My Apple Airport Extreme Base Station allows me to connect any USB drive or printer and access them from any computer on my network - since I have a hub attached to the AEBS , I currently have three external HDD's and a printer and can extend this to any amount by adding extra hubs as required .
The drives do not need to be anything special and since , size for size , standard USB drives are much cheaper than NAS ones this is a much more economical solution for anyone likely to build up an array of numerous drives .
Although the AEBS is an Apple product used on my primarily Mac network , it does work with Windows machines by installing Bonjour on them . I have 3 ethernet ports for direct connection to computers and use a Linksys ADSL modem for internet access via the AEBS .
The drives do not need to be anything special and since , size for size , standard USB drives are much cheaper than NAS ones this is a much more economical solution for anyone likely to build up an array of numerous drives .
Although the AEBS is an Apple product used on my primarily Mac network , it does work with Windows machines by installing Bonjour on them . I have 3 ethernet ports for direct connection to computers and use a Linksys ADSL modem for internet access via the AEBS .
