Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler HDD Enclosures & Network Attached Storage

I now have a 500GB SATA HDD available. I started looking at just getting a simple enclosure for it with a USB connection. As I researched enclosures, I realized that what would be really cool would be to make it available to my home network (both wired & wireless connections).

I'm comfortable with computers and the basics of networking, but I have no idea what to do with this opportunity. The choices are bewildering. I didn't want to spend more than $100, but it seems like all of the diskless NAS options in that price range are non-standard.

Would want to use this for:
1) Backing up files from PCs
2) Sharing all of our music
3) I guess other media files as well, not that we have any video yet.

So what would you recommend? What alternative solutions would you recommend? I also have a couple of external USB drives already (250Gb and 160Gb I think).

Thanks!
Rich

You could get a wireless router that supports external disks. The one off the top of my head is the Apple Airport Extreme Base Station, but I know Linksys and others have a similar setup.

I researched NAS enclosures a while back, and came to the same conclusion. They either seem very expensive ($200 or more) or are non-standard and require some sort of driver to be installed on each system.

I have a 1TB NAS terastation from Buffalo that works great. It's rather expensive, but this is mainly due to the fact it has an on-board RAID controller that gives me extra configuration/redundancy options. But for what it cost these days I could have built a cheap computer with SATA drives and raided them together for the same affect.

If I was going to do it again, I would buy a simple USB enclosure, plug it into a computer that I leave on all the time, and simply share the drive on my local network. This might be your best bet, it's a snap to setup, especially if all of your computers play nicely together (all Windows or Mac etc).

Thanks for the advice. I don't really have a PC that's on all of the time. But I may go that route. Any advice on what enclosure to use? I see reviews all over the map, but not any that are consistently rated well.

Thanks!
Rich

I think it's pretty hit or miss, there aren't any brands that really stick out in my head. Best suggestion would be to buy one from a local store if possible, that way if you have problems you can take it right back.

I am running the linksys NAS200 it is cheap and runs independent of you pc, only problem is to write large files takes a long time, my initial back up of 60 gig took about 8 hrs, but now that is done I have no complaints.

I'll start by admitting that I'm a bit of an Apple fanboy. I have a Mac Mini, wife has a Macbook and I use a Macbook for work.

I have a Lacie NAS that I bought at the lacie.com outlet for pretty cheap. Works fine for PC and OSX but it's pretty loud. I also use 802.11n at home. Last week I finally installed my Apple Time Capsule (1TB) and it's great. All 3 Macs now backup automatically to the Time Capsule and all computers access this hard drive. I know others who use it with their PCs and Macs at home. Good solution but not $100.

I don't think you'll find great $100 NAS solutions. The best one I've seen is drobo. But it's very $$$ and only attaches via USB. You can get the Ethernet adapter but it adds cost. You still have to attach your own HDD. However, it's probably the most powerful for the home because it's doesn't really need a PC to config. Another option would be HP's new MediaSmart servers. They've had really good reviews, highly rated on Amazon as well.