How to set up network storage ?

real1314

I've (well, the family) got 4 laptops and a pc, all wireless on sky broadband. The PC has 2 external drives, a 300gb and a 1tb drive via usb.

I'd like to set up a storage network independent of the pc, so I *think* I can buy one of these:-

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/New-USB-LAN-Network-Storage-NAS-FTP-Samba-Print-BT-DLNA-DDNS-Download-Server-/271007538133?pt=UK_Computing_Servers&hash=item3f194edbd5#ht_2627wt_1037

and then I *think* I can just plug the 2 external drives into it via usb and hopefully I can set up all the laptops/pcs to access the device/drives; without losing what's on the drives at the moment?

2 laptops are on W7, the rest are vista machines.

Thougts / comments? TIA :cool:

Im_just_careful

An interesting product.

I'm a great fan of Network Attached Storage (NAS) drives.

I've not got anything like the device you link to but I can't see why it won't do what you want.

I have a couple of Buffalo LinkStation drives and a couple of older drives in LAN Disk cases I bought from Maplin years ago and they are great.

The single most useful function is being able to attach a printer so you don't have to turn on a particular computer to print but I also keep all documents on the network drive hence accessible from any machine.

I have 2 drives so I can mirror data between the 2 in case of failure (all my eggs are in one basket !).

If you have a little more money to spend you could consider the Buffalo product. This would have one drive built in and you could plug in your 1TB drive and mirror the two. You would then have protection against disk failure.

If you do buy the product in your original link I would be interested if you could post a bit of a review (good/bad).

real1314

If I do go for a network storage, i won't be using it for the printer as i've got a wireless printer that serves all the machines. i might have to consider whether i need to add more storage to allow back ups of all the machine - time to do some calculating!
:cool:

tombruton87

In theory it should work in reality tho it will most likely fail. you get what you pay for, if I was you id get a 4 bay nas encloure. your looking at around 150, rip the drives out of there usb caddies and do it that way. then you have 2 more bays for other hdds. you then also have raid options and a system that wont fall over when you throw loads of stuff at it.

also the product you linked to doesnt even have gigabit ethernet so it will be horribly slow. technically slower than the wifi

fishybusiness

I'm not saying it will happen, but I have had NAS enclosures that need to format a drive before use, which is I think a problem your were hinting at in your first post.

Some routers allow USB caddy's to be plugged in and shared, might be worth a look if you get stumped with your NAS solution.

bazster

Why don't you just share the drives from the desktop computer?

diable

Buy a networked NAS that runs on ethernet and whack the 1TB drive in there, you may need to format it so do back up the data first.

I bought a Synology dual case as I had 2 spare 750GB's in the drawer and they are mirrored.

Not sure if that's the route the OP wants to go as they are not cheap but it does allow me external access over the net and a bit torrent client.

fishybusiness

Buy a networked NAS that runs on ethernet and whack the 1TB drive in there, you may need to format it so do back up the data first.

You will need to format, NAS boxes tend to run some flavour of Linux, so won't recognise the Windows file system as native.

Im_just_careful

Some interesting alternative perspectives.

I would expect drives formatted as FAT32 to "just work" with the adaptor and the NAS enclosure. The ones I've had don't take NTFS or HFS/HFS Plus drives without reformatting.

There is a product at Maplin (the Iomega IConnect) which looks similar and could be returned if it didn't work.

Parva

I bought a nice ZyXEL NAS drive for ~ £60 from eBuyer and it's brilliant. I have my net cam hooked up to it via wifi and it records pictures of anyone approaching the door. I also store a lot of movies on it and other things that I can give people access to so that they can download off it but not take over the drive.

I could even run my own full website off it if I so chose. Very impressed!