Edimax NS-2502 SATA NAS Server

Hello all and thanks to everyone for their posts – I have the 2502 and the dismal support from Edimax has been very frustrating, I’d almost given up hope and resigned to the fact that I’ve just wasted my money on this device.

I wish I’d found these posts before starting up my device, I’m having awful problems with it. I can usually fix things myself (when the issue is not too advanced) but no joy so far after 7 days of attempts. I hope someone here might be able to advise.

I have two x 1TB sata drives installed correctly, I’ve run through the entire set-up process, exactly as detailed in the Storage Server Wizard software. It formatted the drives, I set up the password and name and then I hit problems – the drives did not appear on my computer as detailed in the instructions.

I followed the hard reset instructions to run through the process again, and now I get the same message with the software every time; the software recognises the device as shown on the initial screen with IP 192.168.2.5, as detailed in the instructions. I key in the default 1234 password, then the same recurring issue occurs;

The screen ‘verifying password’ is displayed, as in the instructions, and then after about 3 mins I get a screen stating the message along the lines that there has been ‘an unexpected connection problem, please reset the device and repeat the storage wizard software’; which I’ve tried over 20 times and the same thing occurs.

I now see that the default firmware that comes with the device is not that great, but I have no idea how I can upgrade the firmware when I cannotmaccess the UI.

I’ve tried connecting the server to my computer using USB but my comput does not recognise it.

My computer still recognises the device every time when connect to my Draytek router.

I think I need to upgrade the firmware, which I was hoping could be done with independent softwar but I haven’t found anything that can do this.

The lights on the router display that everything is fine.

The purpose of me buying this router is for my small office so that I can set-up a VPN and access my work folders from home and other places.

I’m completely stuck; I have spoken with Edimax support on the phone (on a very crackly line which I presume is in Taiwan). Friendly but unable to help. I have also been in touch via email, but the support is not helpful and I’m no closer to solving the issue.

I’m so pleased to have found this forum, after many hours of searching for solutions online! I find the posts here extremely helpful and I will try assigning different IP ranges on my router so that I can try to access the device using a browser.

I will also check out Planex and see if there is a way of resolving this problem.

Thanks to everyone for all of this helpful information, if anyone has any advice I would be most grateful, this is the biggest problem I have ever encountered and I’m close to giving up. I will try everyhing suggested here and hopefully have some luck.

Many thanks

Jesse

Have been searching around and I have decided it will be that or I use my current old PC as a a storage device and I will put something cheap together for myself.
Is there a particuar QNAS which is a good media server, does decent transfer rates and isn’t too expensive?

I finally lost patients with the edimax ns2502 drive lastnight when copying 12x300mb files to it and was getting 3Mb a second.
I tried to do the flashing of the firmware with the Planex one. Started it off, waited for about a hour and I had no message saying it was successful or not.
Rebooted it and now all that happens is the power led flashes steadily. Tried holding the 2 buttons, that just makes the front lights flash up and down. Tried all the IP addresses listed here but non work. I think its dead.
I have an eeprom burner but its more hastle to unsolder the chip and solder a new one in.

This is truely a terrible NAS box, very slow performance, I had to rename all my AVI to .WMV or .MP4 for my xbox to read it, the media sharing just listed all my 700mp3s in 1 huge list making it usless.

Any final suggestions I can try?

Try:
Reset (copy and relase button put for 5 sec)
and connect with router.
And because lanuch the Installation wizzard programme.

If nas don’t work, try connect out the bay1 (or bay2, i dont remember good) hard drive.
The second flashion smashd my bay1 (or bay2) hard disk file system (If was this, dont format disk, you can save data).

What is the old firmware?
What firmware have you on your NAS now? Edimax or planex? Sorry, if the questions is crazy.

First step: Do on PC 11. step on 12. page in this:
http://www.planex.net/pdf/nas/MZK-NAS01-02SG_Manual_V1.0_Eng.pdf
You make all config on 12-13-14-15-16. page.
Second: Connect the nas to PC. (NAS-PC, not with router)
Go in browser 192.168.1.100 and setting Nas.

The rates (Edimax firmware):
with ext2-ext3 (with JBOD) file system 8-10 MB/sec, with wifi only 6-7 MB/sec (Edimax BR-6574n router)
with NTFS file system only 0-3 MB/sec :(

I flashd my nas in half year and next this process (after 5 hour suffing) flashd I the old firmware (Edimax).

