Here's my situation. I currently have an iMac and 2 Windows laptops. The iMac gets the most use by far. All machines share an internet connection. For various reasons, this is done wirelessly for all, using my Airport Express. What I now want to do is expand the storage for my iMac. I currently have 250GB and would like to expand such that I have enough for Time Machine and also enough to store my ever-increasing photo and music collections. That's my main goal. But as a secondary goal, I would like the additional security and flexibility of a NAS RAID box. I'm sort of stuck as to which way to proceed. I would also like this to be easy and (relatively) inexpensive. Any thoughts or guidance is appreciated. Thanks.
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Advice Needed: External HDD or NAS?
- Thread starter The Monkey
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I've been there too and ended up the easy route.
I bought a Airport extreme and attached a large HDD to the AE,
now all my machines can access it via wifi.
Hope this helps a little.
I bought a Airport extreme and attached a large HDD to the AE,
now all my machines can access it via wifi.
Hope this helps a little.
Time Machine can not access a NAS drive. I know, I know, that sucks. I had went out and bought a 2Tb NAS drive only to find that out the hard way.
So the quick and dirty way to do this would be to attach the external HD to the AE, which will be accessible to all? How's the performance? And would Time Machine work?
No Time Machine is not working out of the box as of yet but I believe there is a 3rd party hack out there that will make it work.
As far as speed is concerned it's fine for most things Unless you transfer huge files but you will have the same problem with a NAS if you transfer to or from it via Wifi
Thanks. For now, I think I will probably get a big external drive and maybe one that is smaller and portable for travel. Which brings me to my next question, should I go for an "all-in-one" solution or should I buy an external HDD and an enclosure? What are the main advantages to both?
It actually does work, just not out of the box.
I actually have both an external and an NAS. External is more for portable storage. NAS is used for media sharing in the house and Time Machine backups.
I let my iMac back up over Wireless G. The initial backup took 3 days. I have to say, I don't even notice it running. I have tested it, it seems to be working pretty well.
If you want ease of use, get the external drive. If you want flexibility and features, get the NAS drive.