Networking Hard Drive..Simple Solution Needed
 

My brother and I are looking to network a HDD so we can have one place for all our music,photos,videos,etc.

Now we have our computers networked right now but his computer has to be on at all times for me to be able to access it and that's a pain.

I know network storage drives exists but those are extremely expensive and come with more features than I need. All I would like is a hard drive that can be networked via Ethernet into router. Don't need FTP or anything else.

Is there any cheap ones out there, or are there any easy cheap solutions to accomplish what I need? Thanks.

You need a stand alone San. They are not really cheap. I was looking for something like that before and decided to just get a VPS server hosted someplace else. Worked out for me because I moved all my email and websites to one server and then had plenty of storage for my backups and such. If you don't know much about servers you can get a Managed VPS from Server Intellect at a reasonable price and they can help you admin your server. That is about the only options you have.

A simple NAS enclosure like this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822111012

or just grab a cheap (or even 2nd hand) workstation-class PC with a low spec PSU that can fit a few hard disks in it. You don't need a Kbd/Mse/Screen attached at all times, just for set-up.

The NAS as smurfy stated before is a simple solution. But I know Server Intellect and how they backup their servers for the managed solutions. So really your getting your files backed up on a separate server. Which is something the NAS wouldn't do. It would offer a double protection if you think about it.