> But that says the USB 2.0's 480 mb/s is no better than 100mb/s of the > net, and that is much slower than direct access to a drive. The extra > USB speed provides a net speed buffer in that case. Each of those cases > is much slower than a direct access to a fast drive, and that was the > original point. I, too, have been looking at setting up and NAS because I've heard that external HDDs have a high failure rate. Wouldn't the tradeoff in speed be worth it for reliability of an NAS? In other words, is it better to have 100mb/s and a reliable RAID setup than to have 480mb/s and an external drive that may overheat in its enclosure and die? Benjamin