It seems my wireless router is toast, so I’m in the market for a new one.
This one, a Belkin N+ was touted as having “simple” NAS - simply plug a USB storage device into the back of it, install a small client on your machine, and bada bing you would be able to access your stuff.
The NAS part never actually worked at all, but the device worked well as a router* anyway so I kept it.
Now I guess I can try again, and maybe this time get something that actually does serve files from a storage device over the network. I don’t want to buy anything extra like a NAS server or install any fancy software beyond a wee client, but no client at all would be better. I don’t care about music streaming or NAS printing. Just plug-and-play file storage.
Anyone got any recommendations?
*Except that my Blackberry couldn’t see the SSID, my PS3 couldn’t connect to it if I had any encryption turned on, and my roomie’s laptop couldn’t get an IP address from it if encryption was turned on. Actually, it didn’t work very well at all, in retrospect.
Apple Time Capsule is working alrighty for me. I’ve had REALLY good luck with their wireless products. I’ve had linksys, SMC, D-link, and a few I’ve forgotten and Apple’s have been the only ones that didn’t fail in 16 months or less in wierd ways. They also have support for PC’s so it’s a (partially) agnostic solution.
After the Edit: It also supports guest Wifi (for your oddball devices…Nintendo DS I’m lookin’ at you) and a second 5 Ghz N-radio that avoids the Microwave and cordless fallout.
In playing with one of these these units befoe selling it on ebay it seemed (to me at least) that a lot of the issues with the NAS functionality was not router or hardware based, but was OS related and concerned network security permissions re access etc.
You can download a copy of FreeNAS (http://www.freenas.org) onto a live CD and install it onto an old PC you have and have a very easy to use file server with lots of options.
An even easier is a product called SME Server. You simply install it on an old PC, assign it an IP address, and you have instant network storage.
I’m the guy who always comes into these threads with my Ubuntu simple NAS how-to doc, but I have to admit, FreeNAS is really slick. I have set up a couple of small servers for folks with it and the web-based UI was every bit as easy to use as any commercial product. The FreeNAS installer asks a few basic questions and then installs itself. After ten minutes your donor PC is exactly like any fancy-schmancy NAS from Best Buy.