Airport extreme/time capsule help

[ConfusedMac29]

Hello

I was wondering if anyone can advise me on something.

I want to set up a wireless network with a hard drive.

The idea being that I will have my iTunes library on the hard drive so anywhere in the house on my ATV,macbook,iPad,iPhone I can access the library and watch my films wirelessly using homesharing.
I would also like to be able to put files on the hard drive wirelessly

Now the question that I can't seem to find a answer to is:

Do I buy a airport extreme and a hard drive to plug in?

or

Do I buy the time capsule?

I'm really stumped and don't want to buy the wrong thing.

thanks for your help

 

[EmpyreanUK]

Hello

I was wondering if anyone can advise me on something.

I want to set up a wireless network with a hard drive.

The idea being that I will have my iTunes library on the hard drive so anywhere in the house on my ATV,macbook,iPad,iPhone I can access the library and watch my films wirelessly using homesharing.
I would also like to be able to put files on the hard drive wirelessly

Now the question that I can't seem to find a answer to is:

Do I buy a airport extreme and a hard drive to plug in?

or

Do I buy the time capsule?

I'm really stumped and don't want to buy the wrong thing.

thanks for your help

Either would work. If 2TB of storage is enough, then the Time Capsule will probably be the cheapest and most straight-forward approach. However, an AirPort Extreme will allow you to control the storage yourself, meaning you can decide what size discs to use and easily swap it for a bigger HD in the future.

 

[Macman45]

If it were me I'd go for the Airport Extreme. It's cheaper, and supports the new AAC wifi standards...So does the new Time Capsule, but I've always used mine purely for backups, and never partitioned it for other uses...It can be done, but reports here and on other boards suggest that it can cause issues with backups...If you don't need the backup facility then the Extreme is the way to go IMO.

 

[waw74]

The idea being that I will have my iTunes library on the hard drive so anywhere in the house on my ATV,macbook,iPad,iPhone I can access the library and watch my films wirelessly using homesharing.
I would also like to be able to put files on the hard drive wirelessly

You must still have a computer powered on and running iTunes to access the files from you aTV, iphone, and ipad. They can not access the time capsule directly.
The computer can access those file over the network and share them though.

Now the question that I can't seem to find a answer to is:

Do I buy a airport extreme and a hard drive to plug in?

or

Do I buy the time capsule?

the function the exact same way, an airport extreme + a 2TB external drive functions exactly the same way that a 2TB time capsule does.

the only difference might be...
if you are using gigabit ethernet (or possibly the AC wireless if your computer supports it), the internal drive should be faster than an external.
otherwise 10/100 wired and 802.11N are all slower than USB2, so the drive will be as fast as your network connection.

If it were me I'd go for the Airport Extreme. It's cheaper

not really cheaper

airport extreme - $199
Time capsule 2TB - $299
Time capsule 3TB - $399


2TB external hard drives are around the $100 range, and you don't have a second piece of equipment sitting there (possibly having to be plugged in to power also, not sure how much power is available in the USB port)

although the $200 premium is a bit much for the 3TB, you'd get a log more bang for about the same amount of $ with the 2TB internal and a 2TB external.

 

[mic j]

I have done it both ways. Currently have an AEBS w attached 300GB HD.

My previous TC died (think the power supply died because of heat...a documented issue with earlier TC's). So remember, if you buy it as a unit and something goes wrong, you have to re-purchase both. After using the TC for a couple years, I came to the conclusion that 1TB of backup was way overkill. Basically it comes down to the bigger the drive the further back in time you can go. But frankly...who needs to go back over a year? Currently, the 300GB drive allows me to go back over a year and I still have 27GB free. Once it gets filled, it will delete the oldest backups as needed to make space for new backups.

Unless you are really interested in the "look" of an integrated unit, I would go with the AEBS and buy an inexpensive USB HD. And remember, if one or the other dies, you only have to replace the failed unit, not the whole thing.

I would also recommend doing monthly backups using something like SuperDuper or CarbonCopy. If you run into a serious situation, having a full system backup on a bootable HD make crisis recovery much easier (and quicker) than a full recovery from a TC.

 

[Mr-Kerrse]

I have an airport extreme with 1tb drive attached but my atv2 is jailbroken so no need to have the computer running although that is also accessible when needed as it's set to wake for network access.

 

[ConfusedMac29]

Thanks everyone

I think I'm going to go for....... The Air port extreme and Ex Hard drive.

As its a little cheaper and with the hard drive I can disconnect it and take it some where if I have to.

But I would like to have it all in one as it'll look better but you can't have everything.

I didn't realise that you need the mac on for the home sharing to work that is a bit of a pain. But I guess I'll just have to work around it. Maybe something will come out or be updated one day to solve that without me having to jailbreak anything.