I'm not 100% sure this should go here, but as i consider my 2 1TB harddrives my "music hardware", as they only hold music, i would post here.

As i said, i have 2 1TB USB Hard Drives.

I want to connect them to my network, so i can use my pc to wirelessly access and play the music on my laptop, and on my wifes.

Something like this sounded perfect, but reviews aren't as glowing.

Any ideas and/or recommendations?

I don't want to spend more than 150 grand ... more likelly 100.

Thanks.

There are several NAS boxes (often with a bultin HDD) that have additional USB ports. These usually don't come with built-in wireless, however you can connect such a box to any wireless router and that's it.

If you have an old pc lying around you could also provide wireless access (and much more) with any linux distribution (for free ). There also some pre-made packages available FreeNAS for example. If you're somehow tech savvy I would go this route. Takes some reading for inital setup, but once done it's going to run smooth forever .

Yeah, a PC is an option.

Problem is that they are usually not very "slim", and i don't want to have a keyboard, mouse, monitor, etc.

Regarding NAS enclosures, the ones i have seen are expensive, and i would need to crack open my 2 (4 actually), USB enclosures, voiding the warranty.

I've been running a server with the NASLite-2 server operating system for 15 months now - it's never lost a file. It's connected to my gigabit switch and from there to my wireless router. I can pull down music or video (DVD ISO)
wirelessly no problem at all. The O/S costs $30 and you can use most recycled PC hardware as the basis of the server. I use an Adaptec 21610SA hardware RAID card for RAID5 functionality (NASLite-2 does not support software / driver assisted (i.e. motherboard) based RAID solutions - check the Hardware Reference Guide for details).

[edit]
It runs "headless" too if you set the BIOS not to error on no keyboard, etc.

There is an HTML based system status page which can be accessed remotely too.
[/edit]

As i said, a PC is an option, but a last resort one.

Not because of the technicality, but because it want it as small as possible.

As long as they are plugged in and switched on when you boot the server, NASLite-2 supports USB drives. With this in mind you could build a mini-itx system (the new Intel Atom boards look lovely, about 68 euro) with (extra?) USB ports and connect that to your network - mini-itx in a slim case would be small indeed.

Apple AirPort Extreme and plug both the disks into it using USB. The Airport Disk functionality is supported by Windows as well as MacOS. The disks aren't going to appear as single volume doing this though.

There are three routes to go:

1. File server (appliance or home built): these generally work great, though sometimes over wireless there can be hiccups.

2. Wifi-based USB device sharing: as you linked to above and also by Pricom/Silex or Keyspan. These generally work fairly poorly. The one thing I would *definitely* avoid these for is connecting drives.

3. Certified Wireless USB: all of the hardware out on the market has gotten rotten reviews (even the "second generation" ones). I'm still holding off until performance, distance and disconnect handling has vastly improved.



150 grand? That's way out of my budget!

-brendan

AirPort Extreme looks nice, but, it appears to have only one USB port, i need 4. Wouldn't it suffer from performance issues?


For now, my only solution appears to be a PC (maybe a used laptop), setup as a bridge for the USB drives.


Agree.


Performance apparently sucks big time.


What is the difference between this an number 2?

wireless usb would be akin to a bluetooth connection, but faster.

consider being able to use an external drive like a wireless mouse/keyboard, or bluetooth headset.. just turn it on (in range) and its connected (to the one computer).

I am not sure if what you are wanting is a stand alone server type where the drives are all connected and it either appears as one file server or 'media' server (possibly using UPNP), or if you are wanting a wireless connection to your drives at your computer (like the above mentioned wireless BT/USB connection).

If your looking for a standalone (wired or wireless) media server that can stream via upnp (or as a file server), I would suggest you read through the many links @ http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=wireless+UPNP or http://www.google.com/search?num=100&h...NP+media+server

You might also want to research into windows home server appliances

I'd go with the Airport Extreme. I don't have one yet, but that's what I'm going to get to do the same thing. For more USB ports you'd get a hub. Looks like those are about $13. But you said you have two disks, so why are four ports needed?

I would advise an old PC as host plugged into your router and sited out of the way in a utility room, spare room or the like. It is likely to be cheaper, more flexible and possibly faster. In particular, it will not cripple your future options like a NAS or dedicated hardware will when you want to do more with it in the future.

The NSLU2 from Linksys is very nice too. It's a USB hub that you connect to your router through an ethernet cable (i.e. a NAS). It has 2 USB ports but supports a USB hub on one of those ports... It's extremely small and costs about 80$. I've been using it for more than one year now and it works great: it's my file and web server at the same time
The nice thing about it, is that you can hack it if you want. There are several projects that offer alternative firmware for the NSLU2 to run a Linux distro on it (e.g. uNSLUng). There's even a possibility to "overclock" it

I want to be able to access my 4 1TB HDrives with either of my 2 Laptops, anywhere on the house.


I would take a look.


Are you sure AE would work by connection a hub?


That looks very interesting. What about performance?

#2 is tunneling of USB via ethernet/wifi: a local virtual USB hub is installed which then tunnels, via a proprietary protocal over ethernet/wifi to a device that understands the protocol which then

#3 is the USB Implementation Forum's ultra-wideband substitute for USB ( http://www.usb.org/developers/wusb/ ).

Turns out neither is good for your needs, since you need to be able to allow two laptops to access the data at the same time. You're pretty much stuck with a samba-based/CIFS-based solution (fileserver or NAS appliance) as the only answer.

I'd normally recommend the ReadyNAS products, but since their Netgear acquisition the prices have gone up beyond what I feel is appropriate for recommending a consumer device (unless you have a large budget). The feature set is impressive (multiple filesystems, raid, and many media extensions) and the performance is good, somewhere between the low-end (NSLU2) and the high-end (an intel/amd-based server), except it tends to fall apart when working with a lot of small files, esp. over wireless (e.g. it's impossible for me to manage my iTunes library's mp3 files on one from my laptop without direct-connecting to gigabit ethernet).

-brendan

Thanks all for the help. For now i would try the NSLU2 solution.

Some reviews:
http://www.amazon.com/review/product/B0001...nDateDescending