jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Rather than make two separate posts, I thought these are close enough in content to go into one.

Do any of you -

1. Use a computer as a server? I see lots of videos online showing how to use an old computer as a server for your house. I've never seen the advantage or need, so I've never bothered.
2. Put an M.1 drive into an enclosure to use as external storage? This seems like a good idea, especially for laptops, because such a drive would be small and fast. Prices of M.1 drives vary from under $100 to over $200, depending on speed and size. As far as speeds go, don't believe what the maker says. These drives, in their enclosures, can get too hot to handle after doing a large transfer.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

1. I had our three computers connected via the network using home group or something like that. But I can't get the new Win 10 laptop access the desktop. The win 10 box can see the other devices, but I haven't been able to correct the privilege to USE them.

I use/transfer files from Win 7 box 1 to Win 7 box 2 a lot. Not so much a "server" but the Win 7 boxes can use files on the the other Win 7 computer. Transferring large amounts of information over encrypted WIFI takes a LONG time though. Single files like documents, spreadsheets, and images are fine.

2. N/A for me. I have a WD pocket drive or USB fob if needed. Important files I copy to the desktop over WIFI for backup.

edwdickinson Loc: Ardmore PA

Jerry,
If you are referring to a SSD then there is now and never was a m.1 designated drive. There is a 2.5″ SATA SSD "which is the one I think you are referring too", m.2 SATA SSD, and M.2 NVMe.

chikid68 Loc: Tennesse USA

If you are going to put an m.1 mount drive in an enclosure you will likely have to have an m.1 to Sata adapter card which is readily available but be sure the enclosure is sufficiently cooled or well ventilated since the typical m.1 drive runs quite warm.
First time I adapted one to recover data from the password protected drive before doing a clean windows installation.
I literally burned my fingers touching the drive.
The reason I had to do this was because my stepson who owned the laptop passed away and his mom inherited it and wanted to get any pictures off of it if possible.
I was using an old PC as a file and print server mostly due to the fact that it lets the entire household access the files much like a network attached storage array.
Another advantage of the setup was that I had the operating system installed on a virtual drive on the system which isolated it from the actual files and acted like an additional layer of malware protection (A necessary precaution with multiple teens living at home).

Bayou

I have done this for many years. I have large collections of documents, photos, opera videos, and music files that are easily shared to any computer in the house (there are 4) by having a simple home server and using Windows mapped network drives on each computer. ALL data in the house is on this server, not on individual machines. The server is backed up locally to an external drive and to a cloud service in real time with historical file versions in both cases.

The living room entertainment rig consists of a desktop computer driving a large television as its monitor, and a wireless Logitech keyboard/touchpad for input control. This computer is on the local network and accesses those files from the server to play music, movies, and of course, photo slide shows. This machine also streams Netflix, etc. via its web browser.

rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona

Jerry, yes to question 1. I have 7 computers, Apple, Windows, Linux, networked. One of them is used as a server.
--Bob

Canisdirus

M.2 drives are better...but mainly because of their location...designed to reduce any bottleneck by placing it into the mother board itself.
It's not that the hd itself is way better than any other ssd.

Frankly...it's for gamers and really high end graphic design.

elee950021 Loc: New York, NY

I've standardized on these cheap 2-1/2" SSD drive enclosures and insert various sized Samsung 2-1/2" SATA SSDs into them. I can also take the drives out of these cases and still use them in my laptops. Two of my laptops use M.2 SSD's but my other ones use the larger SATA ones.

Be well! Ed

chrissybabe Loc: New Zealand

To use the M.1 drive in an external enclosure will require an adapter. And since it is external (assuming you aren't connecting over eSATA) the external enclosure will be via USB. Slow as a wet week so really not much to gain.
I have 5 desktops and 2 laptops connected via network adapters. They can ALL speak to each other and are frequently used this way. A wired connection is just so much faster than wireless (particularly for large transfers) that I have never worked out why anybody bothers to use wireless in the home (other than the odd occasion when it can be useful). All my printers are networked (they have an internal network port) so anybody can print whenever they want. I will never buy a printer that does not come with a network port. My Epson interfaces via a UTP to USB adapter. So no need for any PC to act as a "server". Backups are done PC to PC and just so much faster than relying on USB and external enclosures. Having internal backup drives (which can all be unplugged) means they can all be protected StableBits so I always get advanced warning of a potential failure.

neillaubenthal

Yep…our main machines are laptops and I have a Mac mini that used to be the household file server when we lived in the RV for space reasons…it's now just used for network backups of the laptops. When we moved into a house instead of the RV I bought an iMac so that I would have a larger screen for PP images. I put a 12 TB OWC RAID on it for photo storage and setup for BackBlaze backup and it's also got a share for 'data'. Between that and DropBox all of our data is essentially not on the laptops which makes backups and cloud backups much easier.

Laramie Loc: Tempe

I have a WD MyCloud single-disk NAS device on my network. I use it for backup.