When we left our hero (me), he was struggling with the installation of a new NAS drive. If I was previously in a tunnel, there now appears to be some light at the end of it.
First of all, I managed to get the data off the old drive and onto the new one. The downloading was more onerous than the uploading. The final batch was 334gb and took more than 18 hours to copy onto a USB drive. The upload onto the new NAS with USB 3 took less than 2 hours. That’s progress.
But there was still the issue of internet connectivity and a new ASUS router arrived to hopefully assist with that problem.
There is a general truth about the software supplied with computer peripherals: it’s shit. If it works at all it won’t do what it is intended to do and will likely crash your machine on a regular basis. Won’t crash a Mac of course; but this is usually because it never works in the first place. Printers, modems, routers, joyticks; if you plug it into your computer then you can rest assured that the hardware may be adequate but the software will be junk.
So I unpacked my new router with a heavy heart and anticipated many hours of pain ahead. Plugged the modem, the NAS and my computer into the router and turned it on. A window popped up and led me through an install process. Five minutes later everything was working (including internet access from the NAS). Plus I had a screen that showed me info about the router and its connections and offered me various options in words a technically challenged geriatric could understand. Well done ASUS.
Enthused, I examined options to address my remaining technical headache, torrents.
I am aware that downloading torrents puts something of a strain on a hard drive. Not wanting to assault any of our regular computers with this task, for the past few years I have used a Macbook which was our first ever Mac (many many years ago) and has refused to die. The battery has long since expired and the fans are noisy; but the hard drive continues to pound away in the service of entirely legal torrent downloads. I have to download the torrents via the computer and then copy the entirely legal media onto a USB drive and then stick the USB drive into the TV to watch it. Bit of a hassle but it works.
My old NAS and new NAS both support torrent downloads, but I didn’t fancy attacking my photo storing NAS drives with endless torrent downloads. But what’s this? The ASUS router also supports torrent downloads, and it puts them onto a USB drive plugged into the router. So I plugged in a USB drive and in no time at all it was filling up with entirely legal media. But how to watch it?
Easy enough from a computer, just connect to the router and away you go. But what’s this? ASUS offer an app which I could stick on my phone and iPad, and allow me to stream videos. Twenty minutes later I was sat on the toilet watching a documentary on my iPad. I didn’t actually need to go to the toilet; just wanted proof of concept.
The last hurdle was the TV; but that has a wifi function which immediately recognised the router with the attached drive; so I can watch the same documentary on the TV as well as on the loo; and how many times have I wished I could do that…?
Very impressed with the ASUS, but the final solution is not quite in place. In order to access my photos and media remotely (no idea why I would want to do that, but I demand the option), I have to reprogram my modem to work in Bridge mode. It’s a Belkin and the software is crap so I remain cautiously pessimistic (again).
Comments 🔗
2015-01-30| Grant says…I’d still rather be out in the motor house valve grinding a Hillman Minx…
2015-01-30| RJM saysI upload all my photos to Facebook and lock the albums so only I have access. I can access them anywhere in the world and it’s free. Ok, I won’t get the download quality but at least I have a copy I can work on.
2015-01-30| Spike saysYou could do the same with Flickr and keep much higher quality images available. Facebook destroys images when you upload them.
2015-01-30| Spike saysI assume “grinding a Hillman Minx” is a euphemism. You pervert.
2015-01-30| RJM saysYes, you are right about the quality issue. There are advantages to FB with uploading a quantity fast, comments, tagging, etc. I keep all my photo’s on a 1TB external USB drive and back up every so often. I use the fantastic Picasa for downloading and basic edits before using other editors. I can drag and drop individual photo’s or whole files anywhere on my computer or onto USB hard drive.