Attaching external drives to my network.

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silverwolf0

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Jan 14, 2004
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I have replaced my home computer setup with a Microsoft surface pro 4 and swimsuit what to do with my old computer and hard drives. I have lots of media files i want to stream from my hard drives onto my surface pro and over the Internet using my phone.

First thing i thought about was using a NAS. But they are very expensive and u don't need any of the fancy features or raid since none of the files are important. I just want easy and universal access to them.

Next i thought about buying a few cheap usb 3.0 external enclosures and getting a wireless router with multiple usb ports. Having a hard time figuring out which to get though and what is the most economical. They seem to all only have one usb port.

Any other methods i should consider?
 
Could always take a Raspberry Pi and hook up multiple USB hard drives to it and share it out over the local network that way?

Or.... build a dedicated file server yourself. Celerons make good systems for this, you don't need a high end system.
 
A router like net gear nighthawk can support multiple drives via a USB hub - worth a shot.

NASes don't have to be expensive. Most of them have USB support as well, so you can get low bay number and add in the rest of the drives on USB .There are also USB NASes, basically a NAS with no drive bays and just a bunch of USB ports for external enclosures.

If you still have old computer hardware laying around, that is probably the least expensive option - anything as long as you could get the drives to recognize in it.

Or you could just pay for some cloud storage and move all the data there - that would be out over the Internet, but also a possibility.
 
You forgot to metion that ARM-models (like the one you linked) are quite slow...
 
He's looking for a low cost option. As longs as only a few users are going to be streaming at a time, I don't see an issue. I have a few friends with the the dual-drive model and stream to a DLNA and laptop at the same time with no issue.
 
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I was thinking of just getting a wireless ac router with usb 3.0 (i need a new router anyway) and attaching a usb hub. The drives will be in cheap external enclosures with usb. I don't need much power since usually it will just be one person streaming anyway. Any recommendations on good ac routers with usb 3.0 that are budget friendly? The only thing I'm worried about is usb3.0 signal interference.
 
Where are you at, US?
D-Link DIR-860L (HW B1) is an excellent budget choice in general with 3rd party firmware support if you want that. Have several running without any issues, the USB3 seems quite speedy too (about 30-40mbyte/s over Samba).
//Danne
 
silverwolf0 said:
I was thinking of just getting a wireless ac router with usb 3.0 (i need a new router anyway) and attaching a usb hub. The drives will be in cheap external enclosures with usb. I don't need much power since usually it will just be one person streaming anyway. Any recommendations on good ac routers with usb 3.0 that are budget friendly? The only thing I'm worried about is usb3.0 signal interference.
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Don't expect multiple USB drives to work well with a router when they are going through a hub. In my experience if you get one router connected drive working well you are already ahead of the curve. Some of the routers can't even initialize more than one drive as well.
 
Highly depends on USB Hub controller, SoC and of course the firmware.
 
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