Nas

[albert]

Most new routers have the option to act as a NAS by plugging in a USB drive in the USB port, tho the drive might have to be reformatted as a EXT3/4 drive

I agree with Kreg. You pay more for a NAS that is networked. Get a USB 3 drive that can be attached to the router which will treat it like network storage. Backup from your PC regularly to the drive. In the end a PSU failure can take our both drives in a RAID single box.

If you have your primary copy on one and backup on a PC or vice versa then you're safer.

Or go offsite as has been suggested with cloud storage. Or backup tape to iron mountain.

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk 2

[Benny]

I'm still faffing about. In the interim i've backed everything off to crash-thing that TL plugged a few weeks back. I want it mainly to hold movies so that I can pull them straight to the telly as required now. With the sales on I'll spend another 3 months deciding! That or some memory,  or an SSD....

Sent from my flashy iPad keyboard, which is surprisingly cool.

[Snokio]

I have formatted it to EXT 3 and plugged it into the BT hub as it has a USB port, powers up etc, but still can't see it on a PC (also tried NTFS and exFAT)

(Some good deals on SSD's at the moment, such as 250GB Samsung 830 for under £120)

[kregoron]

you will probably need to map the drive as network accessible on the router

[smilodon]

I've an external drive plugged into a Netgear 2200 router formatted to NTFS.  I had to change some settings in the router admin panel to bring it to life. Then Windows just picked it up. Might be worth checking the routers settings if you have not already done so.

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[kregoron]

I've an external drive plugged into a Netgear 2200 router formatted to NTFS.  I had to change some settings in the router admin panel to bring it to life. Then Windows just picked it up. Might be worth checking the routers settings if you have not already done so.

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk 2

:withstupid: exactly

[Snokio]

Tried looking in all the settings,  It did ID, but it still would not see it from a PC, I think NAS is the only way

[DrunkenZombiee]

Strange as it should work.

I don't have any experience with the BT home hubs but i know my LINKSYS Dual band router works fine if not quite sluggishly. Can you not put tomato or DD-WRT on there to speed things up a bit?

[kregoron]

Tried looking in all the settings,  It did ID, but it still would not see it from a PC, I think NAS is the only way

i can have a look at it later if you want?

[smilodon]

Do you have other things connected to your router such as laptops etc. that can be seen on the PC? There was a setting buried in Windows 7 network settings about Network discovery. I can't remember exactly what I did but I know I had to toggle a setting before I could see the USB drive in Windows. Not very helpful sorry.

[Penfold]

I'm still faffing about. In the interim i've backed everything off to crash-thing that TL plugged a few weeks back. I want it mainly to hold movies so that I can pull them straight to the telly as required now. With the sales on I'll spend another 3 months deciding! That or some memory,  or an SSD....

Sent from my flashy iPad keyboard, which is surprisingly cool.

I have purchase several of THESE over the last couple of years and have found them excellent for backing up.

The fact they're one or two TB means ican jut back up my entire drive using FREE FILE SYNC  and its a nice solution.

It's quick and easy and the fact it doesn't need power is great.

Benny, my only concern about your solution is that is if you suffer a fire or something (god forbid) then the fact it's on a cupboard won't mean jack. I think you need some sort of off site solution. Having the encrypted WD Passport left at your office would work.

Other things I have which work well are Microsoft Live Mesh which is free and will synchronise any file or folder or drive with another computer elsewhere.

None of these will help you with streaming though !

[Benny]

Aye, I've subscribed to crashplan and parked a few gig of photos there, which was my main worry. The streaming piece is interesting. I can use a USB into the TV or indeed direct from a Samsung Allshare app over the network, but I guess I was looking for a toy. I think the option will be the http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/seagate-expansion-sgr39211-external-hard-drive-2tb-black-16787143-pdt.html bargain here for now.

I hate Christmas because it makes me want to spend money!

I have purchase several of THESE over the last couple of years and have found them excellent for backing up.

The fact they're one or two TB means ican jut back up my entire drive using FREE FILE SYNC  and its a nice solution.

It's quick and easy and the fact it doesn't need power is great.

Benny, my only concern about your solution is that is if you suffer a fire or something (god forbid) then the fact it's on a cupboard won't mean jack. I think you need some sort of off site solution. Having the encrypted WD Passport left at your office would work.

Other things I have which work well are Microsoft Live Mesh which is free and will synchronise any file or folder or drive with another computer elsewhere.

None of these will help you with streaming though !

[Penfold]

It's certainly cheaper than the 2tb my passport but looking at its size I think it's probably 3.5" as opposed to the smaller 2.5" one but hey ho.

 If I want to stream I tend to just plug my ipad into the telly and do it from there. Not seamless perhaps but it works for me.

[Snokio]

I looked in the network settings and tried switching everything off, but to no joy

Thanks for your input and help though :thumb:

[TeaLeaf]

HP ProLiant N40L 1P 2GB-U Emb SATA NHP 250GB LFF 150W PS MicroServer or on the internet just google HP N40L Microserver.

I forgot to mention you get a free 250 gig HDD with this and I think you get an MS:OS for free with it too.

This was on UKHD for £85 a while back after cashback... I got it for £100 from amazon when my other NAS went pop and put 8 gig of RAM in there. I would recommend putting 4x2TB in there and leaving the 250 gig drive you get with it as the OS Drive, Swap etc. In raid 5 this will give you just under 6TB across the 4 disks with one disk redundancy.
It lightening fast at everything and I am currently hosting VM's for work on it, have various shares on there, running my downloading and decompression software for free papers etc. It will even play GW2 quite easily on Low as I have have added a 6670 into it. Does everything I ask of it well. Dont be put off by what seems as a low spec of the dual 1.5 GHz as it easily destroys the AMD3200 chips which were the same spec.

Great bit of Kit way faster for file transfers than my Synology by a long way (3-4 times faster). As stated earlier you can run what you want on it as its x64 so you can run a fully featured OS on there and any software you want.

http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/hp-n40l-micro-server-185-90-85-90-after-cashback-sold-elevenfirst-fulfilled-amazon-1331196

Hope this helps.

DZ

Slightly old thread, but after months of looking at "huge sexy NAS systems that I can't afford" I took the plunge and bought an HP N40L today too with the intention of stuffing it full of decent-sized disks.   £89.99 delivered after the £100 cashback from HP.
http://www.box.co.uk/product/id/1120795

Assuming the PSU can handle it, you can get up to 10 HDDs into this server if you start using 2.5" drives and internal 2.5" SATA bays.    Seagate 3TB's are on offer atm for £100 from overclockers, but I might wait for a better deal to pop up.

Now I'm off to consider whether or not to use WHS2011 or something like Flexraid.