A few years ago I got a Cisco NAS drive. It never really worked that well in terms of the software integration and it has now long since been ceased as a product and no longer supported by Cisco. As such I’ve relegated it to a simple back up device rather than a useful home hub where files and media can be shared across all the devices in my house.

At the end of the day it’s just a caddy with a couple of HDDs in it so is there any genetic software or apps I can use to breath new life into it and use it as it was originally intended? I’m all Appled up so has to be compatable with iOS.

Cheers.

I’d guess there’s a small computer on a pcb inside, embedded controller type of thing, doing the interface to the network. There are people who hack routers and supply different software, so you may find someone who’s hacked the Cisco.

Thanks rich, I thought about that. It uses Twonky, which I believe is a fairly standard and common server protocol/language, so you would just need to hack into the system to get to the ‘operating system’. Way beyond my IT skills though which is why I’m hoping there is a nice convenient app.

You’ll find if it’s quite old it won’t be running enough memory on the controller to run a more modern Synology style OS. Depending on age you may find it’s IDE/SATA controller are also quite slow and might not be suitable for anything but file access and backup.

Have a search around though, it’s often surprising what people have managed to stick on devices like that.

Do you have any OSX devices (iOS is phone/iPad) as I’ve found Apple is quite good at “talking” with Windows/FAT32 devices ? Have a search on Apple support forums and also MacRumors forums, lots of good stuff on there. If the Cisco really is just a few HDD’s inside you may be able to put them in external enclosures and run them stand alone off USB connections with or without their own power source, they can be reformatted to Apple in this case.. I’ve put some of my old HDD’s (laptop style ones) into these and use them for backup / media libraries.