I’ve been dithering for months now on how to sort out my storage ‘issues’. Thats digital storage I should add. Should be easy. Done it before – remove the current hard disks and replace with bigger ones. Pretty cheap, straightforward and after a wee bit of hassle I’ll have a massive amount of storage space.
However on so many fronts it doesn’t work for me. I want to access the data on the drives from any device. Xbox, 360, PSP or laptop. I also want it to be independant of a PC. My current desktop PC is so noisy and has too much oomph for just simple storage. I’m also going to replace the dekstop this year, probably for a laptop so any investment in the desktop now would be a waste (hasn’t stopped me before). The reason for the laptop is that I never use the desktop for games and I would gain from the extra portability.
I’d been swaying towards getting a NAS device so that my data is available on a network for any device to connect to and use but I just can’t find one that meets all my needs or that I’m comfortable that it’s a reliable solution. The 360 wouldn’t see that data either as it’s on a NAS device – it needs a bit of pc software to see media shares and to see video it needs Media Centre. Bah.
So – I’m plumping for a temporary solution. I’ll dig out the old desktop PC which is a lot quieter than the current one and either set it up as a normal PC with network shares or as a NAS device using NASLite. At least that way I’ll have more disk available and I’ll be able to stream on the Xbox. Long term solution is still a grey area. Might wait for more details on the PS3 and also make a decision on laptop first. Also need to factor in a proper long term backup strategy for all this data – it’s getting quite sizeable. As well as every new home having a solar panel it needs a server too, not as standard but definetly as an optional extra. I’m sure there’s a business opportunity there for someone with bigger balls than me.
Anyway – I’ll report back on data dilema’s once I get round to doing something. Hopefully some helpful geek will post up some other options.