Linksys by Cisco NSLU2 Network Storage Link for USB 2.0 Disk Drives

Since the Tom's Networking article (http://www.tomsnetworking.com/Sections-article85.php) a highly active community has formed which have taken it upon itself to customise this item with additional functionality such as iTune servers, mail servers, CVS servers etc, SSH, print servers, Fat32 support, etc.

See http://www.nslu2-linux.org for the latest and greatest information on custmising the NSLU2.

A very neat little box with great potential and solid community support!

On opening the box, the first impression I had was how truly tiny and cute this thing is - it's completely dwarfed by my router and cable modem!

It was a complete doddle to set up and get working (although at that stage the only external device I had plugged in was a memory stick), I just connected the unit to my router and ran the wizard on my PC to find and configure it. The contents of my USB pen drive were then accessible both via Windows Explorer and for extra cool factor, viewable via my browser too. Neat!

Out of the box it doesn't support NTFS (why do Linksys ship with their out-of-date firmware? This is losing them sales...), which was how my drive was already formatted and as that was stuffed with my backup data, I wasn't keen to reformat it! So I already knew I needed to upgrade to the latest official Linksys firmware (exploration of the unofficial projects, "Unslung" and "OpenSlug", I'm leaving for another day).

Well the upgrade process wasn't as smooth as it should have been - following the instructions just didn't work and I had to search online to find out that there was a little utility called EraseAll required. This turned out to have been supplied on the CD, but not documented. However that did run without a hitch and the NTFS drive works just fine (Note: I'm sure the release notes in the firmware mix up usb ports 1 and 2 when taking about NTFS support, so try connecting to the other port if it doesn't work).

I haven't tried using it as print server yet and I've only dabbled with the ftp, but both are useful features to have available.

Transfer speed seems just fast as it was from a dedicated PC server and responsiveness is actually better. The LAN is the limiting factor on speed.

The only negative things I can find to say about it are minor:
1. You need to have an ext3 formatted device attached to change some of the configuration (like the admin password, hmmm...), but I guess a spare USB pen drive would do for that.
2. It doesn't start automatically when the mains power is switched on, you have to press the on button.
3. Power saving spindown on USB disks is apparently a bit hit or miss (I don't think this is an NSLU2 specific issue) and you have to enable it on the drive itself, from a PC, using whatever utility the manufacturer might provide. So I haven't tried doing this yet.
4. Devices are not hot-swappable. No biggie, you just have to remember to power the unit down each time.

Anyway, in summary, if you want to share disk space across your LAN I thoroughly recommend this device. All the other features are icing on the cake to me, but it's a real no-brainer to buy this little server when all the alternatives are at least as expensive, less flexible and mostly devoid of all the little extras.