[AccessD] External Hard Drive

Some thoughts on external hard drives:

USB drives are great -- but if you want storage you can share, you 
should consider moving up to a NAS (Network Attached Storage) solution. 
NAS is a fancy name for a dedicated file server in a custom enclosure.

 * Warning: If you are in the market for NAS, you might see a little 
unit from NetGear, called the SC101. It's cute. It's cheap. It's a piece 
of crap. It is not true NAS, but a poorly-executed SAN device with some 
half-assed NAS features. I made the mistake of getting one, and boy do 
I  regret it! It has a hugely bad reputation on the Web. So, a friendly 
word: DO NOT buy this device!

 * You are far better off getting a true NAS device (starting at ~ $150 
on up).

 * If you have an old computer, why not turn it into your own custom 
NAS? It is a good way to reuse old hardware. There are two free, 
open-source projects that let you do just that: FreeNAS 
(http://www.freenas.org/index.php), which is FreeBSD-based, and 
Openfiler (http://www.openfiler.com/), which is Linux-based.

-Ken