I know it’s a pretty niche use case, but I have a 4TB USB 3.0 hard drive lying around and I want it to be used as a storage target for random stuff. If performance doesn’t matter whatsoever, would it be a good idea to pair it with some used Netgear router (R7000) and set up an SMB share there?
P.S.1. Netgear R7000 goes for 15 bucks in my region, and comes with a USB 2.0 port.
P.S.2. I have a main all-flash NAS that is connected to my main 10 Gbps network. I just want to use the 4TB HDD as a storage target to store some random stuff that doesn’t matter.
P.S.3. Does somebody have experience with configuring Netgear router to run SMB share in the network, without having another sub network?
So it should be fine as long as you do two things:
- Make sure to disable it as a DHCP server (otherwise its going to try to hand out IP’s)
- Make sure to give it a static IP that is on your subnet, but not your main router
all that being said, I probably would buy a raspberry pi and use it instead. wayyy more flexible and smaller package
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