Looking for Network Attached Storage with a USB Print Server.

I bought a brand new WD NetCenter many years ago with a 500gb drive and a USB print server. I loved this thing and used it many times a day for probably the last decade. Well it completely died on me, won't even power up. I was able to get the drive out and it seems OK but that's neither here nor there. I just want to replace the unit.

I'm having a hard time finding a home-use oriented NAS with print server to replace it. I don't need much storage, I mainly use it to shuffle files around between machines. I don't believe I ever used more than 150gb of the drive at any point in time. So I don't need an expensive, commercial server quality NAS. If it has some storage (I don't mind an empty enclosure to add my own drive even.) and a USB printer port I'll be satisfied. Wireless is fine but it sits right next to my router so a physical ethernet cable connection to my router is preferred.

Just having a hard time finding what I want. Would love to keep it under $100 if possible.

Do you have any recommendations? Thank you.

 

My advice: Simplify things, and don't look for a single device that can do both tasks. Especially at your budget.

For the print server, see if your router has a USB port that can do print server duties. If you bought a router in the pat 5 years that costs more than $30, then there's a good chance that it can do it. If your router does not do this, then buy a standalone $30 USB print server device.

That leaves you with the drive access. The easiest approach is to just mount the drive to a computer on your network (via USB enclosure, or install the drive internally into the PC), and use Windows file sharing to give access to other computers on your network. The drawback is that the host computer needs to be powered on 24/7. If you need a true NAS (does not depend on a host PC being powered on 24/7), then search for "NAS drive enclosure" on Amazon or Newegg, and pick something from there.

Since you're buying something from scratch, this is a good time to talk to you about RAID-1 (mirroring) and backups. This drive *WILL* fail. Every mechanical hard drive *WILL* fail.... the only variable is when that failure occurs. If the contents of this drive are irreplaceable (e.g. work product, business files, personal photos / videos, etc), then make sure it is backed up. If you need to buy another drive to store the backups, then do it now. Because I can promise you that if you just put it in the back of your mind, then most people will forget about it. And the next time most people ever think of backups is when that drive failure occurs, destroys all of your irreplaceable files, and makes you think "Gee, I wish I had a backup." Don't be the sucker that goes through that. Back up your data.

When that drive fails, you'll suffer some amount of downtime to make that data accessible again. It could be a few hours (to restore from backups), to several days or weeks (if you need to source a replacement drive that can act as the target of your restored backups). If you cannot afford that downtime, then buy a drive enclosure that supports RAID-1 (mirroring). When that drive failure occurs, a RAID-1 configuration will suffer zero downtime, and still leave your data accessible. All you need to do is to source an identical hard drive to the drives in the mirror, swap out the defective drive, and let the RAID-1 array automatically rebuild itself. Zero downtime, and only a few minutes of your own time to get back up to 100% operational status. It's worth noting that regardless of RAID-1, you *STILL* need a backup. A RAID-1 mirrored array is not a backup. If you accidentally delete or overwrite a critical file, the only thing a RAID-1 array will do is delete that file twice off of the two drives.

If you're new to this, then it may sound like overkill. You're likely to spend a few hours setting this up, and probably about $200 - $300 in drive enclosures, extra hard drives, and backup software. It may sound like a lot of time and money right now. But I promise you that every single person in the entire world that has suffered loss of irreplaceable data due to hard drive failure wishes they could spend $200-$300 to get that data back. You know that 500GB will fail, just like every hard drive will fail. Take this opportunity to be prepared for that drive failure, and make sure that you arne't one of those suckers that gets bitten in the rear.

 

I appreciate the time you took to put this together, I really do. But, honestly, this is precisely the kind of set up I want to avoid. I'm a half century old, have never backed up a single thing in my life, have had tons of hard drives fail suddenly on me and lost lots of data. This has never, ever caused me any sort of problem or inconvenience and I can't imagine a scenario where it ever will. Absolutely none of my data is important or can't be replaced. But still, I do thank you for the information so please don't take my cavalier attitude towards data safety as any type of negative feedback towards you. I'm grateful for the type of help you and people like you provide.

I'm looking for precisely and exactly an all-in-one, cheap NAS storage device or enclosure with an included USB print server port for as little money as possible. I will, in all honestly, purchase the first one I see to fit these meager requirements.

If anybody knows of a product to fit this description I would appreciate hearing about it. I see plenty of them with USB ports on the back side but also none of them mention anything about printer compatibility.

 

@balane I suggest RPi3 or some other mini-PC. For RPi3, you'll need to add case and PSU (any 5V 2-2.5A will do ~$2), any micro SD card (you probably have some lying around, otherwise 4GB for couple $ is optimal) - and the enclosure for your HDD if you don't have one. Even in worst case scenario combined costs won't climb over $50. DietPi is the most user-friendly distribution, setting it up as NAS will be easy and straightforward; print-server is not yet included, but there are guides for this.