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I have a Linux based device which has network and USB, but write speed over the network is very slow. I'm wondering if a network storage device exists which allows write to a drive/share over the network, and reads of the devices/share over a USB connection? This would let me write files over the network faster.

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Could you rephrase your answer? It makes little (to no) sense to me in the current from. – Bart De Vos Dec 20 '11 at 17:48
USB is slow, there is no magic to make USB noticeably faster then USB. If you want something fast, then get something with a SATA connection. – Zoredache Dec 20 '11 at 17:57
It looks like Buffalo has a product called "DriveStation FlexNet". It has a toggle switch which goes between a direct attached USB drive, and a NAS. I think this is the best I can hope for, since it makes sense that you can't have both of these features working at the same time for one device. – Jim Dec 20 '11 at 18:58

closed as off topic by Zoredache, MDMarra, Chris S♦, Mark Henderson♦ Dec 20 '11 at 19:32

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2 Answers

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There is no NAS device that I know of that will give you fast copy speed via a network port on the device. I think that most commercial NAS devices (that have USB on them) will give you copy speeds of between 2.5MB/s to 10MB/s. I haven't heard of anything that would give you anything faster than that. If there was , I would like to know.

I think what people do in this case is find a Nettop PC or a cheap PC that has SATA drives on it. In that case, the PC motherboard has a wide transfer rate from the drives through the motherboard directly through the network adapter. So, in theory, you would get full network speed. On a old 100MB network, it would be many orders of magnitude faster than a standalone NAS device, which are usually constricted by the USB controller.

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Why are you equating NAS with USB ? They have nothing to do with eachother. – adaptr Dec 20 '11 at 17:51
@adaptr, because that is what the question asks about? A USB NAS? – Zoredache Dec 20 '11 at 17:54
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USB == a host-to-device connection protocol/methodology/standard/whatever. NAS == Network-Attached Storage. – adaptr Dec 20 '11 at 17:55
The higher-end SMB NAS'es do. Thecus has some which are powered by Celeron CPUs which go well beyond 10 MB/s. No idea if this would work with USB-connected disks at the same performance level (seems unlikely), but the general functionality is there. – syneticon-dj Dec 20 '11 at 19:11
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What kind of device do you have? We have a QNAP NAS and they have different versions with different processors and ram modules that have a fairly good performance.

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This is a "homegrown" device of my own, basically an embedded development board that I've turned into a home server. It's old, so its network is only base 10, thus the desire for a separate device with a faster network adapter. – Jim Dec 20 '11 at 18:55

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