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Is Windows XP good for a home network with shared external hard drives?

I have setup one of my computers to be dedicated to host all of my external hard drives at home. I find that the transfer rate suffers greatly (from 2 times to 10 times slower than being directly connected to the computer needing the files). All hard drives are usb external. I was wondering if a WRTSL54GS storage router with USB hard drive sharing could be faster for data access on a home network than going through a winXP computer? Would linux work well enough to dispurse the data faster? Something like Ubuntu server edition or something? How does linux work with other windows os based computers on a small home network? All I need in the end is to have a place where all my ext. drives are connected and accessible with good transfer rates from other computers. Thanks.

Public Comments

1. If you want to have NAS (network attached storage) you might consider something that is Ethernet connected instead of USB 2.0 connected as Ethernet has a higher transfer rate either through a direct connection using an Ethernet crossover cable to the computer in use or by Ethernet connection through your router if it has enough ports. For example: http://shop2.outpost.com/%7BOq8dTkK1GYrcskBQ1JcLeQ**.node1%7D/product/5223907;jsessionid=Oq8dTkK1GYrcskBQ1JcLeQ**.node1?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG I have Linux on a second partition on my laptop and Linux can see NTFS and FAT32 files on the Windows XP Pro partitions. However, I have not yet been able to write to those files. They are read only. I can pull files from Windows onto my Linux partition and work with them there just fine. Windows doesn't see the Linux files at all.