Advice on inexpensive network storage

Basically I have 3 desktops, and a netbook, and am looking for an inexspensive network storage solution. Right now I am using Homegroup, which works most of the time, but of course requires multiple computers to be turned on if I want data from one to another.

I am looking for something mostly to hold photos, music, and video and be able to access it from any of the computers. Just trying to keep costs reasonable. This is my proposed setup, let me know any thoughts or suggestions. Thanks

NETDISK SOLO NewFAST - Enclosure 351UNE -Features seem quite nice for the price
Western Digital 1.5 TB Caviar Green SATA -Bang for the buck-As a network drive, is there a benefit to going away from a green drive?

Dropbox or Sugar Sync?

Not really what I want, as it carries a monthly fee for anything more than 2gb of storage. More or less just want to easily be able to share data between computers at home with one central location to store it all, and be able to boot only the computer I plan to use. If I need to take it with me, can just dload to the netbook.

Performance. The Black is optimized for performance at the expense of noise and power consumption, the blue is a general use drive, designed to be a good balance of performance, power consumption, and noise, and the green is designed to use as little power and make as little noise as possible at the expense of performance.

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Stolen from the internets

Xterra said:

Stolen from the internets

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Yea, I understand the difference between black, blue, and green drives. My question is to whether there would still be any performance gain being used as a network drive, simply because of the speed being capped by the speed of the network.

The reason I ask is because of the comment on the info page of "Although SATA II & III drives are working in the 351UNE, the Gigabit LAN interface presents a theoretical speed limit around 128MB/s so there is no significant benefit in using the higher speed drives." While that refers to SATA II vs III, it is still relevant to overall speed being restricted by it being a network drive.

Maybe I am over thinking this lol

I tend to use RAID rated drives just because they are designed for server usage. I prefer Samsung for all my RAID configs. For simply accessing files, pictures, and media, any large capacity drive will fit your needs.

Green is more then fine for a network storage device, but I question their (WD Green) reliability as I've had 3 out 5 fail so far in a short period of time.

As far as a cheap NAS device, you can make one of your own with any parts/old computer you may have laying around not in use, with plenty of free software available to do whatever you wish with the NAS. You could also go all fancy and buy new parts for custom setups (as I did with my WHS).

Mpegger said:

As far as a cheap NAS device, you can make one of your own with any parts/old computer you may have laying around not in use, with plenty of free software available to do whatever you wish with the NAS. You could also go all fancy and buy new parts for custom setups (as I did with my WHS).

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I actually have looked a bit into doing that as well. I have a pentium 4 as well as Athlon 2 PC sitting in a closet (stripped other than cases, mobo, and processors). I am just deciding if I want another computer tower around the house. I like the small footprint of a external drive sized solution. I am still debating though.

Since you have the main parts, for the price of one of those external options, you can get something better with more options, especially when it comes to the ability to expand when needed in the future.