A good solution for home backups and file/print sharing

I’m looking for a cheap and reliable solution that allows me to share files and a printer in me home network. Raid support and very low power consumption would be nice extras. Should I go with a NAS or a hand-built home server? What about the software? Is Windows Home Server worth the price (compared against freely available open source alternatives)?

Answer

I use a DLink DNS-323 for this. It's a 2-drive NAS enclosure so you can buy your own hard drives. It's low power: it spins down when idle. And it has a USB port you can use as a print server. It can also act as a DHCP server if you need that for some reason. As of writing, I'm seeing it on Amazon for $128 AR.

It also has RAID but I vaguely recall reading a few odd things with it. Something like you have to reformat both drives just to enable RAID-1.

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