External HD w/ network connection

D

dar124

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jan 21, 2012
Messages
2,014
I have been looking for an external HD eclosure that has a network connection. I'd like to connect it to my switch so the HD will have an IP address. I'd prefer to just get the enclosure because I already have a HD to use. But I'm having some problems finding exactly what I'm looking for. The search results come back with 4 bay NAS setups, or just regular enclosures without the network connection or some really expensive options, when all I'm really looking for is a simple HD enclosure with a network port.

So I've been thinking, which isnt always a good thing :D. I currently have an external HD with a USB connection. Would it be possbile to get a USB A Female to USB B Male Adapter and a USB to Ethernet Network Adapter and "convert" the USB B to USB A and then the USB A to a network port that I can connect to my switch?? Or is that too many conversions / connections and not work??
 
As an Amazon Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
Being as the HD enclosure has no processor or otherwise, no those converters will not work.
 
dar124 said:
I have been looking for an external HD eclosure that has a network connection. I'd like to connect it to my switch so the HD will have an IP address. I'd prefer to just get the enclosure because I already have a HD to use. But I'm having some problems finding exactly what I'm looking for. The search results come back with 4 bay NAS setups, or just regular enclosures without the network connection or some really expensive options, when all I'm really looking for is a simple HD enclosure with a network port.

So I've been thinking, which isnt always a good thing :D. I currently have an external HD with a USB connection. Would it be possbile to get a USB A Female to USB B Male Adapter and a USB to Ethernet Network Adapter and "convert" the USB B to USB A and then the USB A to a network port that I can connect to my switch?? Or is that too many conversions / connections and not work??
Click to expand...

no, that definitely won't work... there is no NIC... that converter is to run USB signals over network cables...

LoStMaTt has your solution...
 
As an Amazon Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
The other option is to get a router with USB ports that you can plug USB drives into.. but unless you get something with USB3 or 3.1 and your external USB drives also support USB or 3.1, the transfers are still going to be slow.

One of the other things you could do is just plug the drive into a desktop and share it over the network. The only drawback is that the computer it is plugged into has to be on for you to access it from other devices.

Here is an interesting little NAS device that let's you plug in a USB drive and/or a printer to make them networked devices.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/GIGA-NAS-USB-Network-Storage-Ethernet-Adapter-Dongle-for-FTP-Samba-File-Server-/400075058934?hash=item5d2654eef6:g:0V8AAOSwl9BWHXHp

Edit: here is another that is an enclosure and has Wifi and USB 3 for cheaper. You can also plug it directly into your computer via USB 3
It is not clear as to whether or not you can use a USB drive with it or not though, but it does have a USB 3 port on it.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/3-5-Inch-USB-3-0-HDD-Hard-Drive-Enclosure-w-WiFi-NAS-Share-Network-Storage-/351484161735?hash=item51d616aec7:g:Ng4AAOSw3ydV0isf
 
As an eBay Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
As an Amazon Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
cyclone3d said:
The other option is to get a router with USB ports that you can plug USB drives into.. but unless you get something with USB3 or 3.1 and your external USB drives also support USB or 3.1, the transfers are still going to be slow.
Click to expand...


I actually have a TP-LINK TL-WDR3600 which does have 2 USB ports on the back of it (which I forgot about). Would plugging an external HD into one of thos ports give the drive its own IP address??

I'm looking to get an external drive with an IP address because I've recently set up a Hikvision DS-2CD2032-I IP camera and have been trying to get the recording part of the software configured. But I'm having some issues setting it up to record to my WHS 2011 server. The more I've looked online for info it appears that the camera has a 200GB limit for the HD that it can record to. I've currently got 3 2TB drives in my WHS server and I'm using DrivePool so it's appears like a single 6TB drive. So, the reason that I'm looking to connect an external HD to my network is so I can get a smaller drive (with an IP address) to have my camera record the video to. I created a "\\Fileserver1\Security Camera" folder on my server, but the Hikvision software wont show that folder as online \ able to record to. I'm thinking that's because the folder appears like it's on a 6TB drive. So my thought was to have a smaller separate drive to record the camera video to.

And the more I think about it it'd probably be better to keep that as a separate system from my media (videos, pics, music, etc).
 
As an Amazon Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
I think that will work, but I don't have any experience with that router. Try it out and see how the router sets it up.
 
why don't you partition a section of your 6TB drive to 200GB and see if your hikvision is able to see that?
 
If that router works anything like my dlink with a usb port then no, it will not give an ip address. It will, however, allow you to map it as a network drive. I went through this with my router and there is a bit of a finicky setup.. so if you have any questions just shoot me a message.
 
to add to that last post, the finicky part wasn't all that bad now that I look back at it. I had horrible luck with searches is all.

The drive will "sorta" show as an ip. Sorta.

In my scenario I had to go into the router menu, find the name it had given to my drive and map to that by using my routers ip addres and then off of that. For me it listed my hard drive as usb_A1. So to map the drive I had to use \\192.168.0.1\usb_A1

this directly linked to the drive. Some of the pages I browsed mentioned that its also common to see the drive called storage(0).. but in the end the name you use is whatever your router assigns.
 
tonyyy said:
why don't you partition a section of your 6TB drive to 200GB and see if your hikvision is able to see that?
Click to expand...


In the past I've had some issues partitioning drives after the initial imaging of the PC was done. So I was a little hesitant to partition part of the 2TB (or 6TB shared) drive, especially since it was on my server. If something went wrong a reimage of the server would be a bit more involved.
 
auntjemima said:
to add to that last post, the finicky part wasn't all that bad now that I look back at it. I had horrible luck with searches is all.

