Basically, I want to have a NAS without buying one. I want to get a big external drive with USB2 or FW and then somehow put it on the network. I have assorted wireless routers and an AE. Would the AE know what to do with the drive If I plugged it in?

Network-drives typically have a little Linux server running on them, but they basically work the way you seem to want.

[64.233.187.99]

Our hosts offer this:
[eshop.macsales.com]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/07/2009 08:16PM by Doc.

A new square airport extreme would do what you want. But at $200 you might as well buy a cheap NAS.

Quote
Doc
Network-drives typically have a little Linux server running on them, but they basically work the way you seem to want.

[64.233.187.99]

Our hosts offer this:
[eshop.macsales.com]

Somehow I can't bring myself to pay 60 bucks for an empty box.

>>Somehow I can't bring myself to pay 60 bucks for an empty box.

Oh, you want a NAS for free! Thats much more difficult!

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>Somehow I can't bring myself to pay 60 bucks for an empty box.

Take another look. There's one for $40.

Also, even at $60 that's not much more than a decent USB/FireWire enclosure would cost.

I bought a couple about 2 years ago. I think they were SimpleTech. They came with 300g drives and were about $100 each.

They were junk. Slow and unreliable. I ended up putting the drives in firewire cases & scraping the NAS boxes.

Like some one said, they run a Linux chip that runs about like a 160 meg PC. Especially slow if you are using it for backup and copying many files to it.

If you had a folder with a couple of thousand files in it (like photos), it would take 2 minutes to do a directory list.


Either get a good one or save your money.

Fred Also