No problem. Don’t worry. :)
Just, do 7.-11. step on 10-16 page.
If the nas work (with computer connection), you go on 192.168.1.100 and in the main menü/network setting you on “Obtain an IP address automatically”.
Planex Nas’s first start process is crazy.
(Sorry, I am bad in english.)

You must do the first start process.
http://www.planex.net/pdf/nas/MZK-NAS01-02SG_Manual_V1.0_Eng.pdf

HI! Could you answer the one question? This NAS format internal disk only in ext2. But I don’t want use this ancient file system, because I need the safe storage of my data, not the speed of file transferring. How can I format internal hard drive in ext3 or NTFS with ns-2502? I have 0.73 firmware version. I have read about JBOD function in this forum. One man said that with JBOD I can choose file system, is it true? I have one hard drive and I don’t want to risk and buy another one for experiment. I want know can I choose file system with JBOD function? Sorry for my mistakes in English

Hi,

I’ve installed the newest Planex firmware 1.4.1 on my Edimax 2502, but I can’t install the btmodule.bin. Why? The error message is

BitTorrent install fault.
File system error.

What can I do to fix this? In the previous firmware it was also the same.
I would be glad if anyone can help me.

Sincerly

Milan Popovic

To all new owners: if you don’t see the NAS is because your computer IP address is in a different range than the NAS one. Use the discover tool to see what is the address than change the computer one to match the class. After this change the NAS address to a new one from your home class address than restart the NAS. My advice is to install the PLANEX firmware (I put the download link in my previous post) which works better than the EDIMAX ones. Don’t forget to download also the PLANEX discover tool to see what is it’s address :)!

I agree the people at edimax could put more effort into developing decent products.
And decent firmware, that actually works as advertised, i still can’t get the Bittorrent client to work :S

I just thought I’d tell you my experience, and what solved my problems.
It may or may not be helpful for you, it can’t hurt to try, right?
Otherwise, maybe the next person who ends up google’ing this page might find it useful.

Good luck though

Hey John,
Before demanding a refund, you might want to hear my experience with this device.

I have a router that is a DHCP server in my network.
The router assigns 192.168.222.x addresses.
When the software that was provided with the device couldn’t find the device, I tried changing the router’s way of assigning IP addresses to match the IP address that the device should have given itself.
For example: if the manual states that the IP address of the device is 192.168.123.1 then it might be a good idea to change your router settings so it will assign IP addresses in the 192.168.123.x range.
It worked for me, hope this helps

Good news for the ones using the Planex firmware: there is new 1.4.1 version on the japanese site http://www.planex.co.jp/support/download/drive/accept/mzk-nas02sg/mzk-nas02sg_v141_zip.shtml (press the first left small button than in the next page the large left button). There are no obvious changes, howevere if someone see something new feel free to let us know! :)

I purchased one of these last year and after getting transfers of 500k/s on the original firmware I shelved it.

I tried the Planex firmware and got much better transfer speeds, 10-12mb/s but via wireless its like 100-200k/s which is unusable.

Also the media centre finally works but it doesn’t recognise Xvid or DivX in AVI format, which is just completley insane.

I think I’m just going to cut my losses an get a QNAP.

Did anyone get the telnet to work on the edimax ns2502 with planex firmware installed?
It should be at port 1192 I think, but I can’t get it to work.

I am trying to modify the nas in the same way this article describes:

http://tungchingkai.blogspot.com/2008/12/pci-mzk-nas01sg-mzk-nas02sg-modding.html

And what about BT klient in new firmware? Any changes?

Hi everyone,
I finally got the NAS working again.
Turns out my router uses 192.168.222.x, and the nas uses 192.168.1.100
As soon as I configured my router to use the 192.168.1.x range, I was able to use the web UI.

Does anyone know how to install SSH support on this device? I read something about “fun plug” but I’m not sure what it is and where to get it.

After installing the Planex firmware use their special client (you can download it from the same web page where you downloaded the firmware) for locating the NAS (it will show the new IP address). After that change your computer/laptop IP address to match the NAS IP in order to access it through the web UI. Good luck!

