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Connect external drive to router or to mac?

dickovski

dickovski

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 17, 2007
126
1
Norwich, UK
Which is the better/faster/reliable way to serve my iTunes library from an external hard drive.

1. shared usb drive connected to Airport Extreme

or

2. shared usb drive connected to iMac

Whole network is wireless

Am I right in thinking that 1. will be a longer journey and therefore slower. i.e. router - iMac - router - ATV whereas 2. is just iMac - router -ATV

I have it set up as 2. at the moment and haven't had any problems but would like to share the iTunes library with another mac and 2 Droid phones when the iMac is not running.
 
ragu

ragu

macrumors member
Sep 8, 2009
57
3
dickovski said:
Which is the better/faster/reliable way to serve my iTunes library from an external hard drive.

1. shared usb drive connected to Airport Extreme

or

2. shared usb drive connected to iMac

Whole network is wireless

Am I right in thinking that 1. will be a longer journey and therefore slower. i.e. router - iMac - router - ATV whereas 2. is just iMac - router -ATV

I have it set up as 2. at the moment and haven't had any problems but would like to share the iTunes library with another mac and 2 Droid phones when the iMac is not running.
Click to expand...

I would think that using your IMac means it is always on to stream but if you connected to the airport extreme it would be able to stream without the IMac and others can access it also...:)
 
A

Alrescha

macrumors 68020
Jan 1, 2008
2,156
317
dickovski said:
Am I right in thinking that 1. will be a longer journey and therefore slower. i.e. router - iMac - router - ATV whereas 2. is just iMac - router -ATV
Click to expand...

Yes. Option 1 will effectively double the load on your wireless network. If all your are doing is watching a movie, it will still work fine. If there are other things using your wireless network, they might be affected.

A.
 
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