PDA

View Full Version : Well you can't have everything.



Artemis
02-15-2010, 11:13 PM
I have upgraded my own PC, but since the peripherals are relatively modern, kept and integrated them as well. In the process I have taken the plunge and migrated to Windows 7 X64. I went through and checked compatibility and even with some things that weren't 'supposed' to be compatible they are working fine, an example being my bluetooth dongle to link my cellphone. One thing I didn't check however was whether my NAS was compatible, and bollocks it's not! A fairly expensive oversight on my part :(
Two bay SATAII Gigabit NAS enclosures aren't exactly cheap in my neck of the woods.
The model, before anyone asks is a Netgear SC101T, and Netgear has 'no plans' (bastards) for Windows 7 updates.
The NAS uses a Z-San SCSI driver (software) to be seen by the O/S, it's compatible with the latest MacOS but if your using Windows 7 your stuffed!

Detale
02-16-2010, 12:05 AM
Hey bud. does the OS see it at all when it's plugged in?

Artemis
02-16-2010, 02:51 AM
Hey bud. does the OS see it at all when it's plugged in?
Nyet :cry:

Detale
02-16-2010, 02:56 AM
When you do network discovery it should recognize the disks as a network disk I think, maybe try Map network drive?

Artemis
02-16-2010, 05:14 AM
There are no network drives to discover, therefore none to map. I will explain the Z-san driver for you though to help. The Z-san driver is a 'virtual' SCSI device driver, i.e. the software is what looks for discovers and assigns drive letters for the NAS drives. Without the Z-san driver the device & drives are undiscoverable.
I do however hold out hope that other manufacturers may update the Z-san driver, it makes no difference who writes the updated driver, it would just be nice to have one that works. At the moment though, I'm screwed :cry:

Skiz
02-16-2010, 05:39 AM
Do you need x64? Is your system benefiting anything from it that you wouldn't get from x86?

Detale
02-16-2010, 07:18 AM
Some people are saying this worked for them bud

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itproappcompat/thread/c04b0c9d-8e7f-4270-aa7a-d16fc27a5608

Some people are saying this worked for them bud

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itproappcompat/thread/c04b0c9d-8e7f-4270-aa7a-d16fc27a5608

Artemis
02-16-2010, 07:27 AM
Actually a very good point, there are registry hacks available which will allow the Zetera Z-san driver to work under windows 7 X86, but not X64. The reason for X64 was that apparently it increases the processing speed for X264 encoding, the reason for the upgrade in the first place was for a Quad core since encoding on my AMD dual really sucked with 36-48 hrs processing time at 94% processor usage on gxinsane preset.
There is a workaround that I might use till I figure out something else which is simply to map the drive on an XP machine then share it.A bit bodgy but on a Gigabit LAN segment it shouldn't slow things down too much ?

Detale
02-16-2010, 07:33 AM
So why not dual boot X64 and X86 :O

Artemis
02-16-2010, 09:45 AM
So why not dual boot X64 and X86 :O

Because to be honest with you, dual booting the machine just for one device then going through the hardware config then editing the registry and hacking the z-san driver seems just ever so slightly a case of overkill, I truly can't be arsed faffing around to be honest.
I can still access the data, just not from this machine, so it is inconvenient and irritating more than world altering. In the end despite the advantages of of SAN over NAS (speed) the hassle of the Z-san driver & updates means fairly soon I will get a more compatible device to backup data to.

After some digging around I found a rather interesting 'hack' here :http://starens.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!AE22C6E38275FAC9!266.entry .I haven't tried it yet (it's late, I'll do something stupid) but this actually looks like a very good workaround.

Detale
02-16-2010, 11:41 PM
EDIT: I'm going to start a new thread with my question bud so i don't hijack ;)