£322 TimeCapsule vs £170 3rd Party 1Tb NAS

[JasonGough]

Hi folks!

I've been for a few weeks now, gearing up for a post xmas upgrade to my external storage. suprise suprise my 500gb drive is now filled. who'd have thought it?!

so i checked out the TimeCapsual 1Gb and its still just as expensive as when it came out a year ago or so.. i would hope the price would come down in line with the dropping storage costs of today. maybe at MacWorld??

as i paid for an AirPort extreme when Leopard came out being excited about 'AirDisk' working i'm already £100 down so to speak, so maybe paying £320 to add a 1Tb drive to my draft N network isn't a great idea..

I've found a nice looking 1Tb NAS drive by Freecom

this boy offers 1Tb, Torrent Client for un-interrupted downloads when i take my MacBook Pro out the house (TC doesn't do this right?!), and also remote access to my files, again for when my MBP is out the house. all sounds great!

But last night i learnt about this thing called 'Hard-Link'. Its a file writing syncing system thing and that most drives don't support it, which puts you at serious risk of finding your TimeMachine backups are not guaranteed to be fully accurate come that dark day when you actually need it to work. TimeCapsule does support this. but i've seen so many stories of headache and woe about the TC that i don't know if its trust worthy investment of an extra £150...

There must be a lot of peeps in this same predicament, i'd love to hear some help and advice before i buy (after MacWorld of course)

big thanks!

 

[gazfocus]

I've been looking at the possibility of Time Capsule vs another NAS too, although I don't already have the AEBS. The NAS that I have been looking at is the IcyBox NAS4220 because you can put whatever size drives you want in, and run them in any RAID config.

It also had the Bittorrent server, FTP Server, Samba Server (for sharing with both Windows and Mac), and it has 2 USB ports so you can connect your current external hard drive and share that over the network as well as connecting a printer too.

I do love the design of the Time Capsule and I'm not sure if you can use NAS drives yet with Time Machine (does anyone know?) as last time I looked into it, Time Machine wouldn't recognise the NAS drives.

 

[OllyW]

Have you tried plugging a USB drive into your AirPort Extreme?

I've got a WD 1TB working with mine. I'm not using it for Time Machine at the moment but your post got me thinking so I'm giving it a go.

I'll let you know how it works out, it could save you a bit of money.

 

[The SpinDoctor]

Am I right in saying that if I plug an external HDD; USB2 or Firewire, directly into an MBP, I could use it for a Time Machine backup?

 

[gazfocus]

Am I right in saying that if I plug an external HDD; USB2 or Firewire, directly into an MBP, I could use it for a Time Machine backup?

Yep that's correct

 

[The SpinDoctor]

Yep that's correct

Thats quite good; thanks for the info

 

[JasonGough]

Gazfocus, the Icy Box does sound like a great option having read up about it.

I have 2 concerns tho...

firstly, i still don't know anymore about this 'Hard-Link' spec that apparently TimeCapsule has but most others don't. If i'm backing up my data i don't want to risk it being no use when i finally need to recover it.

2ndly, and this might just be a windows issue, reviews of the Icy Box are saying cos it doesn't support NTFS only FAT, you can't use files larger than 4Gb using that drive. do you know is HTFS works on that NAS setup? I'm up for those new Seagate 1.5Tb drives! hell yeah

what does anyone know about 'Hard-Link'? i think thats my main question. i think it could concern everyone here if people are backing up their data in a potentially un-safe manner...

 

[neiltc13]

Network storage is still either horrendously expensive for a good setup or ridiculously slow if you buy a consumer one. I say avoid it at all costs.

I had a Time Capsule, and apart from it being a terrible router which played havoc with my devices, transfer speeds were excruciatingly slow, even over 'n' WiFi. I returned it to the store when it developed a fault and I got a Seagate Freeagent Desk for Mac with FireWire 800 - the difference in transfer speeds is amazing, and I never get a failed backup now, whereas with Time Capsule I got them all the time.

Good riddance to bad rubbish.

 

[gazfocus]

Gazfocus, the Icy Box does sound like a great option having read up about it.

I have 2 concerns tho...

firstly, i still don't know anymore about this 'Hard-Link' spec that apparently TimeCapsule has but most others don't. If i'm backing up my data i don't want to risk it being no use when i finally need to recover it.

2ndly, and this might just be a windows issue, reviews of the Icy Box are saying cos it doesn't support NTFS only FAT, you can't use files larger than 4Gb using that drive. do you know is HTFS works on that NAS setup? I'm up for those new Seagate 1.5Tb drives! hell yeah

what does anyone know about 'Hard-Link'? i think thats my main question. i think it could concern everyone here if people are backing up their data in a potentially un-safe manner...

NTFS is (as you know) a Windows File System. If you are using the IcyBox for just OSX, I believe you can use Journaled formatting which is the same as your main OSX hard drive will be. Therefore, I wouldn't worry about not having NTFS.

I'm not an expert on Time Machine or how the Time Capsule works but maybe the Hard-Link is the method Apple use to ensure you're not able to use a regular NAS drive as a time machine drive??

 

[The SpinDoctor]

I still think £300+ for a 1TB NAS unit and wifi router is still a tad expensive; I just think ill spend £130 on a Western Digital My book Studio

 

[JasonGough]

yeah i know that its expensive doing the NAS route, but i've had an external 500gb drive for a year and lets face it, if you have a MacBook you don't want to move the drive around the appartment with you to access your files.

Yeah a FW800 backup will be well fast, but once the first one is done the incremental backups are small and over draft N shouldn't take much effort.

Also being able to torrent whilst you & your MBP are out the house is a great benefit.

In answer to a question earlier, yeah i have had my WD MyBook Pro connected to the AEBS, but the stupid thing spins down after however long and then won't wake unless you walk thru and unplug it and re-connect it. not very smooth as solutions go for remote and convenient access.

I am interested in the idea of having the Icy NAS case with 2 bays, i can buy a 1.5Tb drive now and probably a 3Tb drive next year and progressively build my storage without having to buy a new and very expensive TimeCapsule once Apple release a larger capacity model.

Gazforce, i don't believe hard-link is an apple implemented restriction, but i believe its essential for guaranteed syncing of data on drives. I'm trying to find other drives / controllers that feature it but as yet haven't found any.

 

[gazfocus]

Gazforce, i don't believe hard-link is an apple implemented restriction, but i believe its essential for guaranteed syncing of data on drives. I'm trying to find other drives / controllers that feature it but as yet haven't found any.

I'll try and find out more about it for you