6. NAS Features

Wireless is nice, but without its NAS features, the WL-HDD is just another multi-mode access point! Unfortunately, the NAS features are pretty basic, and like the wireless features, can use a hefty dose of User Interface improvement.

After initial drive installation, you'll need to visit the Disk Tool page (Figure 12) to partition the drive (EXT2 format only). This utility gets the job done, but isn't particularly helpful, since it neither shows you any existing partitions, nor calculates remaining available unpartitioned space when you enter partition sizes. At least once you click the Apply button, it does report partitioning progress.

Figure 12: Disk Tool (Partitioning)
(click image to enlarge)

Once you're partitioned, your next step should be to set up users via the User List (Figure 13) at the bottom of the Shared Nodes page. Its use is pretty self-explanatory but note that User passwords are stored in the clear and you can't edit defined users. Note that the WL-HDD comes with a Guest user (which doesn't show in the User List) which is similar to WinXPs and is used to allow anyone to access a share. So if that's all you want, you don't really have to define any users.

Figure 13: User setup
(click image to enlarge)

With User setup done, you'll move on to setting up shares (Shared Nodes) via the top half of the Shared Nodes page (Figure 14). This portion also contains some other NAS-oriented settings. The Network Neighborhood mode defaults to the not-so-secure setting of sharing all disk partitions to everyone with read and write privileges. It also lets you disable sharing entirely or use the permissions set in the Shared Nodes List entries.

You set the Windows workgroup via the Work Group (default is mygroup), but note that there are no Appleshare enables or controls since the WL-HDD supports only SMB / CIFS via TCP/IP. This lack of Appleshare support would only be a problem with older Mac OSes, since Mac OS X works with the WL-HDD just fine.

Figure 14: Share setup
(click image to enlarge)