Network attached Storage with USB

[Giraffe }{unter]

Can't seem to find this product anywhere...

I'm looking for a NAS that supports NTFS and also has a USB (output) to connect to my media player.

My goal is to use the NAS as a backup location for all of my media files over the network. When my Mvix Media player is on I want to use this drive as an external USB drive for the media player to access the backups of my media.

I found a buffalo that does both, but you need to flip a switch to change from NAS to USB mode. Anyone have any products to pimp?

[Foo]

Not sure you'll find one that'll do that. How about one that supports DNLA?

[Therac-25]

That would be... challenging to implement. I doubt you're going to have much luck.

The challenge is concurrency between levels. UMS is a block protocol, which is lower-level than the filesystem protocol.

If you are absolutely determined to have something that does that, then you could get an embedded system board, and use the linux gadget libraries to create a USB Mass Storage device for yourself.

You would have to somehow create an area of data (typically a loopback filesystem is just a big, fixed-size file) that could be accessed by both the UMS client code, and a filesystem driver (which would be exported by the file sharing code). You would just have to pray (hard) when it came to concurrency, though, as there's no way to do correct file locking when the USB host has block-level access to the data.

See here for some more details.

AN IMPORTANT WARNING! While FSG is running and the gadget is connected to a USB host, that USB host will use the backing storage as a private disk drive. It will not expect to see any changes in the backing storage other than the ones it makes. Extraneous changes are liable to corrupt the filesystem and may even crash the host. Only one system (normally, the USB host) may write to the backing storage, and if one system is writing that data, no other should be reading it. The only safe way to share the backing storage between the host and the gadget's operating system at the same time is to make it read-only on both sides.

You would basically have to ignore that warning to get what you want. It might work, depending on how lucky you feel.

Edit: If the device is capable of reading from an MTP or PTP device, not just UMS, then you might be in luck. As in "it would be possible to do yourself, if you care enough to build a device that can do it".

[Dr_Watson]

why can't your media player just use it as a network share?

(i mean even something like a ps3 or 360 can read videos off a NAS with DLNA)

[dmmh]

I have this one: http://www.trekstor.de/en/products/deta ... d=11&cat=0

dont know if it does exactly what you need, but it can do LAN, USB and Wifi access (if connected to a router), albeit the latter ofcourse dramatically limits performance due to wifi speeds

[Giraffe }{unter]

why can't your media player just use it as a network share?

(i mean even something like a ps3 or 360 can read videos off a NAS with DLNA)

Yes it can, but I am going to be doing Blu-Ray DivX and don't want any glitches. The MviX network interface isn't the best, but the output is nice. I've been using a WD Passport via USB, but I would rather write all my videos and photos to the NAS, then have the MviX access via USB

The MviX works in NDas mode but data transfer is very slow

I have this one: http://www.trekstor.de/en/products/deta ... d=11&cat=0

dont know if it does exactly what you need, but it can do LAN, USB and Wifi access (if connected to a router), albeit the latter ofcourse dramatically limits performance due to wifi speeds

Looks like what I need if you can answer these questions I would appreciate.

Can a PC connected via USB access the files?
Is the drive accessible via USB and Network at the same time?
Can the USB connected PC play a video while another computer is writing via network?

[Therac-25]

Looks like what I need if you can answer these questions I would appreciate.

Can a PC connected via USB access the files?
Is the drive accessible via USB and Network at the same time?
Can the USB connected PC play a video while another computer is writing via network?

From the manual:

Note: The DataStation maxi z.ul can be operated either in USB
mode OR in network mode, but not in both modes at the same time.

See the reasons I cited above. What you are asking is roughly equivalent to having a single drive hooked up to two drive controllers at once.

Edit: It's possible to build something that would do the job you want done -- you would just have to have some kind of auto-sensing for whenever the USB host tried to access the drive. Unmount the loopback filesystem, and then set up the USB client. When it goes away, then remount the loopback (conditional on the detection of those events being robust enough). Basically automate changing modes. Could even build some kind of queuing system to queue up file copies to the device while it's being used by the USB host, and copy them elsewhere on the drive. It's possible to do, it's just doubtful that you're going to find a consumer product that does something like that.

[dmmh]

easiest for him would be to ditch the media player already in the network, buy one with ethernet, connect both the NAS HDD and a new to be bought Ethernet HDD movie player to a router...case closed.

http://www.emtec-international.com/nl/p ... gamme=Q120

Or keep the exisiting media player and simply backup to the maxistation HDD via Wifi, I don't see why USB is a must anyway

[Giraffe }{unter]

Thanks, once I got the point it was not possible to have it both USB and Network, I started looking into other options.

The media player I am using is the MVIX 760HD I am very happy with the unit and it's stellar performance so far. I found that Mvix offers a NAS with a ton of stuff packed in (web server/FTP/mysql/php/torrent client with rss/blog/etc...) it's called the MvixBox. Nice small quiet box with 2 bays that support up to 2TB drives and the ability to mount more storage via the 2 USB ports.

I also picked up a gigabit switch and 2 seagate 1.5tb drives so I can mirror for added protection. The up and down speeds are great, I can access the drive right from the gui on my media player and stream 720p content even while 1 PC is running a file backup and another is downloading torrents to is vai a mapped drive.

all of your info steered me in a much better (slightly more costly) direction.

If anyone is interested in more info on this NAS just PM me I plan on using more of the features as time goes on.

[Therac-25]

Thanks, once I got the point it was not possible to have it both USB and Network, I started looking into other options.

The media player I am using is the MVIX 760HD I am very happy with the unit and it's stellar performance so far. I found that Mvix offers a NAS with a ton of stuff packed in (web server/FTP/mysql/php/torrent client with rss/blog/etc...) it's called the MvixBox. Nice small quiet box with 2 bays that support up to 2TB drives and the ability to mount more storage via the 2 USB ports.

I also picked up a gigabit switch and 2 seagate 1.5tb drives so I can mirror for added protection. The up and down speeds are great, I can access the drive right from the gui on my media player and stream 720p content even while 1 PC is running a file backup and another is downloading torrents to is vai a mapped drive.

all of your info steered me in a much better (slightly more costly) direction.

If anyone is interested in more info on this NAS just PM me I plan on using more of the features as time goes on.

For that media player, what kind of codecs does HD media have to be in? i.e. if I have a bunch of perfectly legal x.264 videos wrapped up in mkv with multiple audio and/or multiple subtitle streams, do I need to change those into something else, or can it handle them out of the box?

As for the NAS, is it just Linux on there, or something weirder? I know some people have gotten sabnzbd+ running on a few NAS devices, and I'd want to get that on there if I went with that.

I've had the GB switch setup down here for a few years now, I'm just getting to the video stuff now.