recycle tivo into a nas device

[boyAfraid]

hi there,
i did a search for nas but couldn't find anything similar to what i'm trying to do. if i overlooked any threads, i would be happy to receive a redirect.

has anyone turned a tivo into a nas device? i don't mean while still using the box as a tivo. i have a spare dsr7000 box which i would like to use for nas. (the drive from this dsr7000 was pulled and placed into a new tivo). i figure i could throw a couple of large drives in there and make use of the box to store data. since we know the box can run linux and tcp/ip is not an issue, it seems to me that it should be a relatively straightforward undertaking. of course, there are a lot people a lot smarter than i on these boards so i wanted to check with the experts before embarking on my journey. anything i should be concerned with?

thanks in advance,
bA

[cheer]

No reason why this shouldn't work, but there are some challenges.

Fundamentally, the Tivo is (as Riley once put it) just a li'l ol' *nix box. However, in order to use as a NAS you'd have to decide how you'd want the Tivo to share the space. The most obvious would be via Samba or NFS. You'd need Samba or NFS compiled for MIPS in order to make that fly.

Also, keep in mind that the Tivo's network performance isn't up to par with, say, a decent PC.

My personal opinion is that it's easier to just find an old, cheap PC and use that, but this is certainly doable.

[tate_harmann]

I agree with cheer. I would use samba if your pc's are mostly windows, because they talk the smb protocol already. There is a compiled samba module on post 4 of this thread:
http://www.dealdatabase.com/forum/showthread.php?t=39601&highlight=samba

I'm going to give it a try on my tivo also, it sounds like a cool idea.