LINKSYS NSLU2 Diskless System Network Storage Link for USB2.0 Disk Drives

Pros: I bought two. I installed a new OS (Debian/NSLU2 --- so now I can make it do whatever I want. I ``de-underclocked'' it g --- I used a razor blade), so now it runs twice as fast. I've only had time to partially set up one, but it'll soon be in a position to entirely take the place of my desktop: Running the printer, orchestrating backups, running the DVD burner and of course just storing a bunch of data, etc. I even have it set up with encrypted filesystems that it's serving up to the net at a perfectly reasonable speed. The second one will have different duties, when I get around to it.

Cons: I have to admit, as a general purpose computer (which is NOT what it was designed for, but IS how I'll use it), it is kinda way-stinky slow, but I'm talking about actual computing horsepower. De-underclocking it does make a big difference, though. For serving up files to a SOHO network (as is mine), it's plenty fast enough.

Overall Review: People are doing some really cool things with these little gizmi. Have a look at for a really geekisoid good time. Rock on Newegg: You provide an excellent service with this website. When I called in for help (with a different product), although the person I happened to get wasn't all that knowledgeable, she did manage to find a way to be helpful, none the less. Very polite and courteous as well.

Pros: This thing does exactly what it says. I use to to stream music and movies... A task it handles flawlessly. Don't get hung up on the required drive format. If you format the drive with the NSLU2 and then disconnect it and connect it to a Windows PC via a USB port, it won't work. Fair enough. Quit being lazy, if you really wanted to do this you'd already know that there are windows drivers available to that will allow Windows to read this drive when connected to your PC's USB port. So you wanna be lazy? Then why would ever NEED to connect it to your windows manchine via the USB port? It's already on your network. I added to identical drives and use the backup feature once a week. Sure I can double my capacity but I prefer to keep my data secure.

Cons: only 2 USB ports.....12 more would be better! he-he

Overall Review: One of the main reason i got this is because I noticed this thing has a huge development community dedicated to "enhancing" it's features. I've read some pretty cool stuff. Unfortunately (or fortunately) I still can't find a reason to hack it. It does everything I need it to do. But then again I'm a windows guy (we don't see the big picture until Bill says we can).

Pros: Cheap ! Very easy and fast to set up. Had a new network share in 20 seconds.

Cons: Slow. Connected my 250 GB external hard drive and reading directory structure was slow. ( I do have thousands of NTFS folders and sub-directories.)

Overall Review: Totally will void your warranty if you do this but there is a resister ship you can pluck of the mainboard on the NSLU2 and it will restore the poswer to the processor frrrom 133mhz to 266mhz. I also reformatted my external drive using the recommended file system for the nslu2 box and now my transfers are very fast. Copied over 120GB in a couple hours. Google search nslu2 remove resistor for simple instructions on how make your nslu2 into a rabbit.

Pros: Does what it's supposed to do. If you don't understand basic networking, however, this product is NOT for you. This device was made for a price, and at under $100, it was a bargain. I hooked it up to a 400 Gig external 3.5" I had just bought from one of the warehouse stores, and they make sweet music together. I like the LINKSYS NSLU2 (Storage Link for USB, 'SLUG' or 'Sluggo') and would recommend it to my geekier friends.

Cons: Not the fastest server in the world. I'm waiting for the warranty to run out before I do a little 'surgery' (do the internet research) to speed it up. An older USB drive case I had connected to the Drive 2 socket suddenly stopped talking to Mr. Sluggo. It works fine jacked into my laptop or a desktop, any other drives (even my thumbdrives) work okay in Drive 2. Not worth the trouble to troubleshoot... yet. My guess is that the external drive was compromised somehow, so it isn't a shortcoming of the LINKSYS NSLU2.

Overall Review: The server's operating system is Linux. Don't hook up any old or previously formatted drive to the Primary USB connector and expect it to work without reformatting the drive. It requires the proprietary Linux formatting protocol, and it is not going to work if you plug it into your Windows machine.

