I have an 80 user network with Notebooks. I need to set up a file share system and a system that does incrimental backups on important users. Oh, and I cannot fund a nice File Server. I want to buy a couple of NAS hard drives that connect to the network via Ethernet rather than connecting external hard drives to a notebook on the net. Will a NAS system run faster/slower/same as harddrives off of a user? Are there any tips or tricks that I could get to make a fault tolerant network without buying an expensive server?

Network Attached Storage (NAS) is a low-cost way to store things on a network, and quite good at its intended use. Not the fastest but certainly reliable, decent speeds, usually above 25mbs.

Do you think the slow speed will be noticeable to the user when the backup is occuring?