USB storage

It is interesting these days how popular the USB hard drives are becoming. First it was the solid state "key fob" drives that can now take several gigabytes of data. Now the regular hard drives are put into enclosures and can be attached with USB port. However, outside of a basic back up function, are they really that useful? Really? The drives can surely offer storage that is easily accessible, simply plug into power and USB and off you go. However, given the size of files today's digital camera's produce, videos and even e-mail, it is critical that this data is not lost in case of a drive failure. As such simply attaching a drive to USB to store those precious pictures from the honeymoon is just not smart. Individuals who go this route are just asking for trouble along the way. Let's explore another shortcoming and that is data sharing. More and more gadgets like PS3, XBOX and normal cable boxes will now display media from home network on the TV as well as play music from the home network on the home sound system. If one uses the USB attached drive, the drive has to be carried from the computer room to the TV room. Alternatively, one can keep the computer on, with average PC having a 400W power supply it is rather wasteful to go with the PC on option. SO where does this leave us? Network attached storage also known as NAS. All we are talking about here is a case that will take a few hard drives. Then the case is plugged into power and the network and voila, there is available storage for all devices on the network to use. The NAS boxes offer redundancy in a way that preserves data when one drive fails. In addition they consume much less power than a full blown PC. The issue here is really the size of the NAS "cases" as most will allow only 2 drives i.e. the "original" and "the mirror/copy." Which is not that great, given that $100 buys a 500GB disk at the moment. Moreover, as people grow their data need they may want to buy more drives. The cases that take more than 2 drives are pricey for what they do. Here is a business idea -> cheap NAS devices. Sell them for $100 with 5 hard drive slots. Case is probably $15, power is $15 and some minor electronics. The thing can run Linux to make for a cheap OS and off we go. You heard it here first....