Hey guys!

Been looking into getting a hard drive caddy type device that I can store all my s*** on. Tired of my computer's HDDs being full and I hate burning dvds, looking for DVDs and having DVDs die on me.

Im looking for NAS caddy, that I can plug my own HDD(s)(500gig+) in, and plug it straight into my network, and with a good interface setup.

It would be a major bonus if it also had USB capability if i wanted to take it somewhere with just my laptop. And it would need some cooling too!

I have found this Netgear product ( http://www.netgear.com.au/products/prod_details.asp?prodID=648 ). Which looks pretty f***ing sweet - support for two hard drives and its netgear so it should work well with my router. Only problem is that it is PATA :(

Any ideas guys? It is worth getting a Network drive? Theres another Linksys product that is a NAS USB server. Which basically connects ya USB hard drives to your network. I could get a decent USB caddy and just plug it into that?

What is the speed difference between Network and USB?

I'd be mainly using it to stream video from it, and using wireless on my laptop I want to ensure that the rest of the linking is as fast as possible.

Thanks for ya help guys.

edit: Ermm shoul have googled for longer, seems that "Network Hard Drive Enclosure" yeilds some good results. Ill check it out more tomorrow.
This looks kinda nice:
http://www.qnap.com.tw/pro_detail_feature.asp?p_id=74
2 SATA bays, network attached, can download BT for me.
Or same as above with 1 bay. http://www.qnap.com.tw/pro_detail_feature.asp?p_id=67

Storage Central features True SAN technology, an advanced network storage technology. True SANs provide block-level data transfers, delivering sustained performance much faster than low-cost NAS devices. Only NETGEAR Storage Central is True SAN, providing advanced data center technology in an affordable, easy-to-use package.

A True San (Storage Area Network) is an advanced network storage technology enabling centralized storage across multiple networked PCs. Known for high performance and reliability, SANs offer features that have historically only been available in business data centers.

As a former storage engineer for HP this makes me puke.

This is in no way, shape or form a SAN, It is at best a NAS device. By using SAN in their technology name and including the expansion of the acronym Netgear have reached a new high in storage ignorance and marketing FUD.

How can a single device be a SAN? It would be like calling a network card a LAN.

Fireblood - network speeds are f***loads faster then USB (got 1gb network? even 100mbit).

No 1gig network :( 100mbit with my wireless and ethernet.

Ermm so getting the usb drives and plugging into the network via the linksys thing would be a bottleneck?

I use USB caddy's and can stream s*** off it (movies etc) and there is no noticable lag or anything.

I am pretty sure NAS caddy's are a fair bit more exxy then regular USB ones.

A thing to note, if you are getting either USB or NAS caddy's AND they are going to be 'on' 24/7 - get caddy's that have fans built in and probably aluminium ones, the hard drives tend to get pretty hot in the caddy's - spend a little extra and get a decent one, otherwise the drive will die and bye bye data and the drive will be more expensive then a caddy!

This looks pretty good, still only PATA though :(

http://www.vantec.com.tw/_en/01_product/03_detail_01overview.php?mainid=6&fid=49&sid=109&id=128

Only about $70 US, so like $100 Aus.

fyi, you can get pata to sata adaptors - not sure if they would work in the enclosure though (enough room etc).

Fireblood - network speeds are f***loads faster then USB (got 1gb network? even 100mbit).

AFAIK
USB 2.0 has a theoretical through put of 480 Mbps or 60MBps
100base-T has theoretical max of 100 Mbps 12.5MBps ... (Worth noting Ethernet rarely if ever reachs 100% utilisation).

In theory a 1000baseT should be faster. In practice ? would depend on ammount of traffic on the network etc etc.

That's the 'burst mode' speed of USB, and is nothing like the sustained speed. Firewire which on paper is significantly slower than USB2, flogs the f*** out of USB if you want to transfer large amounts of data.. And what are you doing with an external USB drive if you aren't transferring 'large amounts of data'.

I burn stuff to DVD from across my network, i wouldn't contemplate burning at even 12x off USB.

