Network storage devices

[eetaylog]

At the moment im running a media centre that accesses all my films, music and photos from a remote desktop server that uses wake on LAN, so whenever i turn my media centre on, it wakes the server up through a wired network connection.

up until now ive been fairly happy with storing my media this way, but there are the odd occasions when the wake on LAN function doesnt work properly, so the server ends up staying on permenently and wasting power (one example was when we came home from holiday a few weeks ago, and the server was booted up, so mustve been on all week).

i want to find another way of attaching network storage, so that its only powered up when i want to access data stored on it.

ive looked at various options such as NAS, but i was wondering if there are any other ways of doing it, such as a usb solid state device with RJ45 ports that doesnt need any external power (im looking for 2Tb of storage by the way)?

sorry for the essay! any help appreciated