It's taken me some time to get Debian working on my LSNAS. For the benefit of anybody who follows, here are some observations and additions/amplifications to Christian's basic instructions a few posts earlier.
1) My LSNAS is used with HDMI out to a TV when I need a screen, and a wireless keyboard. Access to BIOS setup was impossible until I used the DVI out to the TV's VGA input, and used a wired USB keyboard into a motherboard (not case) USB port. It seems that the HDMI takes too long to establish a connection, by which time the chance to enter setup was gone, and the wireless keyboard was crashing. This nearly stumped me at the off, as the install DVD could not be accessed. I needed to call an IT professional to get the answer here!
2) It is definitely recommended to install Debian on a separate disk, and leave the Windows boot disk untouched. That way, when you get it wrong, you can revert to the previous Windows setup without difficulty, and try Debian again another time.
3) Once Debian was installed, I had no success in mounting the music storage SSD, which is formatted NTFS. It can be done, according to the results from google, but I didn't manage it. Instead, I found a free (for personal use) package called extFS (
www.paragon-software.com) which allows Windows to format a disk to ext4, and then read/write. So I copied all my music across to a new ext4 SSD under Windows. (Again, the Windows music SSD was left untouched, so if all failed I could revert to Windows.)
4) Once Debian was running, and Asset installed, I had to mount the music disk. This was simple enough at the command line, but I could not work out how to edit the /etc/fstab file so that this process happened automatically on startup. I solved this with a Debian package called Disk Manager, which I needed to install in addition to the standard installation. (I did a graphical expert install with Xfce as desktop environment.)
I don't want to make this sound as if Debian is something too complex to use. I have never used any form of Unix/Linux before, and building the LSNAS was the first time in 30 years I had tinkered inside a computer. Although I needed several evenings to completely finish the system, I was always able to revert to Windows and listen to music. In the process I have learnt a lot of how/why Debian works. My remaining task is to install PuTTY, so that I can control the system remotely.
Finally, how does it sound? I haven't yet done any direct comparisons, because I did not construct a dual-boot system, so I will need to disconnect/reconnect the SSDs to change the OS, but my first impressions match Christian's - Debian and ext4 is better than Win7 and NTFS.
EDIT: Second impressions are not so good, the sound has changed, but some musicality seems to have been lost. Direct comparisons will be made later today if I have time.