Hello board - been a while.
I'd like to set up some central data storage on my home network. Nothing fancy. Just file storage that's accessible by other computers on the network. No streaming, or media playing or anything like that. And accessible only locally, not remotely.
I'd like this device to have two hard drives, with either Raid 1 or some form of automatic mirroring, as a first line of data security. I'll add a separate backup solution as well, but I don't want to get into that in this thread.
And I'd like the device to "conform" to my existing devices and knowledge. Which is to say, I have Windows PCs and laptops, running Windows 10, and with their hard drives formatted to NTFS. I don't want to have to learn a new operating system. Nor do I want to store my files in another format. If this storage device fails, I want to be able to just take a hard drive out, plug it into a PC and have my data.
To my mind, I just need another Windows 10 PC left permanently on and connected to the network. But that sounds way too simple - or maybe there are pitfalls that would make it way to complicated.
What do I need here?
Thanks.
I'd like to set up some central data storage on my home network. Nothing fancy. Just file storage that's accessible by other computers on the network. No streaming, or media playing or anything like that. And accessible only locally, not remotely.
I'd like this device to have two hard drives, with either Raid 1 or some form of automatic mirroring, as a first line of data security. I'll add a separate backup solution as well, but I don't want to get into that in this thread.
And I'd like the device to "conform" to my existing devices and knowledge. Which is to say, I have Windows PCs and laptops, running Windows 10, and with their hard drives formatted to NTFS. I don't want to have to learn a new operating system. Nor do I want to store my files in another format. If this storage device fails, I want to be able to just take a hard drive out, plug it into a PC and have my data.
To my mind, I just need another Windows 10 PC left permanently on and connected to the network. But that sounds way too simple - or maybe there are pitfalls that would make it way to complicated.
What do I need here?
Thanks.