NAS vs ex.HDD for 25+ PCs network

[chupacabra]

Hello Everyone,
I have a computer network of 25+ PCs and iMacs, all connected wireless to the router. 25 people use USB 2.0 external hard drive connected to the laptop (i3 M370@2.4GHz and 4GB RAM) for storing and accessing shared data (mainly Office documents). They very rarely copy large files across the network and they don’t use it for streaming, but they often print from the network drive (external drive).
The problem occurred when iMacs were added to the network and I tried to set up access to shared folder from them. For some reason it keeps disconnecting every couple of hours which makes it impossible to use.
I’m considering buying a NAS and moving all the shared data onto it so iMacs should have no problem to access it.
The main doubt I have about NAS is whether it’s going to work as fast as external hard drive connected to laptop. Most NAS in my price range (up to £350) has 1.2GHz CPU and 512MB RAM, which doesn’t look good compering to laptop’s i3 M370@2.4GHz and 4GB RAM.
Is NAS with above specs going to be slower than the solution that I use currently?
If yes what sort of NAS (what specification and which model) would have the same speed (or faster) of connection as there is now. I don’t need much storage space (shared data for now is around 20GB) and I would like to get 2-Bay NAS to use RAID for a backup. Can anyone advise please?

 

[kanewolf]

I see two performance limiting things in your current setup. 25 simultaneous devices connected to a single wireless access point (including the shared disk laptop). USB access to a hard disk.

A dedicated NAS will have SATA access to the disk rather than USB and can be wired to the router, preferably with gig-e. Although the CPU and RAM of a NAS is less than the laptop, the operating system on the NAS has been optimized to run with more limited resources.

I would recommend at least a 2 disk NAS so that one drive can be the active shared disk and the second can be used for backups of the active drive. Synology has Time Backup app with their NAS units which can do multiple versions.

 

[chupacabra]

I was thinking about getting one NAS to use as an active shared disk (with RAID1) and connect to it by USB my external hard drive to use it for a automated backup of that NAS. I might setup some sort of online backup for most important data. Do you think this backup is enough for critical data?
Also I was thinking about getting WD My Cloud 2-bay 4TB. Do you think it would be good enough for my case (25 users, storing and accessing Office documents) , at least as fast as what I'm using now?

 

[stevech]

WD not.
Go with QNAP or Synology.
Online backup: only for a small percentage of your files. Truly, not worth it due to your uplink speed to the Internet. I use on-line for non-sensitive data only, like sharing photos.

 

[mervincm]

25 wireless sharing a single wirelessly connected device? Usage must truly be low. When they print the file is sent via usb2 to the laptop then wireless to the ap. Then wireless to the user PC, then wireless back to the ap then I assume, wireless to the printer. My priority would be to wire the shared devices as much as possible, including storage and printers. Also wire in as many systems as possible to lighten the load on wireless and increase performance and stability.
Any quality NAS should equal or increase what you see today. Also 2 bay mirror is what you want. You don't want to impact 25 people when you have a disk failure. And keep another copy or two. Its such a small amount of data you have no excuse. Toss it on a pen drive and stick it in a drawer regularly. Save you bacon if you have a break in theft.

 

[mervincm]

PS I have a WD mycloud 4 tb. I bought it because it was on sale about the same cost as the HDD inside of it alone. While simplistic, its actually OK for file sharing so far. Way less features than the two best brands, but then again you pay so little for the NAS portion, its actually a decent backup target for me.
For 25 people you can justify a real Qnap or Synology. Just get one of those. I really like the just released qnap x51 series. Performance will be never be a problem for your use case.