NAS :D

I'm not specifically familiar with that one. I go by Newegg reviews since that community seems to be have fairly good self control. Also you can tell if a review is written by someone who bought the device or not.

You have to be VERY careful shopping for NAS boxes. The manufacturers tend to try to do a lot with very little. The only advantage of a NAS device like that vs. just having a computer do the job, is the NAS device will draw less power from the wall. Inside those NAS boxes is a little tiny computer, and the tendency is towards very low-end CPU and RAM. Sometimes each individual NAS task works fine, but trying more than two at once crashes or bogs it down.

It seems like I usually see a better spread of reviews for the single and dual-drive NAS boxes than the four or five drive boxes. I think the smaller units have more processor left for disk access and server activities because they aren't thinking as much about processing RAID storage.

I would recommend a two-drive unit running Raid-1. Disk failures are unfortunately getting much more common as manufacturers compete for the biggest TB award. Densities are going up, tolerances are going down, and methods aren't changing. With Raid-1, if a drive starts dying you just get a nice little blinking light and your data is fine.

An NAS is just like a PC server .... minus all the problems and headaches. I'm using this w/ 2 Seagate 7200.12's: $387 look for cool, quiet drives and you will never know the thing is there.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

Been trouble free going on 4 years this June.

A two dive option $299 after MIR

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

Thanks for the replies, i think I'm not going to get one now as i bought a cheap 2nd hand ext hard disk.