Setup the MacAlly PHR-100NDAS NetDisk with a Multi-OS Configuration
March 17, 2007 by Ross McKillop
Do you have an extra hard drive sitting around and want to do something really useful with it? If you have more than one computer in your home or office then why not utilize it by plugging it into a Network Drive Bay so your computers have a common and shared drive.
I suppose you could setup a computer to share its internal drive with other computers on the same network but what if it goes down or it’s needed out of office for some reason, that’s usually the time when you need that important file stored on its drive.
This is where a Network Drive Bay comes in really handy, it’s always on and always ready to go, no need for a constantly running computer sharing its drive.
Having never attempted this type of NetDisk network setup and with high expectations I optimistically decided I was going to configure my entire home network to access my newly acquired PHR-100NDAS NetDisk
My Home Network:
- MacBook Pro running OS X 10.4
- iBook running OS X 10.4
- HP Laptop running Windows XP
- Xbox
running XBMC Xbox Media Center (Unix based)
- Airport Express
and Airport Base Station.
- Dynex 5 port 10/100 fast Ethernet Switch
.
After looking through the QuickStart manual it was evident that my aspirations may have been a bit hasty, I say this because in my ignorance I had assumed all my devices would just magically see this new Network Drive Bay on my Network. As is with most things in life, it just ain’t that easy! In fact the MacAlly NetDisk needed a helper application called NDAS that must be installed on all the computers you want connected to it. That seem fair enough but wait… This NDAS helper application is only available for Mac OS X 10.2.8 - 10.4.x, Windows 2000 and Windows XP (there was also what seemed to be a Vista driver on my disk if you dare to go there). But what about my beloved Unix based Xbox Media Center, where was the Unix Driver for that, how was I going to stream all of my DivX content to my HDTV, how would I survive without my time-delayed weekly episodes of American Idol, Heroes and various CSI’s? I had an idea but we will get to that later…
I decided to see what I could get going using the available NDAS software and started off loading up my iBook with the needed NDAS helper Application and entering the ID and Write Keys using the supplied control Utility and there she was, my MacAlly PHR-100NDAS 200GB NetDisk sitting on my Mac’s desktop, beautiful! During this initial NDAS setup I also realized one other potential hiccup, if you have a Mac on the NDAS network then you can only have one computer with read and write permissions. The other read-only computers can connect to the NDAS NetDisk but all they will be able to do is read and not write, not exactly what I was after! Again I had an idea but we will get to that later…
I wanted to see how the NDAS application installed and worked on the Windows XP PC so I gave it a whirl on the HP laptop… Lets just say, the install went as most PC installs go, lots of things popping up asking questions and telling me it’s doing this and that, some driver names flashing on the screen, a restart or two and at the end of what was at least 4-5 times longer then the the Mac NDAS install I got nothing! Oh the NDAS software said the NetDisk was mounted but could I find the Network Drive in the “My Computer” directory like it was supposed to be… No, I looked all over that PC for some sort of NetDisk-Network Hard Drive but it must have been in some stealth mode, maybe hiding from viruses or some other PC threat? Since I wasn’t that worried about getting the PC NDAS working I decided to give my idea a try…
Let’s get right to the “my idea” part because it really worked well and allowed the flexibility to get all my computer devices reading and writing to the NetDisk at the same time including my Unix based Xbox Media Center.
I needed to find a common language for my Windows, Mac OS X and Unix systems to Network over and since they can all communicate over SMB (Server Message Block) protocol I decided to go with an SMB based solution. The only problem is that although you can turn SMB (Windows Sharing) on in the Mac’s System Preferences this setup will only give SMB access to the Users directories on the internal Mac hard drive, not external drives like the NetDisk. I wanted the Windows PC and Unix based Xbox to see the external NDAS mounted NetDisk on my iBook, I had a plan! Several months earlier when trying to get my Xbox Media Center to see my external Hard drive/s connected to my various Macs I resorted to a free program called SharePoints. SharePoints is a very useful program that enables you to setup SMB shares outside of your Macs User directory like in the case of an external drive or a mounted Network Drive. This setup worked perfectly then, so why not use it now…
This is how I did it:
- Install Maxtor 250GB Hard Drive
in Mac Ally PHR-100NDAS NetDisk Drive Bay.
- Connect Maxtor 250GB IDE Hard Drive to my iBook using the USB cable/port.
- Launch the Macs Disk Utility program (in the Applications -> Utilities folder) and format the Maxtor hard drive to MS-DOS File System (this allows both Macs and PCs read and write access).
- Connect the MacAlly PHR-100NDAS NetDisk Drive Bay to my Dynex 5 port 10/100 fast Ethernet switch and power it all up.
- Install NDAS software on the iBook, enter the ID and Write Keys with the NDAS control Utility.
- Under the NDAS configuration Tab select Read/Write Access.
- The Maxtor Network Drive showed up on my iBooks desktop after a few moments, it may take a bit longer over wireless then over a wired connection (I was using a Wireless all 802.11g based Network).
- Install SharePoints on the iBook and setup the Maxtor NetDisk as a new SharePoint.
- Configure SharePoint settings (make sure to checkoff SMB sharing and customize accordingly)
- Connect your computer/s to the newly created SMB NetDisk SharePoint with the appropriate Networking setup and enjoy.
My original idea was to have the Network drive connection as direct as possible to the Xbox Media Center via a cabled Ethernet connection which in theory it was, with this new SharePoint setup the NetDisk drive is actually getting remapped via the iBook to the Xbox turning the connection into a wireless link (iBook was connected to the network wirelessly via an Airport). After running some video playback tests I came to the conclusion that the Airport wireless Network speed was more than adequate for even high quality video playback.
Another reason I wanted a Network Drive was for backup purposes, I went about backing up the iBooks 10GB of user data, this first full backup took about 45-60 minutes over the wireless connection, not bad. Subsequent backups will be much smaller and less time consuming as only new info/changes will be archived.
The Upside:
- NDAS mounted NetDisks really do act like actual drives and therefore can be used with SharePoint software making this setup even more versatile.
- Always on computer independent Network Drive, great for backups and storing multimedia.
The Downside:
- NDAS software alone has definite read/write permissions limitations when using a multi-Mac and PC combined network.
- No Unix, Linux support unless used with SharePoints solution.
- Windows NDAS setup on my PC system did not work fully for me.
In conclusion I would highly recommend adding a Network based hard drive like the MacAlly PHR-100NDAS for anyone with a multi-system network wanting a centrally based storage solution.
Special thanks to MacAlly for supplying us with a PHR-100NDAS NetDisk
Author - Michael Kaye
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