Home made NAS

[Nadav Har'El]

On Wed, Dec 05, 2012, Dan Shimshoni wrote about "Re: Home made NAS":
> Hello, Nadav,
> > Instead, I decided to buy a 2-terabyte WD My Book Live for >$160.
> >For this price, I got both the 2TB hard-disk and a tiny (ARM-> based server in one package.
> 
> What do you mean by "ARM-based server" here ? I don't sure
> I understand. Does this product include some tiny ARM server?

The WD My Book Live (you can look it up on the Web...) is a small
device, about twice the size of a hard disk. You plug it to the
electricity, and to the network (Ethernet). Inside it it contains
a hard disk (you don't need to, and can't, buy it separately), and
some sort of processor running prepackaged software which serves the
files with NFS or SMB, presents a Web interface, and so on.

While I heard the prepackaged software is based on Linux, I never
tried to "hack" it and modify the software or verify the type of
processor. Frankly, I don't really care about the processor or software -
I already have a general-purpose desktop for doing everything else, and
all I need this NAS to do is NAS, which it already does well.

> Do you have access to this server by telnet/ssh, and is there a BSP
> open source package ?

I have no idea. I assume that some hobbyists already managed to hack
this device, but like I said, I never really cared - it already does
pretty well everything I wanted to do.

> I see you have ethernet connection there.
> I look in WD site, and I don't see that they mention an ARM
> based server there:

It obviously has *some* processor - it's a full-fleged filesystem, HTTP, 
SMB and NFS servers. I thought it was ARM but I'm no longer sure:
according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Digital_My_Book,
"My Book Live uses Applied Micro APM82181 processor working at 1 GHz and
has 256 MB of RAM." Apparently you're right - it's not ARM but actually,
believe it or not, a type of powerpc. But who cares - the only thing
important is that it runs Linux :-)

A short Google search turns up that people have indeed been able to
log into the Linux running on this device, 

> http://wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=280
> 
> Can you please give a link/elaborate about the product you are talking about ?

Here the link to my review on Amazon of the 2TB model:

http://www.amazon.com/review/R1ABMTXISNZY6M/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm

A 3 TB model is already available, and if you have patience you may get
it for as low as $160 (last week on B&H...).

You can also get a two-disk version (with RAID support), with 4-8 TB
versions (the 8 TB one was released yesterday, and contains WD's newly
announced 4 TB disks).

-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |    Wednesday, Dec 5 2012, 21 Kislev 5773
nyh at math.technion.ac.il             |-----------------------------------------
Phone +972-523-790466, ICQ 13349191 |You do not need a parachute to skydive.
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |You only need one to skydive twice.