External HDD or NAS or something else?

hitsofmisses

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Jun 24, 2009
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Planning to upgrade current 1*1TB 7200 HDD having Vista with 256 GB SSD running Win8. I've ASUS P6T Deluxe V2 MB that supports SATA II & RAID (internal), eSATA & USB 2.0 interfaces.

The data will remain on the 1TB HDD. It needs to be accessible from any of the laptops (3+) & should have some security features. I'm unable to find HDDs form the same manufacturer to create RAID.

The question I've is:
1.) What is the best, but NOT exhorbitantly expensive, option to securely access the data (Music, Photos, Video, etc.) from authorized users? For e.g external HDD, NAS, etc.
2.) Which is the recommended product/ manufacturer?
 
Solution
If your router has a USB port, you can add an external drive to it. Read/write performance was terrible when I tried it a few years back but it does have some basic security options. The next option would be to get a prebuilt NAS. Netgear, Buffalo, and Synology makes 1-Bay NAS for ~$100 range and 2-Bay NAS in ~$200. Otherwise, you can build your own NAS/Media Server if you have spare parts.

Lisan al-Gaib

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Apr 1, 2013
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If your router has a USB port, you can add an external drive to it. Read/write performance was terrible when I tried it a few years back but it does have some basic security options. The next option would be to get a prebuilt NAS. Netgear, Buffalo, and Synology makes 1-Bay NAS for ~$100 range and 2-Bay NAS in ~$200. Otherwise, you can build your own NAS/Media Server if you have spare parts.
 
Solution

hitsofmisses

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Jun 24, 2009
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The most reliable & easy >2 Bay options are very expensive.

To build my own NAS/Media Server apart from the hardware, won't I need the OS, backup application, security features to control? What would you recommend?