I am looking for advice to buy/setup network device to suit my needs and situations below. My purpose is to have a centralised network drive for storage because our 2 laptops (used by me and my wife) SSDs are almost filled up, as we are semi-casual photographers with lots of photos. Each year we need additional 10GB for each laptop. Also if I can access my files from outside home, that would be added value, but not a must-have.
Here are my considerations and existing setup:
1. I have very limited budget around $100 - $200 if possible. But may invest further if I have the fund.
2. I have a Cisco DPC3925 which is a cable modem cum router from Starhub. There is a blue colour USB port behind, but when I plug an external hdd to it, it doesn't work. I do have credits to exchange another modem/router with Starhub though.
3. I have 6 wifi devices (but only used by 2 persons at home). 2 laptops, 2 iPads, and 2 Samsung mobile phones.
4. I have a non-wifi Samsung laser printer SCX-4600 shared by two laptops using USB port, plugging in and out whenever each of us has a printjob. We use it at most once fortnightly. I can live with the current situation and priority for this setup is not high.
5. I have a spare 750GB int hdd taken out from my old PC, and 2 x 1TB ext hdds. I dunno how I could use these as my network storage. Otherwise each of us are using an ext hdd for data backup. I may also spend $0 by transferring all the old photos to ext hdds. But my wife may kpkb me for upgrading her hdd to 240GB Intel SSD, where now the data filled up 70% of the space available. In 3 yrs I think she would exceed the storage space. I should have bought a 500GB SSD for her.
6. May consider using Cloud storage, but may not be ideal as it can be slow, expensive and even unsafe (e.g. loss of data due to server down/closure, leakage of sensitive info to third party).
Here are my considerations and existing setup:
1. I have very limited budget around $100 - $200 if possible. But may invest further if I have the fund.
2. I have a Cisco DPC3925 which is a cable modem cum router from Starhub. There is a blue colour USB port behind, but when I plug an external hdd to it, it doesn't work. I do have credits to exchange another modem/router with Starhub though.
3. I have 6 wifi devices (but only used by 2 persons at home). 2 laptops, 2 iPads, and 2 Samsung mobile phones.
4. I have a non-wifi Samsung laser printer SCX-4600 shared by two laptops using USB port, plugging in and out whenever each of us has a printjob. We use it at most once fortnightly. I can live with the current situation and priority for this setup is not high.
5. I have a spare 750GB int hdd taken out from my old PC, and 2 x 1TB ext hdds. I dunno how I could use these as my network storage. Otherwise each of us are using an ext hdd for data backup. I may also spend $0 by transferring all the old photos to ext hdds. But my wife may kpkb me for upgrading her hdd to 240GB Intel SSD, where now the data filled up 70% of the space available. In 3 yrs I think she would exceed the storage space. I should have bought a 500GB SSD for her.
6. May consider using Cloud storage, but may not be ideal as it can be slow, expensive and even unsafe (e.g. loss of data due to server down/closure, leakage of sensitive info to third party).
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