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[robotball]

I just completed setting up the 323. I have FW 1.09 in a RAID 1 config (1TB).  I am ready to start creating shares, users, etc.  I have a few questions with the first being pretty easy as I know I am missing something.

1.  How can I create folders on the volume? I don't see an option in the Web UI.  What am I missing?

The next questions are more complicated as I think based on what I have read in the forum my configuration won't work, so any suggestions would help. I have a shared XP Pro desktop and both my wife and I have laptops running Vista.  The username and passwords on the XP and Vista laptops are the same.  I want to create three private folders mom, dad, son.  I also want to create a public folder that is accessible by all of us which will contain music, movies, pictures, etc for itunes and for media sharing on our directv boxes and ps3. How can I do this?

/volume_1/dad - only dad had access
/volume_1/mom - only mom has access
/volume_1/son - only my son has access
/volume_1/public - all have access
/volume_1 - the administrator user on the XP box has access to everything

Thanks for the help.

[Buhric]

to create folders, either broswer your Network devices and the DNS-323 chould come up there
open it up and create a folder has it was a normal local disk...

or open up the "Run" window and type in
\\IPofDNS323\

[chriso]

Along with Buhric's answer you can also in Windows explorer you can right click on "Network" and select Map Network drive..  So that it will create a drive letter for you to use to access the folders and treat like any other drive.

On the question of security.  You said that the same username and passwords where on the XP and Vista machines.  I hope by this you do mean that each person has a different username and password.  Also for you to set this up you are going need to know them, and they can't be changed later without also changing them on DNS-323.

Log into the DNS-323 (Configuration).
Select Advanced.
With the option User selected create and account for each person, and the "administrator" which would be just an another user on the DNS-323.  Make sure the user names and passwords line up with what are on your computers.

Select Groups
If there isn't already a Users group create it and add all the users to it (Or you can use the "All Users" in the network access step).

Now select Network Access.
Delete any current access rules.
Now use the User and/or Group to add the read-only or full access to the folder in question.
There is an icon in the browse dialog that allows you to create a folder if you haven't already done it from Windows Explorer.
Save the settings.

One thing I'm curious about is why Raid 1?  Mirroring provides so little functionality for a home environment.  The only thing it does is if a hard drive fails you can continue.  If people make a mistake and delete something it is gone from both drives.  Even a hardware failure of hard drive controller (on the DNS-323) might  write garbage it is going to both drives.  In my experience the human problems far out way the hardware problems.  So a mirror is only really useful if you have something running that has to stay up 24/7.  A much better use of the second drive is to backup drive one to drive two each night.  Sure if a hard drive fails the mirror might give me no data loss, but if I'm backing up there the most I lose is 1 day's work, and I'm weighing that against all those nasty problems humans have with "oops".

[gunrunnerjohn]

A final note.  Due to the way permissions were handled on the DNS-323, you can't have anonymous shares and password protected shares together.  You either run "wide open", or with discrete password protected shares.

[robotball]

Thanks everyone for their response. I have some additional questions.  I didn't see an option to create the folders in the 323 UI so I was unsure how this was done, but from what chriso is stating when I do a browse I can create the folders on the Network Page?  However, both chriso and Buhric state I can do this via windows?  I was confused there as it would mean I would need to map the drive and then create the folders.  I thought the process would be creating folders before I map the drive.

As for the use of RAID1 well I thought about it the way you stated, but it seemed like most people were using it in a RAID1 setup.  I have a 1TB external that I was planning to use for backups. Am I incorrect in this setup are more using the way you suggested?

Also, although my family practices some security (meaning we have different usernames and passwords) they don't know how to change or set their passwords and I know all of them, so this is how I know they are the same on all computers.

Finally gunrunnerjohn I have read a few posts by you mentioning this problem and I am not sure I understand enough to make changes to my setup.  If you don't mind can you provide an additional explanation and offer a suggestion on what I need to do?

Thanks again everyone for your help.

[gunrunnerjohn]

If you want a public share that anyone can access, you can't do that if you also want password protected shares.  This has been widely discussed here.

[dosborne]

Just to clarify, you CAN create a folder via the admin console browser page. This was mentioned earlier, but I wasn't sure from your post if you knew it or not.

[chriso]

First for the anonymous.  In Windows this means that if you are using an account that doesn't have a password or that password isn't the same as what is used on the DNS-323 it will try to log in anonymously.

So if you go with the username/passwords for one share you have to do it for all given the current limitations of the DNS-323.  As for the comment that you can't have a "public" folder, well that depends on what you call public.  If your idea is anyone that jumps on your network with or without a password should have access to the folder then it won't work once you restrict one share.  But if your intent is what I think you mean by public, as in all the people in your family should have access to that directory then what you do is make sure all those users are in a Group like Users, and then in the Network access you give the Users group access to that folder.  So unless you have strange people browsing your network the difference between the two kinds of "public" don't matter.

On the "Mapping" of a drive that you didn't understand.  Let me see if I can explain.
First off in the Windows world when you want to access a network drive/folder there are two forms to do it.
One is called UNC (Universal Naming Convention), it is in the form \\ And then the machine name \ And then the share name \ And maybe some more directories/folders under this.  So \\myMachine\share describes a full path to folder that is shared by "myMachine".  The machine has to share it, you can't just access anything you want on that machine.  You will notice that the traditional Windows drive letters A:, B:, ... are not being used.  When you browse using "Network" in the Windows Explorer it is using these UNC syntax.  But what if you have a program that is expecting the X: kind of syntax (as in it doesn't really know about network drives)?  Windows has what it calls "mapping".  And what it does is allow you to map a path like \\myMachine\share to a drive letter like S:.  So in a program you can use S:\ instead of \\myMachine\share.  Each user can have different maps.  The mapping can be performed by right clicking on Network in the Windows Explorer.  Also one thing about this mapping.  I should point out that no matter if you try to access a file/folder through \\myMachine\share or S:\ Windows will in the background log into myMachine so that it can be determined that you are allowed to access this folder/file.  Once you have a way to access the folder(s) you want on the DNS-323 you can treat them just like any other drive on your machine, and so you can use Windows Explorer to create them if you want.

On the idea of sharing a directory/folder.  In Windows you might right click on a folder and select the shard option, and in the process tell who can access it.  You are doing the same thing on the DNS-323, but the process to set up a share is different on the DNS-323 and that is why you are provided with tools in Network Access.  First you have tell it about users and groups, and then what they can access, which implies that those directories/folders will be shared out using those permissions.

On the Raid 1.  If you have another way to backup then I guess you are good to go.  BTW another thing that messes up data that mirroring doesn't help is viruses.  To me though the hassle of Raid doesn't justify the very few times you really lose a hard drive.  If you look around you will find that people have problems with it getting out of sync, they have problems even after a hard drive fails just trying to reconstruct it.  It is far from a no brainier that anybody with no experience is going to be able to handle with no problems.  As a point of reference I have maintained corporate software build systems with 30+ machines and they had to be up all the time, and of course they did have raid.  But I don't run raid at home.  I don't think it is worth it, and frankly the professional RAID systems I used at work were a lot more reliable and even easier to use, for things like rebuilding (reconstructing) a bad drive.  On them I could even change out the bad drive with the power on.  

I love the very fact that I have ALL my data stored on the DNS-323 and that I have it setup so every night it backups from one drive to the other, and to send it to offline backup, and I don't have to have any of the computers on to do it.  But each to his own.

[robotball]

Thanks everyone for all your help.