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Forum Discussion
Can NAS Be Used As External Hard Drive
Hi, I'm looking to connect my NAS via a physical cable connection to my Laptop/Computer. Is it possible to do this so the NAS appears as a USB external device? This is so I can run a server on a...
Bigmaca wrote:
Is it possible to do this so the NAS appears as a USB external device?
No. The NAS has to be connected with ethernet - it can't be connected with USB.
If the computer is connected to your home network via wifi, then it is possible to connect the NAS directly to the PC's ethernet port. But generally speaking it is better and simpler to connect both the computer and the NAS to your home network (to a switch or your router).
Bigmaca wrote:
This is so I can run a server on a computer and have my files stored on the NAS.
You can accomplish this without a direct connection between the NAS and the PC. I'm not sure what server you have in mind, and the details sometimes do matter.
You can map NAS share(s) to drive letter(s), and then they look like normal external drives to the application software on the PC. Also a lot of application software does support direct access to network shares (using the \\nas\share syntax that file explorer uses).
Or, if you are running the server on a Linux system, you can mount the NAS shares just as you mount any external share via fstab. If using NFS, just turn it on in the NAS GUI. It will automatically set up the NFS Export.
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