NAS

[MrMcMuffinJr]

Wondering if you gues can help me. I just bought an EXT HDD. Looking for a female rj-11 to female usb 3 adapter that functions as a NAS. I tried amazon but came up short, probably because of search terms

[paddy-stone]

6 minutes ago, MrMcMuffinJr said:

Wondering if you gues can help me. I just bought an EXT HDD. Looking for a female rj-11 to female usb 3 adapter that functions as a NAS. I tried amazon but came up short, probably because of search terms

You can get routers that also function as a limited NAS device, even cheap routers these days.

[NelizMastr]

RJ11? Are you sure? RJ11 is used to connect phone lines. Ethernet uses RJ45. 

 

I assume your router doesn't have USB ports to get this functionality from there?

[MrMcMuffinJr]

1 minute ago, NelizMastr said:

RJ11? Are you sure? RJ11 is used to connect phone lines. Ethernet uses RJ45. 

 

I assume your router doesn't have USB ports to get this functionality from there?

rj45....thats what I meant........derp

 

[Levisallanon]

So let me get this straight, you have bought a external HDD and now you want to wire this up to your network and you expect it to work as a nas instantly?

[GilmourD]

8 minutes ago, Levisallanon said:

So let me get this straight, you have bought a external HDD and now you want to wire this up to your network and you expect it to work as a nas instantly?

Yeah... 

 

[LAwLz]

You will need to connect it to a computer to share it over the network.

If you're not that concerned with speed I would recommend a Raspberry Pi. It will limit read and write speeds to about 11MBps though.

[Kage]

You can not connect HDD directly to Ethernet because of the different ways they work. You have to use some kind of Computer in-between. There are multiple ways this can be done. Here are some of them

 

You could use Print Servers which are normally used to connect USB Printers (mostly 2.0) over Ethernet (100MB/s), but they are rarely usable for storage because they need to support ftp, smb or another file sharing protocol and are very insecure.

 

Another possibility would be a router, many have support for USB file sharing but they still mostly use USB 2.0 (I haven't seen a single one with USB 3.0 yet).

 

The best way would probably be to get a cheap NAS or re-purpose a old PC and connect the HDD to that. Most NAS have support for external hard drives, even if internal drives are normally preferred.

[paddy-stone]

6 hours ago, Kage said:

You can not connect HDD directly to Ethernet because of the different ways they work. You have to use some kind of Computer in-between. There are multiple ways this can be done. Here are some of them

 

You could use Print Servers which are normally used to connect USB Printers (mostly 2.0) over Ethernet (100MB/s), but they are rarely usable for storage because they need to support ftp, smb or another file sharing protocol and are very insecure.

 

Another possibility would be a router, many have support for USB file sharing but they still mostly use USB 2.0 (I haven't seen a single one with USB 3.0 yet).

 

The best way would probably be to get a cheap NAS or re-purpose a old PC and connect the HDD to that. Most NAS have support for external hard drives, even if internal drives are normally preferred.

I've had about 3 routers with USB 3.0 ports on them, including my one I have now which is about 2-3 years old which is a Netgear nighthawk D7000. There are literally hundreds of them now that have USb 3.0 and support USB NAS function... I'm not advocating for it, but just saying it's there as an option for the OP.

[Kage]

10 hours ago, paddy-stone said:

I've had about 3 routers with USB 3.0 ports on them, including my one I have now which is about 2-3 years old which is a Netgear nighthawk D7000. There are literally hundreds of them now that have USb 3.0 and support USB NAS function... I'm not advocating for it, but just saying it's there as an option for the OP.

It is a good option, but I have not seen one with USB 3.0 myself and it doesn't seem to be advertised as a big feature on most routers they just say USB support.

Even the router which you named only says USB support on the homepage, it is mentioned in the user manual but normally no one checks these ahead of purchase or at all, except if they are searching for specific features or don't completely know what they are doing. I myself normally check the user manual for nearly every device I buy for additional functionality or features but I know that is the minority.

I have not upgraded my router in the last 4 years, but because I don't really use WiFi there would probably not be much of an advantage. So it is possible that USB 3.0 is now standard but I personally have not seen one (except that one now) and can not vouch for this.

[paddy-stone]

4 hours ago, Kage said:

It is a good option, but I have not seen one with USB 3.0 myself and it doesn't seem to be advertised as a big feature on most routers they just say USB support.

Even the router which you named only says USB support on the homepage, it is mentioned in the user manual but normally no one checks these ahead of purchase or at all, except if they are searching for specific features or don't completely know what they are doing. I myself normally check the user manual for nearly every device I buy for additional functionality or features but I know that is the minority.

I have not upgraded my router in the last 4 years, but because I don't really use WiFi there would probably not be much of an advantage. So it is possible that USB 3.0 is now standard but I personally have not seen one (except that one now) and can not vouch for this.

I've even had ISP provided routers that have had USB 3.0 ports, and yes they work fine for one stream as I tested them. The downside is the actual functionality, but would be fine if you used kodi on the device and added the router's address to have more of a finished feel to it.

TBH though, most people if they have a PC would be better off just using a network share, or even downloading and using plex server/emby.