Need suggestion on networked storage device for home

[cronos]

Can anyone give me a suggestion for a simple networked storage device for my home network?

What I need is just something that can plug right into my switch, and accessed easily through Windows networking from all of my computers (currently 3 Windows pc: XP, Media Center, and Vista 64).

The intended usage for this is primarily to store multimedia files (pictures, recorded tv shows, mp3s, etc) and also I'd like to be able to do some light backup stuff to it as well.

I'm not looking at a huge storage, 500-750 GB is more than enough. I don't have any preference whether it's a device that I will need to buy the hard drive separately or if it's an integrated device, but the total budget I have for this is around $150 (is that reasonable?).

I've looked around at Newegg but there are so many types of these things it gets me confused, so if you can give me a suggestion of a particular item(s) it will be very appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Blain]

Originally posted by: cronos
Can anyone give me a suggestion for a simple networked storage device for my home network?

The intended usage for this is primarily to store multimedia files (pictures, recorded tv shows, mp3s, etc) and also I'd like to be able to do some light backup stuff to it as well.

I'm not looking at a huge storage, 500-750 GB is more than enough.
the total budget I have for this is around $150 (is that reasonable?).

A single drive unit in the 500-750GB range can be bought for your target price.
But I'd suggest spending a bit more for a RAID 1 NAS drive. I assume the data you want to store is semi-important at least.
A good quality RAID 1 NAS solution will afford you some extra protection against drive failure.

The bottom line is... How important is the data being backed up?
If you're locked into a $150 limit, think about a simple external drive.

 

[cronos]

Do you have any particular suggestion on this RAID 1 NAS drive?

I *was* initially thinking of just getting a simple external drive (and I don't really mind going back to that if it's the best choice for my need+budget), but since I kept finding these to be around $75-80 for 500GB, I thought with twice the budget I can find a more sophisticated solution.

 

[techmanc]

Do you have a spare computer you could setup as a simple file server?

 

[cronos]

I probably can, but I'd really rather not have another computer running. I'd rather just get an external drive and be done with it, but like I said above, I was wondering if I could find some kind of basic NAS device with my budget.

 

[techmanc]

Try here there a few you can look through

http://www.newegg.com/store/Su...ubCategory=124&Tpk=NAS