I am having the same difficulties as Ruslan
I tried to upgrade the firmware of my Edimax NS-2502 with the planex 1.3.6tw firmware.
Now I am unable to access the Web UI, I know the IP address should change but I can’t connect to 192.168.1.100, or 192.168.2.5 or 192.168.222.250 (the original IP before the firmware upgrade).
Now the device is useless, I can’t even restore it to the state it was in when I bought it, because I would need to use the Web UI.
I tried pressing the Copy and Release buttons simultaneously for over 5 seconds, and the device beeps, but the Web UI is still not accessible, even after I switched the device on and off…
Please help, this would be a really expensive experiment if my device is broken now

Hi. Last week I bought an Edimax NS-2502 and a HD Seagate 1,5T. First problem: the application don’t format the HD. It doesn’t matter. I connected the HD to my PC and format with Windows XP (NTFS). Now it’s ok (File server, FTP, BT, media server), but the transfer rate was about 5 Mbps (reading) and 1,5 Mbps (writing). I’ve got a NIC Gigabit and I use a direct connection with a crossover cable.

I changed firmware to Planex, but the transfer rate didn’t improve. Then, I tried to re-format the HD with the new firmware. It was ok (ext2). Now, I’m reading at 24 MBytes/s and writing at 12 MBytes/s.

Thanks

I gave up f*king with Edimax firmwares, it’s terrible nothing works. Switched to Planex one, which was mentioned here and it’s really 300% better then edimax one so don’t be affraid od installing it. Few notes about it from me:

1) when you upgrade your old firmware to planex, all your settings will be overwitten including disconnecting your storage setting, so backup all your files before start

2) if you didn’t make backup of your files (as I didn’t) and installed planex FW you can use this howto to restore files by using PC with booted live linux:
http://www.howtoforge.com/recover_data_from_raid_lvm_partitions

3) there are two files in package first one (images_1.3.6TW.bin) is the firmware file, second one (btmodule.bin) is bittorrent client module and it’s installed separately after flashing firmware not to internal memory but directly on your harddisks, so you have to re-install it every time you change your drives

4) after installing planex firmware you have to press both buttons on the front panel of device till it beeps, it reset your device configuration and you will be able to access web interface on IP address 192.168.1.100

That’s all till now, tomorrow I’ll get 2*2TB western digital green drives, so wait for my future reply :)

Hi Everyone, I have some question, I had updated the Nas 2502 Firmware by planex 1.3.6tw and it crashed, non responding at all only led light is on, and lan light, others are off

please advice if any of you expirienced the same problem failure with NAS Edimax.

regads

Hi,
can anybody confirm that two 2TB drives in RAID1 mirror works in this unit?

Has anyone use it with RAID-1 and checked whether when we replace a Hard Disk, it get’s rebuild properly?

/Nalin

Ok Mishu, thanks. I am running the planex firmware as well, and what a difference it made!!! Supports my 1.5TB drives, media server works, and just asmoother faster experience. I advise all edimax owners to change to planez, you lose some of the led fucntionality… but that is it. Now if I cn only getthe bittorrent client to work then it would be perfect.

Hi Otie, could you email that 0.73 firmware to me please? My email address is cbx2000 [at] hotmail dot com. Thanks! Am interested to see what changes this firmware has.

Great, here is my address mihai.margin****@****.*** but if the file is bigger than 10 MB it will not pass. Maybe you can give me the web site where from I can download it. Thanks a lot!

theoretical limit of 1 gigabit network is

1000Mbps / 8 = 125MBps, that’s 125 megabyte per second

so the bottleneck is in your NAS’ system.

You can check this

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/component/option,com_nas/Itemid,190

which compares different NAS

on NAS it will be ext2 ext3 or ext4 since NAS are mostly running on Linux system. The latest one are now in ext4.

mishu, doubt you will see any negligible improvement when you change your cable from cat5 to cat6 since the bottleneck is on your NAS.

i’m on cat5 and i can transfer 700mb file in 5 seconds.

If you want RAID you cannot select NTFS, it is only one option: autopartition and format. If you use JBOD you can choose any file system.

