External Hard Drive Suggestions For A Small Business

[Source]

Hi guys,

We've been meaning to buy a new external hard drive to house all of our project work for a while now.

Ideally we would like something that we can plug into our router and access from our homes as well, or at the very least, one which is capable of multiple direct connections.

We've looked at Western Digital options as our typical choice, but I can't seem to see whether the latest mac compatible line-up have those options we want:

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/index.asp?cat=33

Can you guys recommend any external storage you use?

Cheers!

 

[Source]

No one has any recommendations whatsoever?

I guess it's a rare thing to have a hard drive you can plug into your modem which you can access from anywhere in the world?

 

[belvdr]

If using the latest AEBS, pick up any USB storage device you want and share it out. I have a LaCie 1TB that's been chugging along just fine.

 

[waw74]

you could look at something like the new drobo FS.

It allows up to 5 drives, and also gives you protection from a single drive failure.
(if they are all the same size, it uses 1 drive of the group for backup, so 3 x 2TB drives would be 1 backup and 2x2TB drives for data), they have a calculator on their site to see what different capacities will get you. (you can also have double drive failure protection, but your total capacity will be a smaller percentage of the total)
and if your needs expand, just pop in another drive, so 3x2TB for data, and 1 for back up.

It has a gig-ethernet connection, so you just plug it into your network. it also will allow faster access than a single drive would. and shares via AFP (looks like a mac shared drive on the network) or SMB (looks like a windows drive)

it's not cheap, about $700 (without drives). This model has only been out for about a week, so reviews and reliability reports are still a bit thin. They have a similar version (drobo s) that's been out for a while with eSATA, FireWire 800, and USB 2.0 instead of the ethernet.

it also has the ability to run what they call droboapps, which will let you set up an FTP or web server to access your files, you would just have to set up the appropriate ports on the router to access the files from outside your network

We've looked at Western Digital options as our typical choice, but I can't seem to see whether the latest mac compatible line-up have those options we want:

for all the drives in the link, your router must have a USB port. and the router will handle all of the file sharing needs, the drive is basically just "dumb storage"

You need to look at what the router needs, not what computers you're going to be using it with.
Unless it's an airport extreme/time machine, chances are it will need a windows formatted drive, even though you will be accessing it from a mac.

If you want to access from the internet, would have to be set up in the router.


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If your router doesn't have file sharing capabilities, then you either need the drobo I mentioned above or, some other form of NAS like the ones from WD
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/index.asp?cat=14

 

[thegoldenmackid]

http://guides.macrumors.com/External_Hard_Drives