Hard drive to connect via eSATA and ethernet simultaneously

Bluu

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Nov 18, 2009
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I am looking for an external hard drive / network attached drive that is a bit out of the ordinary. I would like to find a unit that can connect to my computer via eSATA so it can be used as an external hard drive and use the speeds associated with eSATA. But at the same time I would want it to be able to connect via eathernet as a Network Shared Drive for other devices to use.

I have found NAS units that connect via ethernet and have an eSATA port. The problem is the eSATA is not full read / write enabled. The eSATA connections seem to typically be used as a way of doing back ups etc. I need the unit to be able to read and write as an external hard drive over eSATA and at the same time be able to read and write over the network on ethernet.

Does such an animal exist?

I am ok with needing the unit to utilize multiple drives if needed (internal RAID) to allow read / write to two sources (eSATA and ethernet) at the same time.

I also prefer this to be a stand alone unit so I do not need to leave a computer running all the time for this functionality. If building a computer for this purpose is the only way I would consider it, but is not the preferred route.

Thanks for any help or suggestions
Luke
 
Obviously you cannot have a harddrive mounted to two locations at once. You can either have it hooked up over esata and mounted locally which would be direct attached storage, or you can have it hooked up as a network attached storage. Its impossible to do both at the same time, even if you found a DAS with ethernet, which no one would really want to make for exactly this reason.

the only way to do what you want is have local harddrives, either internal or external, and have the local computer share them over the network.
 


Wow! I have the exact same need. Searched for the same question and found this Thread. :)
I have to admit I find the answers very disappointing... 🙁

Why do you need that? Is it for the same reason as mine?

I need it because I want to extend the HDD of my cable box recorder. The only recommended connection is eSata.
Of course, I also want to be able to share the recordings with a computer to be able to RIP the videos into an MP4, AVI or another compressed video format with a computer on the network. I'm told via blogs that if I disconnect the eSata HDD, the recordings will be lost...

Any suggestions? Thx