USB also takes a heavy toll on CPU, where as a good network card will not.

A USB drive'd be good for backup/low bandwidth storage. Surely you can get a couple megabit out of it which'd even be enough to watch video off?

I've got one which is all in, it has USB 2.0, network connection, Composite Out, Component Out, RCA Audio out, Optical & Coaxal out, remote control extention, car kit, it great also supports divx, mp3 iso files, so i just take to a mates house for movie night.

for the record... firewire is 400mbps, usb2 is 480. Firewire is normally ~ 40MB/s at the most, USB 2 a few MB/s less than that.

But most 100mbit networks only run at ~ 6-8MB/sec anyway... so its still much faster.

Without looking it up, and after writing this, then reading the main post properly i would imagine that the Linksys NAS USB server would be similar to what i have explained below:

Easy way to do this with sata is to get a sata usb caddy ($60) then get your hands on a particular netgear wifi router which has a usb plug on it so that you can hook in the usb caddy/flash drive/whatever into it to act as a nas device..

The router im talking about is a 'Wireless Storage Router':
http://www.expansys.com/product.asp?code=113741 - as you can see, the main problem with it is that its been discontinued.. but i had a friend purchase one from gamedude a while ago, and im sure he didnt pay more than $100 for it..

Only one i can find quickly is on ebay:

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/Netgear-WGT634U-Cable-DSL-Wireless-Storage-Router-108M_W0QQitemZ250015905375QQihZ015QQcategoryZ51166QQssPageNameZWD1VQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

i think dlink & linksys make one similar too.. also you arent getting a plain old nas device, you are getting a whole wifi 108mbit router too.. HOWEVER you would not be able to take it and hook it up as a NAS on another network (i mean, you could but not conveniently) but you could still take the usb caddy (and its easy to change to differnt hds on your own network that way too)

300gig http://www.concorde.net.au/ViewItem.aspx?id=10033

500gig http://www.concorde.net.au/ViewItem.aspx?id=9862

http://www.maxtorsolutions.com/en/catalog/MSS_Plus/


buy a 500gig and tell me what they are like if they good maybe i buy one

my router has usb ports so I can just plug usb hard drives into it and voila! NAS. Comes with file sharing/web server thing too. Downside is that it's a d-link router. Just in case you want to look at something like that, although you already have a router.

Downside is that it's a d-link router.

... not seeing the problem.

People seem to think that just because they had one disaster product (the DI-614 and DI-624) that every D-Link product is also terrible.

I always like to ask people what they think of Intel switches when they start paying out D-Link. Strangely they think they're great. It's nice seeing the reactions when I inform them that they're manufacturered and designed by D-Link, and just rebadged as Intel, along with dozens of other companies.

Yeah well I guess it's ok having a print server open to the entire internet, crappy user interface and as far as I can find, no real firewall stuff like my wrt54g had. Seriously though, I hate the user interface, the only saving grace is that I can plug my usb printer into it and usb hard drive and it has 108mbps wireless.

I have nothing against the hardware side, just their s*** choice for user interfaces. It's too "noob".

last edited by whoop at 20:09:02 19/Oct/06

'noob' is their target market. If you want full control of the device, telnet to it.

I have nothing against the hardware side, just their s*** choice for user interfaces. It's too "noob".

i used to have a dlink router and came to the same sort of opinion, however it died & i got a netgear

one does not simply telnet into mordor. There is no telnet config for the 624s.

buy a 500gig and tell me what they are like if they good maybe i buy one

Hahahahaha! As if! Besides....its maxtor - not touching them sorry!

Update,
Well after finding a price for the QNAP TS-201 ($650 no hdd) I think im going to go for a low cost option for now, maybe even set up a media pc for the lounge room and put all my hdds in there. I could make a half decent media centre pc for 650, and then put as many hdds as i wanted in it. And if i get a low cost caddy i can take the hdds out when i want to!
In a year or two when the NAS prices come down a bit more i might give it another go.