “Music” and I access it through my Sonos Streaming-Clients which have a read-only user to this share (and this share only).
I also activated FTP on my personal share so I can transfer files more easily and reliably by means of Filezilla. (I don’t trust the Windows Drag&Drop thingy too much when I want to transfer large directory trees)
So except for the speed issue (which can’t be solved because the Sharespace **bleep** performance-wise and WD does not give a cr*p) you should be able to do easily what you want to do.
Just browse through the pages in the “Advanced Mode” of the admin interface - you will notice that it is actually not that complicated and mostly logical when it comes to navigation and page hierarchy.
Is there no ability to ‘quote’ in this forum? It’s not evident to me…
Anyway, currently, I’m just using remote access to my PC via LogMeIn to view files; but that doesn’t allow me to transfer files to & from a remote machine, at least, not how I want to.
I’ve considered another approach–using a 1TB USB drive for my media, and then using the Sharespace ONLY for remote access and backup. That would mean that the Sharespace would have to be configured to mirror the USB drive, and that changes to either would be written to both. Any thoughts on that?
just above the reply field, there’s a quote button next to the macros drop down.
are you looking to copy files to the sharespace remotely over the internet? if so, then just setting up dyndns configured to your router is not enough. you will have to port forward to the sharespace. that’s done through the router. you will need to configure a folder with permissions, or just use the public folder. however, that won’t be secure. you will have to setup filezila or some other software to access the router, which will port forward to sharespace. then you can access whatever folders you have available there. information for how to do that will come from your router manual. if the router can port forward, etc.
