I have a problem. My former main computer (OPTIPLEX) has lost Internet connectivity. The Dell Optiplex 740 does work with the wireless adapter, but now it keeps getting an IP address of 0.0.0.0 instead of a 192.0.1.xxx address from the router, and attempts to do things like IPCONFIG /reset can't work because "The RPC server is not running" or something to that effect.
Well, I'll eventually fix that, I looked online and there's supposed to be an intensive process to do a fix to reset this, and I'll try it. But in the interim, I decided to do something in order to have a place to store files. I wanted a single place in order to retrieve MP3s or videos from one place to play them. I was using a shared directory on the Optiplex but now that its networking does not work I can't do that. I've been using a directory on this machine (the Quadcore) but I'd like something accessible from any computer. My older HP Pavillion is accessible but it has a tiny (160GB) drive and doesn't have a lot of room left.
I thought about using a networked hard drive but I've had problems.
A few years ago I bought an NAS server off eBay and discovered that it requires installed software on the clients and I couldn't use it as I could not get it to work, so I've been wary of network hard drives.
I have an external hard-drive connector, it supports IDE and SATA, I bought it a few months ago for like $15, and I could conceivably use that, plug it into the Pavillion and use it as a share, because I pulled the original 80GB drive that was in the Optiplex before I replaced it with a 2GB one. 80GB would be fine as a storage just for media files, it would be okay. I thought about it, I don't know where it is, I'll just spend another $20 and buy another USB external drive case.
Well, I went over to Micro Center to get that, and a few other things, including a desktop tripod for when I need to film something close (like cooking videos), and get another full-size (30-40 inch) tripod for use in making various videos.
I happened to go through the aisle where they have NAS devices and other network drives. I came across a Buffalo 1 TB network drive. Apparently, it requires no client software, you just plug it in to the wall, plug in the (included) ethernet cable into the router, and it appears as if it was another machine on the network. At $159 it wasn't that bad, and having a single place to retrieve files from it makes it less trouble. I've bought Buffalo external storage before, the one I had - a 250GB drive - worked really great until I knocked it off the top of my computer about two years ago (I mentioned it here back then), so I know they make nice stuff.
So I decided to buy it.
I brought it home, and I have an existing network cable running off the router, it runs to the other side of the room, so I can plug the Buffalo into the network there, plug its power supply into the wall outlet, and put the drive (with the included lock-on stand base) on the windowsill, not endangered if the router gets knocked off the table and pulls everything connected to it with it.
So I put it in, and it does exactly what it says. It goes to the router and gets a DHCP address, names itself the model number, so there's a new "machine" on the network called "LX-1X" or something like that. And looking at the share specification, it says it has something like 917.1 gigabytes (which is about right, using hard drive specs of 1000^3 vs the typical 1TB which would be 1024^3).
Well, what's happened is that the drive has a high assignment (192.168.0.140) and has that ugly name, and also it's not on my workgroup (I use workgroup ROBINSON, not workgroup WORKGROUP) so I need to change these.
I connect to the <s>machine</s> hard drive's website (an internal web server) via a web browser, and it asks me to log in. I do so. So through the control panel, I can rename the drive (to BUFFALO), change its IP address to 192.168.0.10 (after I go up on the web site of my router at 192.168.0.1 and change the assignment of the machine to use its MAC address to a fixed address at .10), and change its workgroup. Then the drive has to be rebooted, which it does on its own after telling me to click OK.
So, I go to network, and there are now three places. QUADCORE (this machine), PAUL (my old HP Pavillion) and BUFFALO (the new hard drive). Double click on BUFFALO and I see the shared folders. Sweet!
Anyway, the web page says it has a firmware upgrade that it can install. So I do so. Says not to refresh or close the web browser until it finishes. It's sitting for a long time. I decide to just leave it and go to bed, it's about 10 or so.
I wake up about 3:30 (which would be about 3 hours ago) and the spinner is still running, but it says the drive needs to reboot. So I figure it must have stalled, so I go over and unplug the drive from the wall, wait about 45 seconds, then plug it back in.
