First let me say I’m placing this here because IMHO says it for topics that are for subjects that are less than cosmic (or however it’s worded). I’m looking for knowledgable answers, and opinion backed up with experience.
So, I’m looking for a home network storage solution. i.e. the kind of place where I can dump data that easily accessible from the other computers on my network, or backups, etc…
From my perspective I see two solutions. One is the network hard drive that you plug into your router and voila! there you go.
The other option seems to be a hard drive enclosure, where I buy internal SATA hard drives and put inside the enclosure, and the enclosure plugs into the switch. (example: Netgear Storage Central Network Hard Drive Enclosure )
Who has experience with either of these types of network storage devices? What are the pros and cons?
Obviously I could upgrade to bigger hard drives with the hard drive enclosure unit. What else do i need to know (or need to look out for)?
Whether they connect to the router or the switch depends on what your network is built around. Either of your proposals are Ethernet-connected storage, also known as NAS or network-attached storage.
I can only guess what you’re thinking of as an alternate to the Netgear box is a prefab drive as opposed to a bare enclosure.
One thig to watch for is compatability - I noticed that the Netgear device only speaks to Windows PCs. This could be a significant problem if you have any Macs, Linux boxes or non-PC things like media players.
An advantage to an empty enclosure is that you’d be able to use any spare drives you already have.
Wow, I thought I was pretty clear in my OP, but upon re-reading… not so much.
So… um yeah, that was my mistake using both “router” and “switch”. I have a switch. Yes, I’m talking about network attached [ethernet connected] storage. I am currenly on windows only. The alternative to the netgear box is something like the Buffalo Linkstation. Is that what you’re calling a prefab drive?
I have the Buffalo NAS drive and I like it. I have not had any problems with it so far, and it allows me to share my photo library and other common files between my big iron and my laptop. I shut it off when both computers are off, but you don’t have to do that.
You could buy an enclosure, which is everything except the hard drive itself, but unless you already have a HD to use, I would choose the complete version instead.
I use it on a wireless router. BTW, the various doohickies are:
[ul]
[li]hub - daisy-chains ethernet connections together; allows you to hook several network devices into one ethernet port. It’s the same as if someone ran several ports to your location. Completely “dumb”.[/li][li]switch: hub plus smarts. Hooks many network devices together, analyzes the network traffic, and then sends traffic for a particular device to the device instead of everywhere on the LAN. Helps cut down on network traffic. Many companies will hunt you out and kill you (or give you a really nasty Indian burn) if you hook a hub into the LAN because that sends tons of network traffic from the hubbed devices. A switch will cut down on that.[/li][li]router - a switch that also recognizes that some traffic can’t be handled by anything that’s connected to one of its hub ports. Stuff that isn’t on its hub is set out the wide world aka the Internet. A home router has enough intelligence to send local messages to local devices and remote messages out over your cable or DSL connection. Most routers also have a DHCP feature that allows you to have one IP address from your ISP and then multiple local IP addresses for local network devices.[/li][/ul]