Monday 30 May 2011

Sumvision Aero Lite NAS Dongle Review

I have recently acquired one of these widgets, and have been setting it up over the last day or two. The verdict, good for the price, it was £19 with postage, which when you look at the price of other NAS options is dirt cheap. I have include configuration info at bottom of page.
I have swapped from a Netgear ST101 to this Aero Lite NAS Dongle because I was fed up with the LAG caused by Zetera Drivers when opening word documents etc.


I was promised that I could set up this dongle over a network without using any software to do so, and they were right, but with my moderate net working knowledge it took a while. That is not to say you would have an easier installation experience if you used the included java configuration program.

The above page show the configuration utility for the Aerolite NAS Dongle that can be used to set up the device, this can be accessed manually via a browser, or was easy to do with Windows 7 recognizing the device straight away and displying it in the network settings window.

However, accessing the files on the disk took a while, but eventually I realized that the user name and password that you define in the Aero Lite NAS Dongles SMB Server settings will get you in, and once you are every thing is plain sailing.

I am currently transferring some large files over the network (power line network 100MBPS) and the transfer box says the transfer rate is around 2.2 MBPS so by no means lightening fast.

However, once I have major backup files where I need them I will only be topping up from time to time, using syncback or similar.

Over all this is a good widget for the home user, I combined mine with a pluscom, external usb caddy, with a maxtor 150GB 3.5" formatted to FAT32.

Some Plus points for the Aero Lite NAS dongle:

- Cheap
- Easy to setup
- you can use an external HDD or a pendrive

Some Negative points for the Aero Lite NAS dongle:

- FAT32 ONLY
- Only up to 60GB min disk size

Aero Lite NAS dongle Specification:

Device Interface:
Network Attached Storage Device (NAS)
USB Features:
1 x USB 2.0 / 1.1
Network Interface:
RJ45 10/100Mbps
Format Support:
FAT32 (max file size 127GB "network only")
Operating System:
XP SP3, Vista SP1, Windows 7, Mac OS X 10.5.X, Linux (Samba 3.X)
mic type:
Admin - web
Capacity:
Min 60GB and max 2TB.
Services:
DHCP, Samba, bitTorrent, UPnP (Xbox 360 + PS3), FTP and Print server.

Sumvision Aero Lite NAS Dongle Configuration Info:

The default user name is "admin"
The default password is“admin”
If you wish to manually access your AeroLite without using searchdisk follow
the step below.
Type in 192.168.1.102 in to the address field of your chosen browser, and then
click Enter .
This should once again bring up the log in box.
The default IP address for the Aero Lite is 192.168.1.102

But . . .

If logging in via SMB the default user name is "guest" not admin.

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Update - September 2011


I had a question about setiing up users so I have include the below screen capture which should answer the question:


So as you can see there are tonnes of options with regards to setting up acess through the SMB option.

Drivers for the Aerolite NAS dongle can be downloaded from here.
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