Best NAS for viewing photos across multiple laptops?

[stealthnat]

Currently I have a usb connected SSD to a network router. There are 4 old laptops of various Windows versions (XP, Vista, and 10) that are all accessing the drive through Ethernet and viewing the photos in Windows Photo Viewer.

 

There are times when it can be slow, since all laptops are accessing the drive at the same time. Also, when a laptop goes to sleep and tries to reconnect, I get this error: 

Quote

<Drive_location> is not accessible. You might not have permission to use this network resource. Contact the administrator of this server to find out if you have access permissions.

Reconnecting the usb cable fixes the issue.

 

Would having a NAS make viewing photos faster? If so I would like a recommendation on a basic NAS that is somewhat portable. It only needs wired connection, I don't need any wireless or cloud features.

[Electronics Wizardy]

any  nas should be fine. the rounter connected solutions are pretty bad normally. Do you have a budget? Id just get something like a cheap synology.

[Ericarthurc]

Honestly a synology nas isn't very expensive and the software is pretty good and user friendly. Might be worth checking out.

[Jarsky]

Second Synology, DSM is great for sharing with Photos & Videos. 

[stealthnat]

Thanks for the replies. I'll check out the Synology NAS.

[soulreaper11207]

Just build you one and get some drives. The os on Synology devices is ok, but if you was a better level of customization, go with an open source NAS os like OMV or FreeNas. Setting up shares and users on these are fairly straight forward. Plus you can then use the server to a lot of other things aka Plex, print server, or tons of other services. 

 

This is my server:

Inspiron 5547

Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4510U CPU @ 2.00GHz

8gb ram

4  x 3 tb drives in a 4 bay exrernal bay over usb 3.1 connection

 

Hell, you could even use a raspberry pi with OMV and a few external drives too.