If you have only one external hard drive in home or small home office then you have to transfer data with pen drive when it is needed. In that time you must be think that better if you access external hard drive on local server directly. It often happens even in home that you have to keep external hard drive with notebook. If basic printer is also there and you need a print then you connect the printer to notebook first and then give print. In market, where basic printers cost $50 to $100 there wi-fi printers cost $150 to $200. And 500GB basic external hard drive costs only $70 to $80. But now you don’t have to upgrade your devices. You can wireless connect basic external hard drive and printer. For it you need to have a basic nas adaptor and wi-fi router. If wi-fi router is already then only nas adaptor is needed. NAS means network attached storage. With this you can wireless access devices on local network.
You have to attach nas adaptor to wi-fi router. After that you can attach external hard drive with USB port. NAS adaptor automatically detects IP address. You can also make external hard drive password protected. You can also create different user IDs if you wish. Now you can easily access printer and external hard disk without connecting them.