First off, put the included CD in and run the file “SearchNAS_for_silverstone###.exe” and this window will pop up:

Click on the “Setup” button and a green window will pop up, and it’ll hopefully find your NAS. If not, make sure that your firewall isn’t messing something up, and also, if you just powered it up, it make take up to three minutes to finish booting, and thus take three minutes until it’s found. Once it’s found (it’ll be called “stornas” by default), write down the IP address it’s located at, then press okay.

A new window will pop up, asking you for the admin password, which is “admin” by default. So, type in “admin” and another new window will pop up for your IP settings. Click on “Automatically obtain an IP address (DHCP)” and hit next. You can manually setup your IP settings later if you can’t use DHCP.

Another window will now pop up, asking for the date and time — don’t bother with this, just hit next, ’cause you’re going to format the hard drive anyway, and this stuff won’t be saved.

The next window is to confirm that all the settings are correct. If they are, you just hit “Save,” and yet another window will pop up to confirm that you actually want to change the settings.. press “OK.”

This is where it gets fun. You remember that IP address we wrote down earlier? Now you’re going to use it to log into the NS312. Go ahead and type the IP address into any web browser, and you should see a login screen. If you forgot to write down the IP address, it seems to me that typing “stornas” into a browser should work as well.

Once you’re at the login screen, go ahead and type in “admin” for the user and “admin” for the password, and the next page will have a bunch of settings and alert you that you need to format your hard drive. If you didn’t start out with a new hard drive, and the one you’re using has already been formatted with a FAT32 partition, it might not state that you need to format it, but you should anyway. So, go to the “Maintenance” tab, select “Disk Utility,” and if you’re running Windows, select “FAT32″ and hit the “Format” button. Give the operation a few minutes, and before you know it, the window will refresh and you’ll be at a new menu with more options.

At this new menu, just go the “Quick Setup,” and run the “Wizard.” Select the correct language, change your password (to something you’ll remember, of course!), change the host name from “stornas” to something l33t, correctly setup your IP settings, edit the time (or just choose a NTP Server if the NAS will be connected to the internet), and you’ll be ready to party. The NS312 should simply show up in “My Network Places” on your Windows machine, and you’ll be able to use it as you please. If it’s not showing up, and there’s no “Entire Network” icon to be seen, simply type “Entire Network” directly into the address bar, select the workgroup it’s in (”Workgroup” by default) and go ahead and use it.

If you’re still having trouble finding it, make sure it’s not your firewall blocking the NAS somehow. Also, make sure that “Windows Setting” is enabled under the “File Server” menu, which is under the “File and Print” tab of the NAS’s Control Panel. If it is enabled, and the thing’s still not working for you, there is one more useful option to use this as a network drive: through FTP, which I believe is enabled by default. Yes, that’s right, you can use the NS312 as an FTP server! Pretty exciting.

To add it as a “network place” under Windows XP, go to “My Network Places” and on the right side, under “Network Tasks,” select “Add a network place.” A window will pop up, to which you’ll hit “Next” on. There’ll be a couple “Service providers” on the next window, select “Choose another network location” and hit “Next.” In the text box on this next screen, enter “ftp://IP.YOU.WROTE.DOWN:21″ and hit “Next.” On the following screen, uncheck “Log on anonymously” and enter “Admin” (or whatever you chose) as the user name and hit “Next.” The next screen’ll ask you to name this network place, and you can name it whatever you want, then hit “Next.” Go ahead and finish up, and you’ll now have a new FTP network location. Alternatively, you can just use an FTP client to access it.

Okay, so it’s connected to the network and running properly. I guess we can finally test it now.

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