+1 to what Adam is saying, sounds like we might be solving the wrong problem.

I'm going to make the following assumptions:

You're trying to do this using a USB portable hard drive like these
You want to use the USB hard drive as a NAS most of the time
You want the flexibility to connect the hard drive directly to a computer sometimes
Your USB portable drive isn't using USB-C

Some recommended solutions:

Many home wifi routers include a USB port which can be used to make USB storage available on the network. For example, Mikrotik hEX. If your router has this feature, this would be a quick solution
If you have an existing home server or PC that's always powered on, plugging in your USB drive and configuring the drive to be shared over the network might be OK as well
If you don't have existing hardware that can be used, then you could consider buying a single board computer or refurb PC to convert it into a NAS or use an off the shelf NAS unit

Cursed solution:

This product category seems to have died out, but you used to be able to buy converters that could turn USB hard drives into standalone NAS units
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1762899257.html
Just search for "Mini WAN NET Giga NAS FTP Dongle GIGA NAS FAT 32 / NTFS USB 2.0 Network Storage Adapter Dongle for FTP Server"
The performance and reliability was probably terrible, but it's still neat

On Mon, Jan 23, 2023 at 7:50 AM Adam Thompson <athompso@athompso.net> wrote:

Also, I'm afraid I have to point out that "USB to Ethernet adapter" and "reliable" don't belong in the same sentence to begin with.

As to specific recommendations, no. Virtually all USB Ethernet adapters for sale today use the Class driver, and are implemented using one of about 3 or 4 chipsets - and made using one of about 4 or 5 reference designs. The only variability is (a) whether the adapter has other co-existing functions [e.g. a hub], which does not IMHO have any specific correlation with quality, and/or (b) the warranty and ease of contacting tech support.

Mind you, all the same goes for USB-SATA adapters.

There's still some room to differentiate on USB-C to NVMe adapters, but even that market is rapidly coalescing and consolidating.

-Adam

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From: Roundtable <roundtable-bounces@muug.ca> on behalf of Adam Thompson <athompso@athompso.net>
Sent: Monday, January 23, 2023 7:42:43 AM
To: Continuation of Round Table discussion <roundtable@muug.ca>
Subject: Re: [RndTbl] USB3 to Ethernet, to make NAS

I don't understand - the drive and the NIC are orthogonal to each other. Based on your email, an eSATA port might make sense, but I'm not seeing how an USB NIC helps you at all.

Please clarify?

-Adam

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From: Roundtable <roundtable-bounces@muug.ca> on behalf of Hartmut W Sager <hwsager@marityme.net>
Sent: Monday, January 23, 2023 2:14:57 AM
To: MUUG - Round Table <roundtable@muug.ca>
Subject: [RndTbl] USB3 to Ethernet, to make NAS

Can someone here recommend some specific USB3 to Ethernet hardware adapters, to make a reliable NAS drive. I want this architecture because the external USB3 drive will frequently need to be disconnected from NAS usage and connected locally to another computer via USB (for certain data updates).

Hartmut - +1-204-339-8331

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