Ritmo NAS LAN 650 - 3.5" HDD enclosure with LAN / host USB

[eyesee]

Some feedback on this product ...

I got this unit for $74 from MSY

This is a 'cheap' price considering its a 3.5" HDD caddy with USB2 interface. In addition it has a RDC RISC processor running a linux kernel which implements the NAS functionality in addition to general housekeeping. This unit also has 2 x USB2 'host' ports - whereby you can plug-in any USB storage device and in essence 'network it'.

Why did I get it?

I've got a Dreambox and would like to record content - one way is to add a NAS device as a remote mount - thereby having a non PC based storage system which is easily interfaced to the Dreambox. Its quiet, low power, auto booting, etc, etc ... so I hope you can see the positive aspects - especially for $74 + the cost of a high capacity HDD - like a 500G WD sata for an additional $119 makes a great PVR system

OK ... so much for the introduction... does it work?

Yes it works - but it’s not perfect is the short answer.

First of all I wanted to use NTFS file system. Most 'cheap' NAS systems only work with FAT - because of the greater overhead in processing the more complex file structure of NTFS combined with the limited power of the CPU used in the cheap systems can be a problem.

Well this unit has a bit of grunt - and it definitely supports NTFS. I managed to plug-in my existing 500G USB disk into the host USB port and it instantly recognized the file system and locally mounted my drive.

I was able to set up a SAMBA share to my Windows PC - without any problems. I also defined a NFS share to be used with the Dreambox. After configuring the Dreambox to mount the NAS drive - it worked - and I now had a 500G drive mapped into '/var/nfs' on my Dreambox.

Data transfer rates are adequate - but nowhere near the USB2 speeds. Don't expect 100Mbit transfer rates. the best I could get on a 100Mbit Ethernet connection was about 2.5 to 3MBps which is not bad for such a device. Its plenty fast (bit rate wise) for HD movies going across the network. there were no problems in recording or playing content from and to the 500G disk.

What's not perfect?

If you try to exceed the 2.5MBps - by simply trying to open several files at the SAME time (copy or stream) - then the system will lock-up if the data rate 'wants' to exceed the 2.5MBps limit on its processing throughput. An example is to view via VLC , say 2 films at same time - the data rates for the encodings being , say 500KBps each - this will put a load of 1MBps - which is within the throughput capability of 2.5MBps - so all is cool :-)

It simply has no logic to handle any demands exceeding the total throughput capability and locks-up

Network config for the NAS is broken - it will not work with DHCP - you need to assign a static IP for it to work. If you don't, it will always use the default IP in its settings - irrespective of what DHCP serves out.

Time setting are broken. The NAS config allows you to set up the local time. It has a GUI whereby you can configure the local time zone and get NTP server time update. This is broken AND most annoying when you do set the time manually that works ... your time / date gets reset to 1970 whenever you do a reboot ... a bad bug - but tolerable for $74

... so in summary ... if you are a tech minded person ... it’s ?sort of? worth the $$ as it can be made to work ... (you might not agree ...)

However it would be nice to have some support for the firmware - or better still 'open' the box up with 3rd party firmware ...

It uses GPL code for sure - but no source from Ritmo who are rebadging the device for sure ...

If anyone has their own experience on this device ... I welcome your feedback ...

.. perhaps you have managed to 'open' the box and have some new firmware?

The firmware signature states its ver 2.0 copyright 2007 - but this means nothing as there is no name associated with it ... it’s simply a modded 'badged' generic version made available by some .tw company who manufactured this device for a number of OEMers ...

Hope this mini review was useful

[z80]

I have a couple of the NDAS units and the FTP units.

They only support 8 connections.

They use a very simple RISC processor ( same as the one used in the BF430 units).

You get what you pay for.

Mine are stand alone FTP servers that use a notebook drive.
They just sit there and work....and work...and work.

I went out of my way to get 4 of them because they are the only external enclosures that can be MIRRORED over a lan.

This means when i save a file it gets replicated on two boxes.

I never have to worry about downtime or failures.

Couldn't give a damn about performance as mine are all net based speeds.

I did however upgrade all the firmware which made the hangups diminish.


