Network drives?

[Moofaa]

Anyone used them? I was thinking this could be a solution to some storage problems I have in the home network. Also some of them can be set up as FTP devices, so I can access the stuff on them from anywhere. That would be cool, if its not too hard to set up. How secure are they? Getting one of these would also let me put 150gb raptors into my next PC instead of slower 500gb ones.

Any thoughts?

[Airbozo]

I have used plenty of them. Word of caution; You get what you pay for.

Some of them are "smart" devices with a simple web browser setup tool. Some are not configurable at all and just hang off of the network using dhcp for addressing.

I have not tested them in an unsecured environment as most of our customers use them behind a firewall. I do not recall if any of them had a firewall app installed or not. It is not hard though to setup your router/firewall to direct ftp access to these boxes.

[XcOM]

by access from anywhere, i assume you mean, on your home network, then its easy enough, most of them just use standard network access, you map them in my computer, for external access (IE, anywhere in world) then you will need something a bit more feefy, and it will cost you, also you'll need to to allow this on your router.

and i belive both devices are called NAS (Network Access Storage)