The drive will "sorta" show as an ip. Sorta.

In my scenario I had to go into the router menu, find the name it had given to my drive and map to that by using my routers ip addres and then off of that. For me it listed my hard drive as usb_A1. So to map the drive I had to use \\192.168.0.1\usb_A1

this directly linked to the drive. Some of the pages I browsed mentioned that its also common to see the drive called storage(0).. but in the end the name you use is whatever your router assigns.
Click to expand...


Ok, thanks auntjemima. In the next few days I'll connect my external HD to the USB port on the router and will see if I can add it that way. I'll post back with my results!!!
 
@ dar124
The TP-Link TL-WDR3600 will share the HDD just fine (a bit slow but still), not sure how well it works using vendor firmware but I do have a recent firmware of OpenWRT (with support for HDDs) if you want to give it a go.
Are you trying to say that you don't want it to use more than 200Gb, hence why you aren't using your WHS server?
 
another option is a TripMate Titan. It's a battery enabled, wireless travel router w/ USB and Ethernet port. Plug in a drive to the USB port and have access via Ethernet or wifi.
 
As an Amazon Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
diizzy said:
@ dar124
Are you trying to say that you don't want it to use more than 200Gb, hence why you aren't using your WHS server?
Click to expand...


Yep, I am having issues setting up my Hikvision to record to the "\\Fileserver1\Security Camera" folder that I created on my WHS server. I entered the IP of the server and the path to that folder. But it isnt showing the folder as "online" and allowing anything to record to it.

The more I looked into the Hikvision setup, it seems like there is a 200GB limit for the HD that it records to. I didnt want to try to partition a part of the pooled 6TB that my WHS server has. So my next thought was to get a 200GB external drive and set the camera up to record to it. Which I'm now working through trying to connect and set up with an IP address.



22501945712_b6e398b09d_b.jpg




22501945792_b937241ec9_b.jpg
 
Yes, expect 7-8mbyte/s tops (ext3), NTFS is going to half of that.
//Danne
 
diizzy said:
From what I can tell you can only use NFS shares not SMB
Click to expand...


A little confused, do you mean you can only use NFS shares with the Hikvision camera?? IIRC Windows 7 supports both NFS and SMB shares?? Other than that I'm not really familiar with NFS vs SMB. So I may need some more info / instruction, etc.
 
So I've been googling and found a little more info.

When configuring NFS shares to use as network sources nfs://1.2.3.4/path/to/folder (where "1.2.3.4" should be replaced with the IP of your NFS server, and "/path/to/folder" should be replaced with the path to the folder you want to share)

So maybe I just have the info typed in wrong to the iVMS software??

Instead of "192.168.1.254" and "\\Fileserver1\Security Camera", I should have it there as "nfs://192.168.1.254/Fileserver1/Security Camera" and "/Fileserver1/Security Camera"?? Not sure if that would make a difference??
 
diizzy said:
I did a quick search and both only mentions NFS
http://overseas.hikvision.com/ueditor/net/upload/2015-06-10/ae9f2fc6-bed2-41f2-81fb-4bfea3d0e0a2.pdf
http://www.hikvision.com/UploadFile/File/201433115208669.pdf

Windows doesn't do NFS shares, Enterprise edition can connect to ones but not share.
There are however 3rd party applications or you could use your TP-Link.
Click to expand...


Ok, I'll look over the manuals from those links. Not sure why it's so complicated to get this Hikvision camera set up to record?!?!?
 
dar124 said:
So I've been googling and found a little more info.

When configuring NFS shares to use as network sources nfs://1.2.3.4/path/to/folder (where "1.2.3.4" should be replaced with the IP of your NFS server, and "/path/to/folder" should be replaced with the path to the folder you want to share)

So maybe I just have the info typed in wrong to the iVMS software??

Instead of "192.168.1.254" and "\\Fileserver1\Security Camera", I should have it there as "nfs://192.168.1.254/Fileserver1/Security Camera" and "/Fileserver1/Security Camera"?? Not sure if that would make a difference??
Click to expand...

You're incorrect about the 200GB limit, because Hikvision makes and sells DVR units that support 8TB in HD's, so, I don't see that being an actual limitation that applies. I know, I got one I'll be installing from Laview (Hik rebadge).

With that said, SMB and NFS are two completely different file sharing protocols. Its not as simple as changing a URI. Here's how you set it up on WHS 2011

http://www.mediasmartserver.net/2011/12/23/guide-setting-up-nfs-in-whs-2011/
 
stiltner said:
You're incorrect about the 200GB limit, because Hikvision makes and sells DVR units that support 8TB in HD's, so, I don't see that being an actual limitation that applies. I know, I got one I'll be installing from Laview (Hik rebadge).

With that said, SMB and NFS are two completely different file sharing protocols. Its not as simple as changing a URI. Here's how you set it up on WHS 2011

http://www.mediasmartserver.net/2011/12/23/guide-setting-up-nfs-in-whs-2011/
Click to expand...


Ok, I've been looking back to see where I read about the 200GB limit. It was mentioned somewhere and I thought it might be part of my probem trying to set this up. It'd be good if it wasnt true.

Would setting up NFS on my WHS 2011 server effect anything else as far as how the server currntly shares files?? Just dont want to set up NFS for this camera and then have to reconfigure a bunch of additionl programs tied to WHS or have it break something else along the way!!!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top