Buffalo? Drobo? Airport Extreme? Time Machine?

[RobPink]

Right, I've currently got my macbook connected to my airport network with my airport extreme (set to N), with a seagate freeagent drive plugged in through the USB port and backing up via time machine fine, also on the drive is films and TV shows. This all worked fine, but I've been through 3 drives!! They all seemed to fail and coem to a grinding (literally) holt! I'm sensing that the drive can't keep up with the use that our household requires. So now I've resorted to simpliy plugging in a new drive (not seagate) via USB directly to my macbook to backup and I have yet another drive with TV shows and films on, which is also plugged directly in via USB.

What I'd like it a good wireless backup system that time machine can use and also a place to put all the media.

Since I've had a bit of bad luck, I'd like to have a RAID solution too, but I know that the airport can't handle small software RAID enclosures, so that makes things a little more pricey.

I've seen a Buffalo NAS solution Buffalo Linkstation Pro Duo 1TB adverstied here..(I'm in the UK by the way)

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/149259

Can I use this with the extreme plugged in with the ethernet cable and have access over the wireless network to the drive and can I also perform time machine backups to this?
I've seen a lot of posts on Drobo solutions, but this is a little cheaper and was seeing if anyone has any experience with this setup.
Thanks for looking!

 

[MikeBrWade]

I have one and have been unable to set it up to work with time machine, has anyone had any better luck?

 

[TheHoff]

Is it the same brand / model of drive that has failed every time? Have you considered that maybe the space that the drive is in or the enclosure itself is getting too hot? Something seems to be amiss with three failures like that even under hard use.

I personally have a Nexxtech two drive enclosure; it has a RAID controller so I have it with two TB drives in a mirror mode. The enclosure itself is well built and has a fan for cooling... much cheaper to build it yourself like that with a good enclosure than go for a Drobo.