74 q MAXIMUMPC | oct 08 | http://www.maximumpc.com
R&D^
Examining tEchnology and putting it to usEConfigure your drive
Once you’ve logged into the web
GUI, you’ll want to take a whack
at a few important configuration steps:
Change the name of the NAS; set the cor-
rect date, time, and time zone; and create
a unique username and password. Start
by clicking General (in the left-hand menu
stack, under the System heading) and
change the desired information in the large
pane on the right. Click the Password tab,
type in the existing password (“freenas”),
and enter your new password in the two
boxes provided.
You’re now ready to prepare your hard
drive. Go back to the left-hand menu and
choose Management under the Disks head-
ing. The plus sign inside the circle on the
right-hand pane indicates that you can add
an element to the NAS. In this case, we’re
going to add a hard drive. Click the plus
symbol and all the drives in your system
(including the optical and USB thumb drive)
will appear in the window next to the Disk
heading. Be sure to choose your hard drive.
You might want to experiment with
some of the options on this page (especially
“hard disk standby time,” “advanced power
management,” and “acoustic level”), but
leave them at their default values for now.
Do make sure that the value for “Prefor-
matted file system” is set to “unformatted”
before you click the Add button; then click
Apply Changes.format and mount
the hard drive
Ready to wipe your drive? Return
to the Disks heading in the left-hand
column of the NAS box’s administrative
options and click Format. Make sure
you’re ready to proceed, as the option will
erase any information previously stored
on the drive. Choose your hard drive from
the drop-down menu, enter a volume
label, and accept the remaining default
choices: “File System: UFS (GPT and Soft
Updates),” “Minimum Free Space (8),” and
“Don’t Erase MBR (unchecked).” Click the
Format Disk button.
A drive must be mounted before it can
be accessed, so go back to the left-hand
Disks menu and click Mount Point. Click
the circled plus sign, select Disk from
the drop-down Type menu, and choose
your hard drive from the drop-down Disk
menu. Choose EFI GPT from the Parti-
tion menu and UFS for the File System
value. Click the Add button when you’re
finished. An OK message in the Status
window indicates that the drive was suc-
cessfully mounted.enable ServiCeS and
Create ShareS
We need to access our NAS box using
computers running Windows, so it’s essential
that we enable the SAMBA networking protocol
on our NAS box. Look in the left-hand column
for the heading labeled Services and click the
CIFS/SMB menu item. Place a check mark next
to Enable in the main window but leave all the
values at their default settings. Click the Save
and Restart button.
Now that SAMBA’s up and running, you’ll
need to create one or more network shares that
allow your remote computers to treat the NAS
box’s hard drive(s) as though they’re a local
resource. Click the Shares tab in the “Services:
CIFS/SMB: Settings” window and click the
circled plus button. In the screen that appears
next, give the share a name, add a comment
describing the purpose of the share, set the
path, and click the Add button. Click the Apply
Changes button on the next screen.
When you’ve finished configuring FreeNAS,
click the Backup/Restore button to create a
backup of your configuration. You should now
be able to find your NAS and your newly creat-
ed shared folders listed in Windows XP’s “My
Network Places” (or Vista’s “Network”).5
6
4
Now that your new NAS box is ready to go, getting all your movies and photos to
stream to your media device of choice is extraordinarily easy. Here’s how you do
it. Pull up your FreeNAS administrative options page and click UPnP under the
Services menu. Click the Enable check box and assign a name to your device. Then
select the NIC you’ll be using. Add the directories you want to share and pick a
component profile that best matches your UPnP device—like your Xbox 360, for
instance. Click Save and Restart, and you’ll be ready for some movie-watching!STREAm AwAyHow to Stream from Your NAS Box