They are distributed by .

I got mine for $45 plus GST each.

[eyesee]

... hmmm ... the mirrowing is def a great feature

... is this by design? ... or someone exploiting a quirk of the system ?


This Ritmo unit also has an FTP server funstion - which works well.

... I'm pissed off however - because of the crappy bugs which are still in the released firmware ... the fact that I probably will never be able to lay my hands on a new rev of this firmware (if it ever is released) is the problem here ... how the hell can you get it if you don't even know from who / where the thing is released

[mikaal]

ritmo products are crap, period.

dont like dealing with the distributors in box hill that bring them in, ive handled and seen their line of products (RAs), everything from sounds cards, to enclosures to speakers to card readers to generic cabling etc s

i'd say the return rate of their products is close to 50%, AT LEAST.
SATO the company that resells the crap is notorious for selling crappy/cheap products at cheap prices (you get what u pay for) and also finding any reason to believe that their shit is faulty

faults ranged from missing bits, to short cicuiting itself and other (more expensive) compoenents it attaches itself to, to just burning out, to lighting itself on fire (literally) and the usual expected crappy false advertising that they always seems to come with chinese products ("ritmo 4 port network card", had a see through package clearly with only 2 ports)

generally if you have a working unit, they will work well for what you pay
but if you think you've got bugs it could very well be as simple as it being faulty

[hikaru]

LanDisk Firmware

[ol' boy]

All I can say is I have had Ritmo 3.5" external HDD cases in the passed and they fall over after a few months..... Both of them.
Yes I agree Ritmo are cheap crap. Personally I would never buy one of their products again... But you never know, they may be better these days

That’s just my experience Good Luck

Great Post though eyesee, I have been tossing up which NAS storage track to go down myself, built a server PC or stand alone NAS storage unit. Thanks for the post; I’ll have a good read later

One the note of streaming from your NAS device, I’m not sure if this is of any help to you, or if you can even record your Dreambox to a Mediagate (latest firmware should let you though). But with my Mediagate, I can stream 7 simultaneous avi's (Divx) movies to a single laptop wirelessly with no problem. Some streams even being the same movie being accessed at 2 or 3 different spots throughout that movie. I haven't tried to see what the limit is on a wired LAN. All I know is a DVD.ISO will chug on WiFi and play fine on wired LAN. This has to do with the limitations on the WiFi though.

My PS3 will only find Windows Media Centers.... so from that stand point alone, I am almost forced to build a server.

Hope you enjoy your new toy

[smithster]

LanDisk Firmware

Just updated to this firmware and now can't access my device. What is the default address?

cheers

[z80]

ftp://lanshare or some such.....

read the accompanying documantation mate.

[smithster]

ftp://lanshare or some such.....

read the accompanying documentation mate.

Thx Z. Unfortunately there was no accompaning documentation with the update firmware and the update is for a different brand to mine however appears to be the same chipset etc. The downside is it appears to have changed the default address from my original to what ever it is for this one.

cheers

[eyesee]

If your NAS device has aquired an IP address (check to see if the Network LED is polling after boot) then its easy to determine the IP its using by going to your Routers (I am hoping you do have one) admin pages and looking at what 'connected' devices have which IP's assigned - the NAS will have a unique MAC addreess - somenting you can identify it by - simply try to use this address when accessing its WEB interface

This should work ...

There are also several utilities to find 'connected' devices on your local LAN - ask your friend (google) - who will point you to the best one of these utilities.

Finally - you should be careful when flashing with 'similar' chipset firmware - it CAN brick your device. Having same chipset is not the most critical aspect here - the memory configuration is more important - as your new firmware may not 'map' to important nvram hardware which will brick your device

BTW - my Ritmo NAS went back to Ritmo for a full refund. I had problems with Linux operation - all works with CIFS with Windows - but had problems with reliable operation with the DM. Ritmo provided me with lates (yet unreleased) firmware - big improvement on everything - but did not fix my problem and you can't flash back old version - they did not have the binary.

They suggested - that I should return the product for full refund - this I must admit was one good thing about Ritmo - they gave me back the money

[z80]

I would say if it's been flashed wrong then it is a rubbish bin job.

