Are you looking to share or backup files at home? Do you work in a small office and would like to easily share files with co-workers? Do you want to share files with out the cost and maintenance of adding a server to the network?
If you answered yes to one or more of these questions then you are looking for a NAS appliance. NAS stands for Network Attached Storage and with the drop in hard drive prices the price of these devices drops. Also, each generation has more features and is easier to use.
We have been using the Netgear SC101 Storage Central
for over a year for sharing files in a small office environment. The SC101 will hold two standard ATA drives (also known as IDE drive). The SC101 comes with a fast Ethernet port and software that makes it very easy to setup. It even comes with backup software that allows for fast effortless backups. The SC101 does not come with drives, you have to provide them, but if you have some old PC's collecting dust you can pilfer the drives and will have the SC101 running in minutes. The Windows Vista drivers are not available yet, and according to Netgear will not be available until later in the year. This is not a problem on a network with multiple PC's. We have the SC101 drives shared on one of our Windows XP PC's and can access the SC101 from any Vista PC.
You can pick up a new SC101 at Amazon.com
for as little as $79.99 and there are usually refurbished and used also available. You can also pick up one or two 500Gb hard drives for under $150 each.
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