I'm well out of the loop with computers these days, I just switch them on and use the internet, stream a vid to the xbox or play a game.

I've seen a lot of people talking about NAS and quite like the sound of it, if I undestand what it is ok.

Do I just buy a NAS enclosure thing, stick a HDD or 2 in it, plug it into my router and then it shows up on the network as a little computer that I can read and write stuff to? Will my xbox pick it up and play vids and music just like if it was on my pc?

cheers

Pretty much.  Dlink dns323s are available at dabs

Sent from my GT-I9000 using Tapatalk

Yep.

Depending on how much space you need and if you want any additional functionality (media centre, torrenting, webserver) you might not need one of the multi-drive enclosures that are talked about on here. There are plenty of single drive all in one NAS drives that are a cheap plug-and-play solution.

Cheers guys.

I was just looking at a basic, cheap 1bay one like this http://www.ebuyer.com/product/184896

but was wondering is there much advantage to going for a 2bay one that supports RAID0? will that increase read/write times much or is the network the bottleneck rather than the drives?

Quote from: DEViANCE on May 16, 2011, 17:24:48 PM
Cheers guys.

I was just looking at a basic, cheap 1bay one like this http://www.ebuyer.com/product/184896

but was wondering is there much advantage to going for a 2bay one that supports RAID0? will that increase read/write times much or is the network the bottleneck rather than the drives?

http://www.qnap.com/QPKG.asp
If your money will stretch, take a look at QNAP - they can do so much more than being just a NAS

Quote from: DEViANCE on May 16, 2011, 17:24:48 PM
Cheers guys.

I was just looking at a basic, cheap 1bay one like this http://www.ebuyer.com/product/184896

but was wondering is there much advantage to going for a 2bay one that supports RAID0? will that increase read/write times much or is the network the bottleneck rather than the drives?

My DNS323 (which is what some others have on here as well) is really slow at read/write, even the parts in RAID0, so I wouldnt say its necessarily the case.

This one  just popped up on HotUkDeals which might be interesting.

Thats ebuyer one looks fine, take a look at the functions you can get out of more expensive models, like the one Egg has linked to or in Dooms' HP Server guide and decide if you want of need any of that functionality or capacity.

If not then something like you posted will do the job, especially if you already have a drive. Pre-built units might be cheaper if you dont.

The £100 cashback on the £230 HP Microservers is still going till the end of the month. Got 4x 2TB and 1x 250GB (system) in mine running everything that is explained in my guide (which I will finish soon, promise!)