Network Storage Drive

[TomWilko]

I need a portable hard drive and I would ideally like one I could drop into my network via ethernet 10/100.

Have been looking at a lot of units and there is a big difference in price (or so it appears) between a USB hard drive and a Ethernet Network hard drive.

Whats the cheapest solution you are aware of for this?

Thanks!

Tom

[philipbain]

I would first ask the question at to whether network attached storage is what you really need as it is, as you said, a lot more expensive than an External USB 2.0 drive and speed wise there isnt a big difference. The best use for network attached storage is if you wanting to share files on a network that has no file server, then you can use a network attached drive so that multiple workstations on the network can access the same files. If your just wanting to have an external drive for a notebook PC then a USB2.0 attached drive is much more suitable and cheaper too. If for whatever reason your PC doesnt have USB 2.0 then a USB 2.0 PC Card is fairly inexpensive, infact it would be much cheaper to buy a USB 2.0 PC Card and a USB 2.0 hard drive than a network attached drive.

If you are still insisting on a network attached drive the cheapest I could find is a 80GB Freecom drive from Scan which retails at £77.21.