I copy files to this NAS with Windows Explorer with 7-8 MB/s over the Ethernet cable and with 5-6 MB through the FTP protocol. I bought a Gigabit Wireless router Linksys WRT320 so after I will replace the CAT5 cables with CAT6 the speed will increase. I have 2×1 TB Caviar Green EADS disks inside so they are not so speedy but overall I am pleased with the performance for this price. If they will fix the BitTorrent client (which is important for me) I will have no complaints anymore! :)

I didn’t try HD, but was really disappointed the upload rate is not so good, the firmware is so so, it is quite noisy. Bittorent is about 7-10 times slower then on pc, so I have sold mine and ordered QNAP.

The support only replied to my email once and sent me a 0.72b firmware, although it fixed some of the problems it was extremely slow to access any menus and as mentioned earlier ps3 streaming didn’t work after about 20 minutes of watching a video.

Nice work Kurt…I’ll be definitely be buying 2 of these now. It’s funny that buying 2 of these is still a hell of a lot cheaper than buying a 4 bay NAS enclosure!

I am currently streaming 720p video content without any problems to a media player TVIX, I tried also 1080p yesterday and works fine (over Ethernet).

Ramzez, what do think of the transfer rates of the unit. Do you stream any HD content from it?

I had a look at the firmware that you mentioned on the polish Edimax site and the 0.72 firmware is dated the 27-08-2009. The firmware I posted is from 20-10-2009. I think that they may release different firmware versions for different regions.
I could be wrong however and it may be an error on Edimax’s part…

Ohh, for anyone wondering…I’ve found some transfer rates but it doesn’t specify what filesystem has been used – http://www.hardware.info/en-US/productdb/bGlkbJiWmJXKZ8g/viewproductspecs/Edimax_Gigabit_Fast_Ethernet_2Bay_SATA_NAS_Server_NS2502/

The tarnsfer rates don’t look particularly great…

Go to the EDIMAX Polish site (www.edimax.pl) and download a newer (and way better!) firmware 0.72 which will change your actual impression about this product. Enjoy!

I too have this drive with a pair of 2 500mb drives. I can confirm that
1). Bittorrent does not work if at all.
2). EDIMAX Support is none existant.
3). I would not buy this sh@t again if I had my chance over.

Buy from a more reputable brand that actually releases working firmware and provides support.

FYI I only manage to get bittorrent working by switching of pnp on my router and changing the default port range. Even then I can only get one torrent working at a time and the others all say downloading but do jack all. The one that does work works at a snails pace and I can download 10 times quicker from my desktop client using another client on different ports.

EDIMAX are assh@les who do not tets their products or provide support.

Do anyone know if you can connect a printer to it an use it as a network printer (print server) as well?

QNAP NAS is quite good and readily available locally, comes in 1 bay to 8 bays

Hi there! I’ve been using the NAS model NS-2502 for more than a year…
I installed 2Tb in it and since the 1st time i turned in ON last year June 2008 i never turned it OFF and the device is still up and running. I’ve been downloading alot of movies, mp3’s and photos without letting my computer to be turned on always.

what is the throughput rate transfer using ntfs ?

anyony knows? anyone can test?

João Eduardo

The DLink DNS-323 NAS has been in our shores for quite some time and it falls in the same price range.

http://www.rsun.com.ph/blog/?p=233

Like the Edimax NS-2502, it has 2 drive bays, supports giga speeds, and has a built-in torrent client.

I think the features that make the DNS-323 better is its built-in fan and firmware support.

Hi
Since yesterday i was browsing for an affordable NAS
The only one that got my attention after reading lots of reviews was the Netgear Readynas Duo, but that is not cheap at all
Now i found this but i see that there are n o reviews on it, probably is pretty new
Still i would like to know how good or how bad it performs.(transfer rates, stability in operations, i saw that has no cooling fan)
Since you have one, could you be so kind to do a more extensive review on it(I know Edimax to be a company that has good quality products, but the price difference from Edimax to Netgear is very high)
Thanx in advance
PS Excuse my English cause I’m from Romania

A device labeled as a “SATA NAS”? Don’t want the reference on this one.

+1 on what sylv3rblade mentioned but I asked my friend in the US to buy the Marvell SheevaPlug (basis for the PogoPlug) since that comes with Ubuntu Jaunty by default.

But this can be a front runner for locally available multi-purpose NAS units.

ciao!

Hi Yuga,

Can you kindly explain how this NAS Server can download Torrent files without using a PC?
Thanks.

Cool… I want one! =p