ourpcnerd.com

I stumbled upon this while looking for a network storage solution for myself. Kinda silly since I already have a 1TB USB drive but i like the ease and convenience of sharing whats on it across my network. Yes i could always share the drive but that involves keeping my PC on all the time or I could just get a Drobo. Unfortunatley they are kinda pricey and im yet to find an Australian distributor.

Well along came Addonics NAS Adapter.

While I have not used one as yet I sure am tempted to grab one…its about $50 USD so approx $100 AUD. While its still a lot of money its the perfect solution to anyone that has an exsiting USB hard drive and wants to share it on a network.

This litte device looks awesome and as quoted on their site it has a range of functions.

The Addonics NAS Adapter is a convenient and economical solution for adding any USB storage devices onto your LAN (Local Area Network). Once on the network, the USB storage can be shared by any network user, just like an ordinary NAS device. When use in conjunction with Addonics Storage Towers or Storage Racks, a Multi-Tera bytes storage with various RAID capabilities can be instantly added to the LAN. With the NAS adapter, you can custom build you own NAS appliance with RAID capability and plenty of storage expansion using Addonics family of Drive Enclosures, Port Multipliers, and IO converters.

Come built-in with a USB 2.0/1.1 connection and a fast Ethernet 10/100Mbps connection, the NAS adapter supports both SMB (Server Message Block) and the open source Samba network protocols, allowing for cross-platform access of all shared data for most versions of Windows, Mac OS X, and various Linux distributions. For remote users who are not connected over the LAN, the NAS Adapter provides FTP access for up to 8 simultaneous users anywhere in the world with an internet connection. In addition, the NAS adapter can also be used as a print server or as a Bit-Torrent downloading appliance.