Network External hard drives
As the range and features of external hard drives grow, one increasingly popular option is a network enabled drive. More and more users now have wireless networks at home using laptops and desktops among family members. With the limited size of some laptop internal drives the need for more storage capacity becomes crucial. One convenient way of saving important data is via your wireless network onto an external network hard drive. A NAS (network accessible storage) drive will enable you to access your files wirelessly if you connect it to your wireless router. It will show on the network as just another drive letter, similar to say your internal laptop drive. You can also do so over the net and the advantage of this means you don’t have to have a computer on all the time, just the network drive. The drives will come with software to make it easy to access them usually via an IP address.
You can also stream music and video wirelessly from the drive although you will need a good wireless connection for the video to work without interruption. All in all a network drive is a good option if you are working around the house and away from your main computer and connected external hard drive. To have access to extra storage space wherever you are makes life a lot easier.
The Buffalo Linkstation and Lacie Network Space are two NAS drives to consider .