nas drive help
 

hi all, i am having a problem with a buffalo 500gb nas drive with a seagate 500gb usb attached i have tried to map the usb folder and it appears to work untill the next reboot when it doesn't re-connect although the nas drive does i have done all firmware updates as advised by buffalo the seagate drive has been formatted to ext3(recommended) so i don't know were the problem is i am running vista h/p any help appreciated

Re: nas drive help
 

Have you tried to assign a drive letter via Disk Management to your USB drive.

Right click My Computer, Select Manage, Storage, Disk Management. Might be slightly different in Vista, this is for XP.

Right click on the USB Drive and select Change Drive Letter.

Re: nas drive help
 

You don't access the USB drive through a letter, it'd appears as a share on the buffallo.

Martyh, if you log in to the web management of the buffallo while the usb drive is connected but not showing up, what do you see for the device status?

Re: nas drive help
 

You are correct, I mis-read it, appologies.

Re: nas drive help
 

Very easy to do:) done it myself loads of times!

Re: nas drive help
 

can you map the share as a drive and ensure it is a persistent connection?

eg - open command prompt and type:

net use x: \\server\share /persistent:yes

not sure if the device is seen as a server with a share or not, being I don't have one! alternatively, right click over My Computer and select Map Drive, then browse to the share ensuring it reconnects at logon.

Re: nas drive help
 

thanks for the response everyone ,yes the share is mounted with a drive letter 'm' it is a persistant connection and re-connects at logon ...when i open web management with the usb attached ,if it is not being read i only get the name but no properties also when the usb has lost its's connection it does not show in the share folder ..or sometimes it shows as an empty folder this is why i tried to map the usb folder to a seperate drive letter

Re: nas drive help
 

Given that the underlying OS on the Buffalo is a Linux variant, I wonder if the Buffalo isn't adding the USB drive into it's fstab file. Thinking about that further, from an OS point of view, USB is a transient connection (P'n'P) and therefore you may not want to add the USB device into the permanent fstab file.
Just to clarify, when do you lose the USB share? After the Buffalo is powered off/on, or after the PC is powered off/on? Have you tried unplugging the seagate USB cable and then plugging it back in - does that reactivate the share?

Re: nas drive help
 

aragorn..thanks for the reply,i lose connection usualy at random,i have tried unplugging the usb and plugging back in sometimes it worked sometimes not.when i map the drive iy works fine and show in my computer the same as other drives but if i reboot it failas to connect wereas the share on the nas drive connects straight away

forgot to mention that the usbdrive when it is mapped as drive L shows the exact same disc usage as the nas

Re: nas drive help
 

Is the USB drive reliable connected direct to a PC? (Having formatted as ext3 it won't load under XP/Vista by default - you'll need an ext3 driver such as http://www.fs-driver.org/)
I think the buffalo firmware is probably letting you down, which means no easy fix other than plugging direct to a PC :(

Re: nas drive help
 

yes the usb works fine when connected to pc via usb and formatted ntfs,are you saying that the link will give vista the ability to read ext3 as i am worried that if i put files on the usb i won't be able to read them when the usb disconects