Installation of the hard drive into the unit is pretty straightforward and well-explained in the instructions.. and this is how you do it:

Get your hard drive.

Remove the four phillips screws from the top of the NAS and take off the cover.

Remove the tray from inside the NAS and screw the hard drive into it using the included screws.

Put the cover back on, making sure that the thermal pad is touching the hard drive, and not over the wires.

Plug the power cord in and plug the patch cable (RJ-45 ethernet) into your router.

If you don’t have a router, there is another option for setting this thing up, and that is by using the USB function of the NAS. Yes, that’s right, the NS312 can also connect to computers through a high-speed USB connection! Whoo hoo! You might be wondering, “Why would you shell out the extra bucks for an NAS and then just use it as a USB hard drive?” Well, the answer is speed. The USB connection should be able to transfer files about 3 times faster than a fast ethernet connection through a decent router. This is of course only an estimation, so you’ll have to check out the tests I’ll conduct later to see what kind of difference there really is.

If you just want to use it as a USB drive, simply plug one end of the USB cable into the NS312 and the other into the computer, and Windows should find it automagically. If you’re running Windows 98, you’re going to have to install the driver included on the CD. That’s it. Running it as a USB hard drive is pretty simple, but not really what the unit was intended for. Also, here’s kind of a big thing: you’ve got to disconnect the USB cable if you want to use it on your network. If it has the USB cable plugged it, it’s going to assume that you want to use it as a USB drive, and it won’t initiate the ethernet part. Next is the tricky part: the software side of getting it to work on your network. The next page will explain how to set it up on a Windows XP machine.

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