usb hdd as nas box

[admin_exported]

I have two usb hdd's at the moment. one 250gb one which i bought when i got my laptop and another smaller one when the first proved too big to carry round.

i've been looking for some way to turn one into a nas box for sometime since it seems silly to have one drive not being used.

I saw this today on amazon:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/NEWLink-single-port-USB-adaptor/dp/B001GXR206

It converts a usb hdd to a nas box.

It seems perfect (i was actually wondering why i couldn't find one before). Would there be any disadvantages in this over a traditional nas box?

thanks,
Ed

 

[fatboyslimfast]

Only that you have two things to go wrong instead of just one. But then again that could be an advantage...

Looks good...

 

[Streamer]

How are you planning to use the USB drive over the LAN? Most NAS devices run an OS of some sort to allow configuration, file sharing, DLNA compatibility etc, I don't tihink a USB HDD will gibe you that kind of flexibility, though if you are just looking to store files (as opposed to streaming to DLNA devices around the house) it may well suit you perfectly........ÿ

 

[dirtydawg1967]

Have you had a look at one of these Eddie? I almost bought one at one point and then my USB HDD went belly up so I bought a NAS box with internal storage.

There is a quite a large user community that's well supported (see here)

 

[John Duncan]

Agreed, it'll turn it into a network share for you (ie a drive that can be accessed by all computers on the network), but it won't act as a NAS (ie a music server while your computer's turned off).

If that's not an issue, go ahead, but personally I think this, whilst more expensive, is a neater solution, though obviously does not allow you to reuse your existing drives.

 

[Anonymous]

Hi Everyone, thanks for the replies.

Whilst i don't need a music server at the moment i do need something that can be accessed by pc (although the Hdd in this died last night), xbox and mac which can then play/stream the music.

I had a look at the slug, but it doesn't support fat32 (from what i understand) and my mac didn't like drives formatted as NTFS.

The freecom option looks good and i'm a fan of theirs already. Hopefully will find better reviews of it than the western Digital Mybook which seems to get voted "worst thing i ever bought"

 

[John Duncan]

I'm running a pair of 500gig ones and they're fine (needed reformatting to FAT32 first for same reason).

 

[Anonymous]

as i still hadn't gotten round to this i bought one of these belkin things on thursday:



Went back today. The blurb made me thing it was wireless, which is isn't, it just plugs into your router. But more importantly the instructions seem to imply that only one user cen connect at a time. which is really rubbish. Whats the point in that.

I wouldn't suggest getting one unless you don't plan on letting anyone else use it, i wanted mine to attach both Gayle and my hdd's to and reduce the wires running over the sofa.

 

[Binman]

I have one of those Freecom NAS disks. Works very well, but file transfer is painfully slow (over wireless). So slow that it wasn't suitable for my needs. So I bought a Viglen MPCL PC for £80 http://www.viglen.co.uk/webmail/5star-offers.html, (comes with Ubuntu installed, but I put XP on instead). I use it as a hub with a couple of HDD attached to it. Works a treat for streaming my music to my Squeezebox / as a backup for my laptop. I gain access to it via remote desktop applicaiton in XP/Vista.

 

[Anonymous]

I think you can plug a USB hub into an airport express and extreme and allow file sharing over a network. I have never tried it so no idea what sort of limitations this may have, but you may want to look into this in more detail.