Pros: Great little home network device. It's not the fastest thing in the world but for our purposes it is fine. We had 2 350G external hard drives attached to 2 different computers. We used the NSLU2 to network the drives together so the computers all see the same things now (My documents/pictures/Quicken ...etc). Good for basic networking.

Cons: Data moves a little slow,especially when you are backing up large files. It's a good idea to do back ups like that at night!!

Overall Review: Recap: Good for basic home networking, especially if you have an external hard drive or two available. This way you can, for a low price, get a small home network up and running.

Pros: I work for a computer manufacturer (servers, not PCs). The console for most of our equipment is on a serial port. I recently got my boss to buy a pair of these to use as term servers. I installed Linux on them and put their root FSes on NFS so they're diskless. I put hubs on their USB ports, put USB->serial converters in the hubs and connected the serial consoles of all my group's machines in the lab to those ports. With the slugs on the net, we can access all the consoles of our lab machines from anywhere. I used ``conserver'' freeware on them which provides logging of those ports and other goodies. A lot cheaper than simple dumb terminal servers, and they do a whole lot more. I'd bet they could probably handle 32 consoles per slug (assuming low activity on most consoles most of the time) just by plugging hubs into the hubs that are plugged into the slugs. Even more by plugging hubs into hubs into hubs (being mindful of the 127 device limit on USB, of course).

Cons: None. Did I mention that I just *LOVE* these things?

Overall Review: WRT my previous post, sorry so choppy. I should've known newegg would chop out all the websites I put in there, making for an ugly post. As for my home slug project, I've now got both of them up and running with encrypted FSes on both. One is my main data server, which also serves the printer, DVD burner, automagically copies backups to the DVD at night (also encrypted) and backs up the backup server. The other slug is the backup server. It mostly just holds all the backups for my laptop and main server (on disk). Backup server will soon be relocated to a tiny corner of the garage I am hoping might survive in a fire, so that will become my teeny-weeny super-cheap disaster-recovery site. I'll also slap a serial terminal on there, so it can also be my long desired shop-puter. I can only get about 1MB/sec max throughput on those encrypted FSes, BTW. Only do that if you really need it to be encrypted, and don't need it to be fast (true on both counts for me).

Pros: This little thing is VERY open to alternate firmware, if you know what you're doing. It's also not as slow as lots of other people seem to claim. What speed you get out of it will depend on how you set this up. Best practice: Use an unformatted disk (no partitions of any kind) and format using the Ext3 file system on the NSLU2. Also, give it a static IP.

Cons: USB hard disks tend to be slow and sometimes a little unreliable (depending on the chips used in the enclosure). Once it's set up, it shouldn't give you any problems, though.

Overall Review: If you know what you're doing, you can give this little guy some turbo speed. Look for the term 'Turbo Slug' in your favorite search engine. It really does make a difference! Warning: It's a warranty-voiding hardware mod.

Comments: You will want to update the firmware on this from the Linksys website. I had to use the Linksys EraseAll utility to flash the device because the autorun program on the CD didn't work that well. I bought my device from NewEgg in October of 2005 and it was still running the original firmware version. FAT and NTFS is available with the new firmware, but its absolutely useless because you can't configure user accounts. Anyone can access the device with user: admin password: admin. I was not able to change the password or add new users. I ended up letting it format in Ext3 (the native format used for the drive). I bought this device to serve as a backup (I dump data from several computers onto it each night). One of my requirements was that if the device failed, I could easily access the drive from any PC. Since I had to format with Ext3, I could not access the drive from within Windows XP. I looked around online and found a free Ext2/Ext3 Read/Write driver for Windows XP at http://www.fs-driver.org. This worked like a charm. In summary, this device is great as a backup on a Windows network if you 1) update to the newest firmware 2) install a Ext3 driver so it can be accessed in Windows 3) set basic security permissions.