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NAS or Server... What's the diff.. which is best?

I'm wondering which to do if the express purpose is to access music and/or Movies anywhere in the home… and naturally back up personal files.

NOTE Security too is very important.

Depending on which is your recommendation…. Mind suggesting one?

The current allotment of personal confusers is… Two desktop PC’s, and one Laptop, but 3 different OS. XP, XP Pro, and the laptop will be Vista. Only the laptop will be Wy Fy… all else is Ethernet cabled… via a D-Link Wireless router

Only one USB 500 GB external drive is in place… I’ve two drives in the Pro unit.totaling 330GB…. About 180 or so on the XP unit, and probably not much space at all on the notebook.

I’m thinking a Tera bit minimum. With the ability to expand.
blindjim

Showing 2 responses by tboooe

tboooe's avatar
tboooe
1,009 posts
 
Personally, to ensure that any pc or device can access the data on the network without the need for a pc to be on, I would use a NAS connected to the wireless router. I have used a few and my favorite is Infrant ReadyNas NV. This NAS has 4 slots for drives so you could easily expand. Putting your NAS on the router also allows you to quickly add additional drives in the future.
tboooe's avatar
tboooe
1,009 posts
 
blindjim, just wanted to share little bit of story regarding storage for your digital music. I went with a more consumer (versus enterprise) based NAS drive. I used this to store my over 30K song library. To cut a long sad story short, this drive died after less than 1 year. Luckily I had performed a manual backup to another drive I had. Just out of curiosity, I opened up the dead drive and found a cheap hard drive in there. I learned my lesson and now will only get enterprise type NAS devices and hard drives. I make sure the NAS has good backup and recovery software. By the way, I used to work for a hard drive maker so I know first hand that there is a big difference between what is sold to consumers and businesses. The difference in MTBF is amazing. Spending a little more now is worth it if it avoids the headache that ensues in the event of a failure. Anyway, just my two cents.
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