N5200 PRO Diskless and External USB HDD

[bloodyguitars]

Hi All,

First of all, a big thanks to all on this forum who encouraged me with their experiences to buy the Thecus N5200 Diskless unit ($799)

Am planning to order it from EAEGIS. Any other store I can get it cheaper?

Now I didnt get any HDD along with it. I want to test it first with the SQUEEZEBOX

Here's what I intend to do. Any comments will be greatly appreciated.

1. Update firmware (Which firmware should I update it to to get squeezebox running without a hassle)

2. Install SlimServer (latest version I suppose)

3. Connect external HDD and share the songs from there to test the squeezebox. (Is this possible)

I will probably have this setup for a week or so
After that,

4. Put in one 750GB HDD and transfer movies/music onto there. Set it up as RAID 0

Test this for a couple of days and then put in one more 750GB and set it up as RAID 1

Do I need to format the HDD when I put them in or I can use my existing drives with movies?

Can I go from RAID 0 -> RAID 1 -> and ultimately RAID 5 when I get 3 or more HDD's

Thats it for now

Cheers

PS: I ordered a squeezebox yesterday which normally goes for $299 but you can enter the promotion code "ThankYou" and get a $20 discount. And ofcourse its free shipping.

[Stefan Huebner]

1.) dunno what squeezebox is or if its neccessary at all -> have a look at onbeat.dk/thecus

2.) onbeat.dk ...

3.) the drive will be seen under /raid/usbhdd, shared folder "usbhdd"

4.) RAID setup only works if a correct RAID can be assembled - so for RAID 0 you need 2 disks at least. No, you cannot put in your drive and share movies, as the disks get partitioned and formatted with ext3 in the RAID setup.

What you could do is:
- buy the new disk
- put it inside the thecus, format a jbod
- transfer your files off the existing disk
- clean the existing disk ("dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX bs=512 count=10")
- put it inside the thecus
- do the RAID level migration to level 0 (that's how you can reach level 5 after inserting more disks)

good luck!