[EDIT]: sorry, I missed one message. :S What I say is that you could have a portable server solution no much bigger than an external hard drive itself with good read/write performances with an Ethernet switch, at the higher cost of having to setup a lot of (fun) things and a few money, and more hardware to carry around.


Another approach woud be another machine dedicated to distribute a networked filesystem (NFS, 9P...). This woud then be a SAN. This is also suited for storing the operating system files (/bin, /lib...).

If it is for storage, you could also go for a NAS, and use a protocol such as FTP, BitTorrent (once libgbt will be ready ;)), rsync...

Or you could also use a server with protocol dedicated to every kind of media: a streaming platform (or plain static HTTP website), fileserver, and if "important things" are code and mostly plain text, a git server would make it quite safe.

The you will have freedom in the kind of filesystem to use.

This would involve having another computer. A RaspberryPi or other ARM board, an old laptop (broken screen/keyboard/soundspeakers, a one too slow for daily use...). A 1GB or 10GB switch would allow direct, fast connection with the storage computer, and eventually connection to a network.