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Saturday, August 20, 2005

Home NAS (Network Attached Storage)

This is my home central file storage. My brothers and I download content (mp3, video's, and files) then save it onto a network drive rather than saving locally to our laptop so that we can access whatever each one of us has downloaded rather than having our own copies of the same file.

What is unique about this setup is that I used Linksys's NSLU2 (http://www.techworld.com/storage/reviews/index.cfm?reviewID=254&productid==)

The NSLU2 allows you to connect 2 external usb 2.0 Mass storage devices and share them on a network/LAN without the need for a computer. It is based on a Linux file system so dont go thinking that you can just disconnect the usb 2.0 drive from the NSLu2 then use it on a windows PC.

*Formatting is required before using the usb 2.0 drive on the NAS, which is provided for on the builtin NAS software*

Overall my personal experiences have been quite good with it, it can support only 1 users however playing a huge DVD video straight from the NAS. If 2 computers start playing 2 video files straight from the NAS, it starts getting slow. Other than that however, it handles playing music files directly without any problem.

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