Looking to reliably connect usb drives to the network

[JeffMD]

So a couple years ago I picked up a WD my cloud 2tb on a clearance sale and I found it fast and adding drives to it to expand storage was easy. Lately however I find that the usb drives show as empty when viewed on the network and I have to either eject them and reconnect (PITA) or reboot it which takes around 15 minutes. There doesn't seem to be any rime or reason except that the my cloud is taking teh shit. I was disappointed that upgrading and reinstalling the software on this thing is the most pain in the ass thing you can possibly do.

I really don't want to a full nas enclosure and full sized drives, the smaller usb 3.0 drives serve me well and I already own them. I am looking for something that simply bridges the usb drives to the network (and supports multiple usb drives via usb hub) and isn't going to suck. A project board like the raspberry pi would be fun but its ports are not fast enough. maybe one of the other lesser known boards are 1000mbit and usb 3.0?

I recently picked up a wrt1200ac and will try using the usb port on that but router port reliability has always up in the air and never hold a candle to a nas device i find.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Just suck it up and do the right thing that you know that you need to do, and get a real (consumer) NAS unit, that takes desktop drives, that were designed to be run spinning 24/7, rather than run portable 2.5" externals 24/7, and wonder why they're failing.

And those little gigabit to USB3.0 "NAS adapter" units, aren't going to be as fast as your router-as-NAS, if the price point and the hardware in those little units can be believed.

 

[JeffMD]

USB drive spin down, they don't need to run 24/7. In fact that also annoys me about the My Cloud, it spins a helluva lot for something I am not using most of the time. It does look like if I want something that isnt a NAS box but is reliable I am going to need to use a NUC based PC. Any NAS boxes you recommend in the $150-$250 range?

 

[VirtualLarry]

QNAP TS-251 / 251A / 251P is a decent 2-bay NAS. Or a TS-231 might be cheaper.

I've got the TS-451, and it has a real 64-bit Intel Atom-derivative CPU in it, and it performs well, even with Seagate desktop drives in it, rather than "NAS" drive. (Which you might want to invest it.)

 

[paperfist]

Just suck it up and do the right thing that you know that you need to do, and get a real (consumer) NAS unit, that takes desktop drives, that were designed to be run spinning 24/7, rather than run portable 2.5" externals 24/7, and wonder why they're failing.

And those little gigabit to USB3.0 "NAS adapter" units, aren't going to be as fast as your router-as-NAS, if the price point and the hardware in those little units can be believed.

Damn I was just thinking what an awesome idea a USB HD to attach to my router and use as a file backup device. I really need to get into file backups, but a NAS is yet another device to care for. What's so bad about USB drives?