Can you put a nas on a normal usb harddrive?

[yoda313]

Ok question here - can you put a NAS on a normal usb harddrive?

My reason for asking is I have a usb harddrive that I formatted to mac hfs with macdrive 7 for use with my xbox 360. It works great. Unfortunately my ps3 does not recognize it. I am suspecting it must only support external fat 32 drives as those have worked before during testing.

But I know the ps3 can read upnp media servers. I know you can also put nas (not entirely sure of definition of nas) on harddrives.

Would this be possible?

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Side question - I don't really want to buy new hardware but would a better opton for networking be to buy one of those networkable enclosure units that dlink and others have? I think I've seen them as low as a 100.00.

Now would you still have to have those formatted as fat32 for the ps3 to recognize them? I mean if this external enclosure is upnp compatible shouldn't it be able to stream anything from anytype of drive? Or would the ps3 still detect it as a non-fat32 external and refuse to read it?

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My reason for asking is that the 360 is very picky about its video files it can read. Until I can successfully make wmv's with 5.1 from bluray and hd-dvd mp4 is my best option. However the 360 doesn't support 5.1 aac audio only 2.0 aac. And I haven't had much luck in getting audio synch on hd-dvd conversion to wmv - the video looks great but the audio is a mess.

Thanks for any advice on networking without a physical computer on hand.

(fyi I did have my vista pc in the same room with the ps3 and the 360 but have since moved it to another room - I'd hate to think that I've have to move it back to get this to work....)

EDIT - Here is what I was thinking about as far as an external upnp enclosure:

D-Link - 2-Bay Network Storage Hard Drive Enclosure
Model: DNS-321


http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8891782&type=product&id=1213400527466

Unfortunately at a 150.00 I'd be better off buying the western digital media player that can use my existing usb drive. With this I'd have to uninstall my 500gb internal secondary drive in my vista pc and use it on this. Then I'd only have the 80gb internal plus my 320gb external that I'm currently using on my xbox 360.

I'd like a software option to turn my usb drive into this gadget. I know this must be impossible.... If it isn't let me know Thanks...

[guns1inger]

The short answer is no. Even a simple NAS is more than just a HDD and some software. It has it's own CPU, controllers and operating system, generally based on a cut down Linux distro. Very simple consumer NAS devices use controllers with dedicated firmware to do the work that better NAS's use an OS for.

If you Google for diy nas you will find quite a few links to people who have built their own NAS setups, and it will give you an idea of what hardware and software is required.

[yoda313]

@guns1inger - thanks for the input.

Actually I think I may have hit on an alternative. THere are apparently wireless routers that have usb inputs that can work with harddrives and then put them as upnp drives. That is exactly what I'm looking for.

Unfortunately I bought a new rangemax router last fall so I don't really need a new router but if I can find a new one with this feature at a price less than a wd media player or the link I showed above for the dlink enclosure I may just do this.

The one I found indirectly was the Netgear wgt634u. I'm looking for upnp attachable routers. So I know have something to shoot for that could work with my existing equipment - EDIT - Ideally for under a 100.00 additional investment that is.

EDIT - Well today (saturday 21st) I bought this belkin router for 120 (a little more than I was shooting for but its a N+ gigabit router so thats something):

Belkin - N+ Wireless-N Router with 4-Port Ethernet Switch and USB Port
Model: F5D8235-4

It has a usb port on it. However I'm reading some reviews online about slow usb transfer speeds. Could it be possible its only a usb 1.0 port????

I'm planning on swapping it out with my existing netgear rangemax router. I will connect my wd external drive to it for testing. I'm hoping it will show up as a upnp storage device. The router does say its upnp. That should let it connect to the ps3 and xbox 360.

Hopefully that transfer speed is just a glitch and can be corrected with firmware. Or perhaps the reviewers were using an older usb 1 drive???