Looking for a VERY specific HDD enclosure...

December 15, 2007 9:08 PM

Calling to the hive mind! Is anyone aware of a (reasonably priced (sub $150)) external hard drive (or, better, HDD enclosure) that meets the following specifications?

It needs have a connection to my home network so that I can access it somehow (I would prefer FTP capability). It also needs to be accessible via USB at the same time. And finally, it needs to be compatible with drives formated FAT32.

Tall order, I know. But it seems like my best solution to move on from my original Xbox Media Center to my 360 Media Center (Thank you, MS, for your Fall Xvid/DivX update!).

Alternatively, is this something that can be accomplished with the NSLU32? Or, can the NSLU32 share things out independently (no computer involved) in such a way that the 360 can access it? And if so, is this fairly simple? I don't have the same amount of time to hack around with stuff that I did when I soldered my original Xbox a few years back.

Thanks in advance!!!

posted by TrueVox to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

I've heard of people spending way too much money on pre-packaged external HDs.

Maybe check out your local shops for hard drive enclosures and an inexpensive HD?

Things to keep in consideration are whether the enclosure supports EIDE or SATA (and at that, SATA or SATAII). Seagate SATAII Barracudas are nice drives and aren't too expensive.

If the you are only using USB2.0, EIDE or SATA isn't a big deal (the bottleneck is USB2) - you might be able to find EIDE enclosures and HDs on the cheap.

Thermaltake makes a decent EIDE enclosure for pretty cheap and you can find older 3.5" EIDE Barracudas for pretty cheap.
posted by porpoise at 9:18 PM on December 15, 2007

Response by poster: Oh, I totally agree. An enclosure and a BYOD mentality would be great. However, I'm willing to go prepacked IF I HAVE TO.

And yes, USB 2.0 will be the FASTEST part of the whole shebang (No gigabit network for ME! :D)

Does the Thermaltake support both NAS abilities and USB connectivity at the same time?

Thanks for the quick response!
posted by TrueVox at 9:24 PM on December 15, 2007

I've never seen a drive that can be accessed via ethernet and USB at the same time. The synchronization issues would be horrendous and if anyone has solved this it wont be cheap.
posted by IronSurfer at 10:04 PM on December 15, 2007

None of the enclosures I've used work with network and usb access at the same time, which is I think what you're asking for?
posted by rokusan at 10:59 PM on December 15, 2007

Incidentally, FTP has way higher overhead than most other network file transfer mechanisms, because it's designed to work over very unreliable connections. You'll get much faster transfers using even HTTP, or better yet NFS or SMB/Windows file sharing.
posted by autojack at 11:30 PM on December 15, 2007

Response by poster: Drat. I was afraid of that. So it's a no go then? Can any slug hackers out there answer the second half maybe?
posted by TrueVox at 2:15 AM on December 16, 2007