Zyxel NSA-221 2-Bay NAS Appliance

[Captin]

As some of you may have read in another post I was having difficulty with powering 10 hard drives in a PC I use for downloading and for sharing stuff on the FTP. Well it's given up the ghost. The motherboard has now decided that no matter what network card I install it will only connect 10/100 and not gigabit. I've tried with 3 different PCI cards and 1 PCI-E card plus the onboard interface, all are gigabit but only connect 10/100. It's not the switch ports or cable ether as all tested ok.

The other big problem is that even though it will connect 10/100 if I send anything to it it stops connecting after a few mins.

So me thinks the mother board chipset is fooked.

So I decided to treat myself to my first NAS enclosures and saw these quite cheap, so I've ordered 2. Only £45 each with free delivery. I may order another 2 yet as I have to find homes for 10 hard drives.

Zyxel NSA-221 2-Bay NAS Appliance (91-016-021003B) - dabs.com

Has anyone had any experience with these? Mainly the FTP side and also the streaming side.

I've been reading all over the net and it seems that data transfer is a bit slow through windows shares but nippy through FTP. To be honest I dont need blistering speed as it's only for sharing stuff on my FTP and also for downloading onto.

 

[Steve2k34]

Have a look on hukd there all talking about it at the mo

 

[Captin]

Have a look on hukd there all talking about it at the mo

I found that too. Also the wiki which talks about hacking it.

 

[Steve2k34]

Oh well I was going to but a qnap but a bit skint at mo so just bought one of these my self so should give me something to have a good play with and see what it can do

 

[Steve2k34]

well ive had this for 1 day thinking of sending it back it does not like to do anything lol and when ya get it working its not very good at it plus there does not seem to be many help forums for the thing

 

[ekwat]

I got mine on Tuesday and apart from it being stupidly slow it does everything I've asked it to. Not that I've asked it to do much, just stream stuff to my 360, t.v, laptops and tablet.

 

[Steve2k34]

Mine keeps hiding behind firewalls so I can't access it (avg) and don't no how to get passed it torrents were not working at first but now I can't move them from one folder to another

 

[ekwat]

Do you have uPNP enabled? Mine is plugged into a router which is in turn plugged into another router and it works fine. Can you access the web interface?

 

[Steve2k34]

Now and again yes I can but if you look at the starter utility it will only show if I disable fire wall I'm using virgin media hub router and as far as I no it upnp enabled

 

[ekwat]

Mines into a router behind a VM hub. Can you see it long enough to update firmware?

 

[Steve2k34]

Yeah I've got it on latest firmware and using it but sometimes I have to disable firewall to be able to see again for some strange reason

 

[Steve2k34]

Have you had to change any settings in your router at all and how would I let it pass through avg

 

[Captin]

Well got 2 of these and they seem to be working ok. I was a bit miffed that they had to format the hard drives as I put them in as they don't read NTFS. so there's been some serious shuffling of files.

They are slow when using CIFS shares to copy files onto them, but are a lot faster when using FTP.

I've put my blu-ray collection on 1 of them and I am using PS3mediaserver on my pc to stream files to the PS3 and it has no problems streaming full 1080p across the network.

But the built-in media server doesn't seem to like any other than AVI & MPG files. Pity it's not like the Qnap and can have PS3mediaserver installed as a qpkg.

I've put the Ebooks and Emulators all on there so the FTP should be available for any peeps to grab stuff. I'm still using filezilla FTP server on my PC and not the FTP server built into the NAS boxes.

I also found that they were quite quick at copying files from a USB drive plugged into the back of the box using the button on the front.

All-in-all these are my first NAS boxes (so I don't have anything to compare them to) and for what I need they work just fine and were well worth the money.

 

[ekwat]

Have you had to change any settings in your router at all and how would I let it pass through avg

Was totally plug and play. I'm using Avast with no issues.

But the built-in media server doesn't seem to like any other than AVI & MPG files.

mkv works fine on mine

 

[Captin]

mkv works fine on mine

To be honest I havent tried it again since updating the firmware this morning. But I like how PS3mediaserver looks on the PS3 screen, without having all those extra folders.

Just tried it and it still says "Unsupported data" when I try to play a MKV file using the Zyxel Media Server, but the same file plays fine using PS3mediaserver reading the file from the NAS box.

 

[ekwat]

To be honest I havent tried it again since updating the firmware this morning. But I like how PS3mediaserver looks on the PS3 screen, without having all those extra folders.

Just tried it and it still says "Unsupported data" when I try to play a MKV file using the Zyxel Media Server, but the same file plays fine using PS3mediaserver reading the file from the NAS box.

Don't have a PS3 to test but works fine on Android and Windoze devices. Can't test on my 360 as it doesn't do mkv.

 

[Captin]

Don't have a PS3 to test but works fine on Android and Windoze devices. Can't test on my 360 as it doesn't do mkv.

I was just going to add that I think the Zyxel only send the files in their native format and does not transcode, therefore it wont work on the PS3 as it doesnt play MKV files ether, but it does work on my windows but uses VLC to play videos.

Some other NAS devices have twonky media server built-in and that does transcode. Some, like the Qnap box, can have PS3mediaserver installed which also transcodes.

 

[Steve2k34]

Do you no if this nas drive accepts 3tb drives as the box says 2tb but the site says 3tb so not sure if this is down to the update

 

[ekwat]

New firmware allows 3TB drives

 

[ekwat]

I put a single 1.5TB drive in on Tuesday and copied my stuff to it. I've now just added a 2TB drive and it's functioning. Being new to these enclosures Do they treat the 2 drives as 1 volume? I'm trying to create a new folder in the new drive but it won't allow me.

So I have Volume 1 which I've filled and I now have Volume2 which I want to create some diff folders in but it won't let me.