right, first here's the situation:
we have 3 laptops at home. I need a local storage for files so that they can be accessed from each machine independantly. My dad alsp needs to access files stored at home while he's on the road with his laptop.

I have been looking at a Western Digital My Book World This will do what I want with having a central data storage and streaming everything over wifi.

The MyBook also lets you access files remotely, but the problem lies in that in relies on a REALLY bad program that syncs to their website and filters out media files such as movies and music etc and doesn't let you access those remotely.

Does anyone know of a good NAS or solution to my problem that lets you access files remotely by either mapping the drive or via ports in my home network etc ? It HAS to be let me modify / create and save files remotely too, not just view them etc. Any way is fine such as a mapable drive or via entering a login into firefox etc.

Any help is appreicated as always !

Why not go completely remote?

Sure there's a few on-line storage options you could use

I had thought about going completely remote. That would at least work fine for all my dads documents etc but for large files such as movies, music and images it's not really practical. I suppose I could buy a NAS for local files and leave my dads on an online server seperately but if there's an option to have it all serves from home it'd be good

You could just get a cheep PC with a 1TD hard drive, slap IIS or Apache on it and set up a password protected folder, you would have more control over it than a NAS but it would be noisier and more power hungry. you would be able to get you files remotely by entering your IP into firefox.

I've actually found this which Schumi owns and recommended to me. It does all I want and takes 2 drives. I'm going to get a 320gb drive (£33) for now which makes it the same price as the My Book World but obviously less space. I have about 200gig of data to put on there at the moment so that'll work fine and I can always upgrade it later It does media sharing to the ps3 and remote access so I think i'm sorted

Just recieved the icybox NAS i mentioned in my previous post. I got the unit for £94 and it takes any sata hdd's so I also purchased a 500gig drive for £34 with it. Just finished setting it up and I'd highly recommend it. You can set user access to certain folders and quota's, plus read-write access. It also supports access over the internet which is something I was in need of.

It supports downloads of torrents as well, just paste the torrent link into the box when you log into it and it will download it straight there without needing to leave your pc on at night....saves money on electricity too.

I've put all my music in there and it supports bonjour so you can stream the music to any pc with Itunes or to any device that can access them, such as the PS3. It comes with the Townky Media server too so you can also stream movies from it to other pc's or devices, really loving that on my PS3 too.

Also you can plug in any usb device...memorystick, HDD etc and push the button on the front to instantly back it up to the public shared folder on the HDD (which you can later move of course)

If you want a NAS or more storage for your pc i'd recommend checking this out first. It's only a bit bigger than a HDD width wise and can take 2 sata drives in various raid settings.

I've been thinking about getting something like it for months for data backup. Will be ready to buy soon so I'll check up then if it's still working ok for you.

how you getting along with this Grant?

really well. No problems at all infact. It's not the fastest for copying large files (2gb etc) from your pc to the NAS but once things are on there it's great. Streaming music and films works perfectly and to mulitple pc's at once.

My dad has all his office documents on there and just opens them directly and saves work all fine. I have moved all my music to it and now when you open itrunes on any pc it auto finds all the songs and sets up the playlists so you can just listen.

I've used it with my ps3 for streaming music and movies fine too. I have it set to spin the drives down after 10 minutes to save power but it wakes up instantly. It runs nice and silent too although you can obviously hear the hdd being accessed under heavy use as it's only a thin metal case and the drive fits snuggly against it but it's nothing to write home about.

There's also a lot of mods and apps for the OS that's running on there to do different things. For the price I can't complain at all. I'd recommend it.

cool, I'm thinking about grabbing one for remote backup

It's defenitely worth it. I wish I'd gone with this sort of thing last year when my HDD decided to pack up. I think aria was the cheapest at £96, not sure if they're the cheapest for the HDD's though but I bought them there as well to save on delivery charges etc.

Mani take a look at this Synology 107 I have the 106e , its be rock solid for a couple of years now the only thing it lacks is Raid but on the flip side its got a great down load client , simply schedule all down loads for the middle of the night , very good streaming performance , I host all my sounds & films on this box & stream them to my PS3 and amazing firmware support new features added every few months ( my last firmware UG included surveillance support for up to 6 IP camera's ) . The last thing I like is that it is small , fits in my Fire Safe which is a major bonus because I back all my photo's and home video's to this device.

Grant what sort of speeds are you seeing over the network I cant get over 25Mbs sustained over the LAN on Vista ?

I looked at that one but chose mine for the raid stuff as it supports all the other things too.

Iccy is to big for me mate , I need a small foot print . A lot of the software on the iccy looks like you have to pay for it after 30 dat trial & if you look at the software & back up funcionality me thinks the Synologhy has quite a bit more to offer ...
There is a clear demark though & that is Raid , if you need it then the 107 is a no no but if your looking at small froot print and features the 107 is the more rich featured of the two.

It's tiny..it's the size of the HDD that's in it...infact it's a tight squeeze getting that in there and then there's a PCB behind that with the connections and that's it

lack of raid would be a killer for me, only point in getting one is for backup so raid-1 is essential for me, size isn't an issue though and I have a nice big cupboard it can go in (with a couple of holes drilled in the back)

243 x 138 x 82 (WxDxH mm) is the dimensions of the icybox one I have.

the print server is a big plus too

Yeah i use the printserver part too. Pretty good.

Stop editing posts spit lol You only have to pay for one thing on the icy after you get it and that's the twonkymedia sever application...of course you can use other methods or programs

The installed one is a 30 day trial... I dunno what other backup things you're refering too that are better spit but this one has loads and supports instant backup at one push of a button from any connected usb device.

Oh and the small footprint means nothing..yours is only like 2cm's smaller than mine in height anyway unless I'm missing something.