Are there external harddrives that I can hook up to my network?

[latrosicarius]

Hi, I was wondering if there are any external hard drives that I can hook up on my router and be able to store all my files on them from my various computers.

I have gigabit LAN, a gigabit router, and gigabit-quality CAT 6 RJ45 ethernet cables as my wiring infrastructure, so if the hard drive had gigabit LAN on it it would be better than 100-base.

Thanks for advice

EDIT ----------

Uhh, I guess I should have read the other post on this. I think Im gonna get one of those Infrant NV NAS things with gigabit... thanks anyway

[b0redom]

I just bought one of those Infrant 600 things. It rocks! Got it hooked up to stream to Xbox, Windows PC, and my Linux server. A tad on the pricey side, but if you keep causing hard disc crashes by o/cing your box to the max, it's worth it!

Tom

[RavenNight]

Yep an Network Attached Storage (NAS) will do the job nicely, make sure you get a decent one, cheapo ones have been a pain for me in the past.

[latrosicarius]

I wonder if they are slower to work from than a normal hard drive. I really like the idea tho

[arthurleung]

I wonder if they are slower to work from than a normal hard drive. I really like the idea tho

Definitely slower...Gigabit does take up a lot of processing power which most cheaper NAS cannot provide.

[RavenNight]

Yeah they can be a little slow but it really depends on you network Adapters, the NAS Controller and the Hard Drives themselves. The ones I've seen are al perfectly usable.

[Funkstar]

Without spending heavily on exterprise level stuff, a NAS solution was be significantly slower that a directly attached drive. NAS units are not really designed with speed as their main concern, they are designed to have large amounts of storage available to one or more network PCs running a variety of operating systems (the good NAS solutions with work seamlessly with Windows, Linux and Mac).

Also have the added advnatage of being an applience type device so they can be a lot easier to set up and manage than building a dedicated PC or getting RAID installed and configured on your PC. You can also hide the box away in another room to reduce noise.