October 11, 2016
There are a few options for the software that can be used to make your own nas. I'll try to make a list of all the ones I can find, but the one that I have previously used is FreeNas. This time I want to give Openmediavault a go. Since my board has an internal usb 3 connector I will be using a regular usb stick that I had lying around. So here we go.
Here are the requirements for openmediavolt.
http://wiki.openmediavault.org/index.php?title=Prerequisites
Installation:
http://wiki.openmediavault.org/index.php?title=Installation
I decided to use unetbootin to make my bootable disk. You'll find it towards the middle of the page in the link above. It's the easiest program to use under windows. I took some screen shots to show you how simple it is to use.
Change the option from distribution to disk image.
Find the iso you downloaded. Make sure you have usb drive selected and formatted as fat 32. The program automatically found my usb stick. I don't have a usb 3 stick so I'm just using this one to test for now. If it works then I'll just leave it alone.
Here are the files being copied. Before I forget, I decided to use openmediavault_3.0.36-amd64.iso.
It took about a minute or less and it was done.
Here's what the usb stick now has.
And this is how much storage this took on the usb stick. Time to shut this computer down and plug the usb stick on the nas and test it.
I booted my computer with the new usb stick and although it worked, it says it wants to install, but I'm not sure if it wants to install on the hard drive in it or the usb stick itself. I'll have to boot it from the nas and see what it does. I wanted to test on my computer first, but I didn't want to begin an install since I'm not sure where it's going from here. This is what this screen looked like.
October 15, 2016 update continued...
Okay, I had this 8 gig usb stick and thought I use it to install omv on it. I then found out that it got a bit tricky to try to install this in that usb port which is now covered by the sata cables. Plus the usb stick is quite long but still just made it into the port. I then remember I could just use the front or back usb port to test this until it's done. Live and learn.
Moving onto the install, the usb boot disk got made but then I ran into a problem here.
I backed up and got this window again. I had no idea what I needed to do next but I tried pretty much all the normal choices that I thought would work. This was after the first install basically render the usb useless, so I had to redo the whole thing gain starting from formatting to creating the boot disk.
You can see that it does get picked up fine.
Then it gets stuck here during the install.
Of course I tried to continue, backed up and redid things or tried to finish, but nothing.
Backed out again to here, but I just had no luck getting omv to work correctly or at all. I kept going in circles with this. I also bought a 16gb usb 3 drive, I figure I pick a faster one, but I still need to figure out how to get the boot disk to work. I can always try other software if OMV doesn't work.
I went out tonight and got me some wiring labels and used those to label each drive so I won't forget which tray I started the numbering from. Of course I would prefer to start from 1 but that's not how the board sees it so you may as well match it.
So I decided to test a sata hard drive on the other side since I had this lying around to just see if it would fit since the usb is not working for me. And of course I then found this problem here. I can't install a hard drive with the power connected. This is the correct orientation that the hard drive fits, but it will not with the power cable as you can see. If I push that, I will break the pcb on the connector. Also, I don't have any more sata ports on this board, all 8 ports are all taken by the drive trays. Hence, the reason I want to make the usb boot disk work if possible.
I tried turning the hard drive so that the cables would work. I also had to bend the lower tabs out more to make the drive fit. Unfortunately the top screw holes won't work this way because the holes on the drive are farther out. So they just don't line up when I flip the hard drive over.
So basically I can't even install a hard drive on these brackets. The tabs would need to be a bit farther out to allow mounting a hard drive either way. This is a huge bummer. This could also be due to the way the power supply connectors are on the psu I got. I don't have another psu like this one to compare it to, so it could just be a simple fix using a different psu as well. Unfortunately for now, this is what I have to work with.
Here's the semi final clean up. I also bought a few more cable ties and everything is much nicer. Unfortunately there is hardly if at all any place to tie the wires to so I did the best I could as is. If I can ever get my 3d printer working again I may be able to make some kind of hard drive mount that I can stick on there with double sided tape. Until then, I got nothing so I need to get that usb boot disk working.
I also went ahead and labeled these two ports. This doesn't seem like much, but it does help specially later on when I have forgotten all about the build and I have to work on it again.
Here's the other side. The only thing I didn't tie were the fan wires since I'm waiting for a fan splitter and some other brush-less 80 mm fans I ordered that I think may work and have four pins for temperature control. The wires may be a bit short but I also ordered two different fan splitters just in case.
I emailed Norco service to see if they had or knew of any pwm fans that they could recommend to replace the ones that come with the case, but unfortunately I never heard back from them. Since they didn't even acknowledge my email, I can't tell you how their support is, but as of now, it doesn't look like anyone is home so you can decide on that.
Norco ITX-S8 nas case 1 - The build
Norco ITX-S8 nas case 2 - The build
No comments:
Post a Comment