Now the son-of-a-bitch doesn't work. The drive isn't visible on the network any more. Going to the drive's web server just shows a spnner and never asks to log in. I've got a dead Buffalo, I'm going to have to go all the way back to the goddam computer store and take this back to get another one, when all I did was follow the fucking manufacturer's instructions to let it update itself! It even downloads the software automatically, I could not have done anything to make it fail!
Well, before I panic or go through another long trip over to the computer store, I go to the web to look for a solution, and find out that there is a manual update program I can download from Buffalo's website. So I do, I open the Zip file and extract the directory to my desktop, the files are about 220 megabytes (thank goodness for high-speed Internet!), then I run the program in the directory - this time it's an application rather than a website - and first, it can't see the Buffalo, so I try a find and it does. I tell it to install the firmware upgrade.
A window with various progress bars is shown and it goes through a bunch of upgrading for probably 1/2 an hour. Then it says it's finished, and low and behold, it now works again!
To add shares to the drive, you connect to its web server and use the menu interface through your web browser. Adding a new share becomes immediately available through the network view.
I've started copyring files over from the PAUL machine to the BUFFALO, and once I figure out how to get them off, either I'll (1) copy files from the OPTIPLEX to a jump drive (it has 16GB) then plug the jump drive into another computer and copy the files to the BUFFALO; (2) hook up a spare hard drive to OPTIPLEX via the USB interface and copy files over, then hook that hard drive to the QUADCORE and copy them to the BUFFALO (essentially the same thing as the jump drive only a lot more files); or (3) get the networking on OPTIPLEX working again and then copy the files over the network to BUFFALO.
As far as copying files, you just access the drive as if it was another machine on the network, then double click on a share to open that directory, then it's just drag-and-drop as with any copying operation.
Also, since the Buffalo has a network name, I can access its web server from Firefox either via
http://192.168.0.10 or
http://buffalo Now I'll start moving audio and video files to it (probably in addition to storing them someplace else, so I don't end up with the same stupid condition where all my files are on one drive that can be knocked over.)
So I'm impressed that the NAS actually works the way I expected it to do so.
I have a problem. My former main computer (OPTIPLEX) has lost Internet connectivity. The Dell Optiplex 740 does work with the wireless adapter, but now it keeps getting an IP address of 0.0.0.0 instead of a 192.0.1.xxx address from the router, and attempts to do things like IPCONFIG /reset can't work because "The RPC server is not running" or something to that effect.
Well, I'll eventually fix that, I looked online and there's supposed to be an intensive process to do a fix to reset this, and I'll try it. But in the interim, I decided to do something in order to have a place to store files. I wanted a single place in order to retrieve MP3s or videos from one place to play them. I was using a shared directory on the Optiplex but now that its networking does not work I can't do that. I've been using a directory on this machine (the Quadcore) but I'd like something accessible from any computer. My older HP Pavillion is accessible but it has a tiny (160GB) drive and doesn't have a lot of room left.
I thought about using a networked hard drive but I've had problems.
A few years ago I bought an NAS server off eBay and discovered that it requires installed software on the clients and I couldn't use it as I could not get it to work, so I've been wary of network hard drives.
I have an external hard-drive connector, it supports IDE and SATA, I bought it a few months ago for like $15, and I could conceivably use that, plug it into the Pavillion and use it as a share, because I pulled the original 80GB drive that was in the Optiplex before I replaced it with a 2GB one. 80GB would be fine as a storage just for media files, it would be okay. I thought about it, I don't know where it is, I'll just spend another $20 and buy another USB external drive case.
Well, I went over to Micro Center to get that, and a few other things, including a desktop tripod for when I need to film something close (like cooking videos), and get another full-size (30-40 inch) tripod for use in making various videos.
I happened to go through the aisle where they have NAS devices and other network drives. I came across a Buffalo 1 TB network drive. Apparently, it requires no client software, you just plug it in to the wall, plug in the (included) ethernet cable into the router, and it appears as if it was another machine on the network. At $159 it wasn't that bad, and having a single place to retrieve files from it makes it less trouble. I've bought Buffalo external storage before, the one I had - a 250GB drive - worked really great until I knocked it off the top of my computer about two years ago (I mentioned it here back then), so I know they make nice stuff.
