Q: How would I take an ordinary hard drive and create a NAS hard drive, instead of buying an external hard drive?

A: If you're referring to a disk drive currently within a server that you want to make available as a shared network resource, you have to use the server as a file server, in which you expose that disk as a file system for access by other computers on the network. With Windows, it would be a file share as a drive letter, for example; with Unix, it would be a mount point. Setting this up as a file system is fairly straightforward and is described in the operating system documentation provided by vendors.

Probably the simplest solution, however, is to use a NAS system that is a prepackaged NAS appliance that can be quickly connected to the network, doesn't require server-type administration and offers fewer opportunities for other software to cause instability.

--Randy Kerns, CTO, ProStor Systems