External USB HDDs on NAS

Heya,

Very similar to something I'm considering.

From the looks of it though, you still need something to control the drives, and nothing will really work on that hub, as the hub is just a big USB anyways. If you have a really cheap/old computer some where, or even a basic laptop, you could turn that into a headless server easily, just by plugging the hub into it and hitting share (then just scoot the thing into a corner somewhere). Ideally a low wattage laptop with USB2.0. I only suggest this since you have 7x USB drives, it's possible you have other old hardware hanging around that could be used to make a little "home nas" of sorts.

Though I'm no expert on the subject. I too would be very interested to find a way to convert a basic USB hub into a NAS device of some kind. Such as being able to load the software needed on a USB thumbdrive, and then serving USB harddisks from the other ports. That would be ridiculously nice.

Check this out: http://www.dlink.com/products/?sec=0&pid=377

You can plug 2 USB drives into it. It doesn't take 7, like you have, but it's a start. You could look for similar products. Basically a router that takes USB drives and makes them NAS drives. For like $100, that's pretty sweet considering alternatives cost quite a bit more. Also, before anyone whines about it not writing NTFS, it supports EXT2 and EXT3 as well as FAT/FAT32. EXT2 is all you need for huge monstrous sized disk support and windows can read/write that just fine. No need to keep a windows format (FAT/NTFS). And you're not screwed with FAT32-only support on those big drives. Format in EXT2 instead. You can google EXT2 and EXT3 if you don't have a clue what it is or why Windows might need a little help knowing how to use it.

Very best,