So I decided to buy it.
I brought it home, and I have an existing network cable running off the router, it runs to the other side of the room, so I can plug the Buffalo into the network there, plug its power supply into the wall outlet, and put the drive (with the included lock-on stand base) on the windowsill, not endangered if the router gets knocked off the table and pulls everything connected to it with it.
So I put it in, and it does exactly what it says. It goes to the router and gets a DHCP address, names itself the model number, so there's a new "machine" on the network called "LX-1X" or something like that. And looking at the share specification, it says it has something like 917.1 gigabytes (which is about right, using hard drive specs of 1000^3 vs the typical 1TB which would be 1024^3).
Well, what's happened is that the drive has a high assignment (192.168.0.140) and has that ugly name, and also it's not on my workgroup (I use workgroup ROBINSON, not workgroup WORKGROUP) so I need to change these.
I connect to the <s>machine</s> hard drive's website (an internal web server) via a web browser, and it asks me to log in. I do so. So through the control panel, I can rename the drive (to BUFFALO), change its IP address to 192.168.0.10 (after I go up on the web site of my router at 192.168.0.1 and change the assignment of the machine to use its MAC address to a fixed address at .10), and change its workgroup. Then the drive has to be rebooted, which it does on its own after telling me to click OK.
So, I go to network, and there are now three places. QUADCORE (this machine), PAUL (my old HP Pavillion) and BUFFALO (the new hard drive). Double click on BUFFALO and I see the shared folders. Sweet!
Anyway, the web page says it has a firmware upgrade that it can install. So I do so. Says not to refresh or close the web browser until it finishes. It's sitting for a long time. I decide to just leave it and go to bed, it's about 10 or so.
I wake up about 3:30 (which would be about 3 hours ago) and the spinner is still running, but it says the drive needs to reboot. So I figure it must have stalled, so I go over and unplug the drive from the wall, wait about 45 seconds, then plug it back in.
Now the son-of-a-bitch doesn't work. The drive isn't visible on the network any more. Going to the drive's web server just shows a spnner and never asks to log in. I've got a dead Buffalo, I'm going to have to go all the way back to the goddam computer store and take this back to get another one, when all I did was follow the fucking manufacturer's instructions to let it update itself! It even downloads the software automatically, I could not have done anything to make it fail!
Well, before I panic or go through another long trip over to the computer store, I go to the web to look for a solution, and find out that there is a manual update program I can download from Buffalo's website. So I do, I open the Zip file and extract the directory to my desktop, the files are about 220 megabytes (thank goodness for high-speed Internet!), then I run the program in the directory - this time it's an application rather than a website - and first, it can't see the Buffalo, so I try a find and it does. I tell it to install the firmware upgrade.
A window with various progress bars is shown and it goes through a bunch of upgrading for probably 1/2 an hour. Then it says it's finished, and low and behold, it now works again!
To add shares to the drive, you connect to its web server and use the menu interface through your web browser. Adding a new share becomes immediately available through the network view.
I've started copyring files over from the PAUL machine to the BUFFALO, and once I figure out how to get them off, either I'll (1) copy files from the OPTIPLEX to a jump drive (it has 16GB) then plug the jump drive into another computer and copy the files to the BUFFALO; (2) hook up a spare hard drive to OPTIPLEX via the USB interface and copy files over, then hook that hard drive to the QUADCORE and copy them to the BUFFALO (essentially the same thing as the jump drive only a lot more files); or (3) get the networking on OPTIPLEX working again and then copy the files over the network to BUFFALO.
As far as copying files, you just access the drive as if it was another machine on the network, then double click on a share to open that directory, then it's just drag-and-drop as with any copying operation.
Also, since the Buffalo has a network name, I can access its web server from Firefox either via http://192.168.0.10 or http://buffalo Now I'll start moving audio and video files to it (probably in addition to storing them someplace else, so I don't end up with the same stupid condition where all my files are on one drive that can be knocked over.)
So I'm impressed that the NAS actually works the way I expected it to do so.