2013-01-14, 21:17
I've been using the USB NAS feature of my Netgear router for serving files to various XBMC clients around the house for about 2 years now. This has been mainly to eliminate any always-on PCs. It's been serviceable, but sometimes causes buffering on 1080p files. It seems the USB controller in the router creates a bottleneck around 2-4 MB/s and it can sometime drop to as low as 500 KB/s. Transfers from PC-to-PC do not seem to be affected by the same bottleneck, even when using the same USB HDD connected to a PC instead of directly to the router, so I've narrowed the bottleneck to the USB NAS feature of the router.
Can anyone suggest a stand-alone Gigabit USB NAS device that I can use to replace the USB NAS feature of my router? There seem to be several in the $50 range and a few below, but none seem to be from a brand I'm readily familiar with... I really just don't know which to avoid? I was about to pull the trigger on one of the PogoPlug devices, but from the reviews I've read they lack SAMBA and UPNP is slow... they seem to really be a cloud-access device more than a NAS device for the local network.
My USB HDD is formatted as NTFS and my wireless router has a Gigabit wired switch. I'd like a device that can support 2-4 USB drives, but a single-drive device would be fine if it offers solid reliability without breaking the bank. A built-in torrent client would be nice as well, but isn't a must.
I'm not really looking to setup an UNRAID server or any other type of home server at the moment... I'm really looking to eliminate PCs and not add more.
Any advice is appreciated. Thanks!
Can anyone suggest a stand-alone Gigabit USB NAS device that I can use to replace the USB NAS feature of my router? There seem to be several in the $50 range and a few below, but none seem to be from a brand I'm readily familiar with... I really just don't know which to avoid? I was about to pull the trigger on one of the PogoPlug devices, but from the reviews I've read they lack SAMBA and UPNP is slow... they seem to really be a cloud-access device more than a NAS device for the local network.
My USB HDD is formatted as NTFS and my wireless router has a Gigabit wired switch. I'd like a device that can support 2-4 USB drives, but a single-drive device would be fine if it offers solid reliability without breaking the bank. A built-in torrent client would be nice as well, but isn't a must.
I'm not really looking to setup an UNRAID server or any other type of home server at the moment... I'm really looking to eliminate PCs and not add more.
Any advice is appreciated. Thanks!