They are cheap, just grab another.

[hikaru]

try the landisk 1.72 tool on the right hand side of all the firmwares

[joedm]

I have a Ritmo enclosre as well - model 650 LAN.

Inside the chipset has RDC s3282.
I can't seem to find any firmware for this and the manual doesn't specify a site to download from.

What I want is to be able to adjust the spindown time etc. which is not available in the web gui I have.

Anyone manage to update this version of the drive?

[pab768]

I bought this enclosure as well a couple of days ago, and have only just got it working. Connects fine with USB, but a little bit stubborn on the network.

I have a 750 Gb SATA HDD installed, but I am having problems setting up the Samba Shares. When I create a SAMBA user, the share appears as 3.97 Gb space, even though the HDD is 750 Gb.

How can I share the entire HDD?

[joedm]

what do you mean?

The web interface for samba does not mention any sizes?
Or are you talking about the size when looking through windows explorer?

One thing I've noticed is that with my NTFS partitions the access is very slow, however if I leave the NAS on for an hour or so and come back to it later, it appears that it has sped up considerably.

I'm not sure why but it seems like when the unit warms up it performs better.

[joedm]

I finally found an updated firmware for the Ritmo ce3590 Lan enclosure.

Here's the link: ftp://satotech.serveftp.com/Ritmo/HD...080125-new.rar



Still no config option for spindown.

[pab768]

[QUOTE=joedm;66501]what do you mean?

The web interface for samba does not mention any sizes?
Or are you talking about the size when looking through windows explorer?

I should have given more detail. I'm using mac OS X Leopard, and when the share is connected, it gives a size of 3.97 Gb of space. So when I want to add files that are larger, it tells me that there is insufficient space available.

Under XP however, I haven't had this problem - must be a leopard thing!

Pity about the lack of spin down time. I have an older LANServer from Ritmo, that uses IDE HDD's. You can specify the spin down time on that. I only got this new enclosure as it has SATA.

BTW, any benefits to upgrading the firmware??

[BELRAC]

I've just bought a Ritmo ce 3590 and it works fine on USB but I'm stuck with the LAN setup. I bought this not especially because of price but it's spec. seemed to suit my needs. Single drive, ide or sata, usb or lan, and it has fan cooling.

It's connected via a Netcomm NB6+4W which has DHCP enabled. The address given to the NAS is 192.168.1.2. The poroblem is that I cannot get into the NAS config using this address - it times out. Consequently none of the computers on my small home network can find the NAS as the network name is not the default. Have tried the defaukt 192.168.0.240 but that takes me to some obscure website.

Can anyone give me a clue?

Thanks.

[NutTom]

Hello,
I bought a SUMVISION SATA/ETHERNET enclosure, but I found the same hardaware in my box, many enclosure used the same chip (s3282)

The s3282 isn't the right product code, it's just a relabeled reference (like a under product reference)

If you look your board you can see this :

R8610 is a SOC from RDC, running with i386 instructions set !!!
If you look the R8610 datasheet pin are the same as s3282

You can easily add a console interface to talk with the board's OS (linux) but the board only allow RS232 terminal instead of telnet (for the moment)

This photo show where is the RS232 console interface :


Sorry I forget to take photo before soldering and glue protecting, but here is the pinout :


You need a MAX232 or equivalent to convert TTL to RS232, configure the hyperterminal from windows or other software to use the good COM port and the right baudrate (38400) with 1 stop bit and no parity

The R8610 need ROM and RAM :

The two chip are documented, google is your friend !

The R8610 can't interface a SATA drive, He need this :

It's a USB/SATA converter, board's USB plug is connected to chip and the R8610 too.


This is a Ethernet sub layer interface

Here you can find a lot of tool, information, datasheet for the R8610 (you can copy and past the directory to your computer to navigate faster and easylier ~300/400Mb)
ftp://ftp.prochip.ru/Support/RDC/R8610/

[maicoalvim]

Friends, please need help. I bought a house in the ebay, arrived yesterday, but the settings do not correspond to the instructions, could someone help me? The model of mine is this:



Thanks for your help.