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I need a recommendation over an external hard drive (SSD/NVME) up to 1TB, which can be connected into two or more operating computers simultaneously.

Computer A copy-pastes files with hard drive and computer B copy-pastes files with the hard drive.

What will you recommend?

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  • There is no such device. You need a host, to which the others can connect. Either a dedicated computer or a NAS structure.
    – Tetsujin
    May 15 at 8:09
  • The closest thing I know of is indeed a NAS, but thats kinda a computer on it's own
    – Irsu85
    May 15 at 8:13
  • That's what is required. You can't connect to two hosts, because you can't decide which one is in charge.
    – Tetsujin
    May 16 at 7:58

2 Answers 2

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Direct attach storage (DAS) can only connect to one computer at a time, but only requires a simple data connection like USB. Network attached storage (NAS) can connect to many computers at the same time, but needs a network connection.

Typically the best solution is a NAS like this Synology paried with whatever drives you choose.

However, there are new devices like this SSK that are cheaper and can host the network themselves. The performance will not be as good as the Synology, but the SSK is portable and much more versitile.

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You can't do this directly. You need a NAS.

You can buy a commercial one, or you can hook your drive to an SBC like a raspberry pi and run a NAS operating system on it.

Then it will be available to be shared across the whole network. You can limit who has access with usernames and passwords.

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