External Hard Drive Dilemma!

[SJamG]

Hello,

I have a 2007 Mac Mini which serves as a media centre with 1TB worth of Music/Movies and the time has come to upgrade my External HDD.

I currently use a 1TB Western Digital My Book (Firewire), which has been excellent, but has ran out of space! I did have my eye on the 2TB MyBook, as it was Firewire also...but they seem to have stopped stocking it (and adopted USB 3.0 - BOO!). Just for your info, I have another WD 2TB USB 2.0 drive which is my Time Machine.

I have been trying to find a worthy replacement and need help. Here are the requirements :

- Must be 2Tb
- Around the £130 mark
- Fast interface

I had thought about a NAS device and plug both the mac and the drive into the router, which would (in theory) give me 1Gbps transfer. It also must handle multiple machines reading from it (Apple TV etc)

Reliability is a must and so is robustness...its on 24/7 365!

Any suggestions and recommendations are greatly appreciated.

 

[afroAnt]

Have a look at owc (http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/) they have some pretty good reviews, I'm looking at geting the Elite Pro mini.

 

[Hillskill]

I'd reccommend a 2 Bay NAS. It will grow with you and be more then capable of handling throughput for multiple clients. I have a QNAP 419 which I upgraded from a QNAP 409 and its great. I use it for timemachine backups, itunes server, serving video to Popcorn hour streamers and tons more. RAID protection for your data is also a benefit. Its a little over your stated budget but will mean that you have a neater and more usable solution. I have seen 2nd hand enclosures go for around £100 so you should be able to get something decent if you can slightly increase your budget.