Would like advice on setting up NAS for SD!

[ericb]

Dear All- now that I've gone mobile w/a MacBook Pro I'd like to be able to use SD! over my WLAN to a network-attached drive so I don't have to keep coming back to my desk to hook up USB cables. Assuming this is even possible (and in searching the forum I'm not *quite* sure), does anyone have any suggestions for good ethernet drives? I'm looking for something in the range of 300-500 GB-- nothing fancy like RAID-- and I've never used NAS so any other advice would be most welcome.

Thanks in advance,
Eric

[willbank]

Hi there -

I have had a lot of reliable performance from the LaCie range of network attached drives - and the upside is that if you don't like their use via the ethernet cable then you can use the USB 2 slot to plug them into your Airport Extreme.

For a slightly cheaper option try the Buffalo Linkstation Live units that are quite good and should you begin to care about data redundancy you can add another to the network and set up an automated backup between the two of them.

I know you said you don't care about RAID but think of all the purchased music and digital photos you'll lose if you have a hard drive failure - if you do want the redundancy, speed and reliability of a proper NAS I can't recommend the Netgear (was Infrant) Ready NAS NV enough.

Cheers, Will

[ericb]

Thanks, Will. Maybe you're right-- I just took a look around and discoverd RAID wasn't as pricey as I thought. The Netgear is around $900 (and I may buy it for my biz), but I also found a 'LaCie 2big Network 1TB (2-disk RAID) Gigabit Ethernet 10/100/1000 Mbits' at Powermax for about $375, which I may get for home.

[dnanian]

I'm a big fan of the Infrant too. Don't know about how the Netgear acquisition is going to affect things, but I'm hopeful they won't mess up a good thing.