External hard drive - WD My Book Live vs Toshiba Stor.e 2 Alu

[EwanMcTeagle]

Hi guys,

I’m looking for an external hard drive and I’ve been contemplating this for a month now – maybe I have read too much.
I would really appreciate your advice, since most reviews I'd read concerned the Windows ecosystem.
The thing is:
currently I have 2 TB Time Capsule which I use for TM back ups and iTunes library (works great, but with 3 MacBooks that available space will run out sooner or later). So I would like an external hard drive to store my movies that I could then watch on my TV (Panasonic TX-P50ST50E or something like that and store some media and other data from my girlfriend's and my MacBooks.

First contender: WD my Book Studio

After browsing couple of options the 2TB WD My Book Live became my first choice – since it’s Ethernet connected I could connect it to the Time Capsule and… be done with it. Then just stream movies to my TV, move files and all of that with high speeds since it would be Ethernet based – the TC has great speeds, so I assumed the WD would be the same…
But then I read lots of reviews that the WD's speeds are horrible and on top of it all it breaks down all the time…
So I thought, okay, maybe it wasn’t meant to be. Maybe I should go with something simple(r) – standard USB drive connected to the USB on my Time Capsule – I found the Toshiba Stor.e 2 Alu – it looks nice and has rather positive reviews.

And now I'm in a puzzle.

On the one hand the WD

is easy to access on the local network, should work flawlessly with my TV, but...
it’s painfully slow and seems to be failing quite often.

On the other hand the Toshiba

should be faster, seems more reliable and it's cheaper, but...
will I be able to stream movies on the TV when the drive is connected to the Time Capsule?


Thank you in advance for your opinions and advice.

PS. Also if you had experience with either drives – don’t hesitate to have your say here☺


Regards.

 

[Weaselboy]

I would not buy the WD simply because you are kind of replicating functionality you already have at extra cost. Your Time Capsule is already capable of sharing an attached drive over the network.

Also, speed of the drive is not going to be much of a factor given you are sharing this over the network. The limiting factor is going to be the network speed, not the drive speed.

Just get an inexpensive USB drive in whatever size you want at a good price.

I have been pretty happy with the WD MyPassport series of drives. Not that they are better than others, but they seem to be available everywhere at a good price.

Short version> You are putting too much thought into this. Just get a cheap USB drive to attach to the TC.

 

[FreakinEurekan]

2nd vote for USB. You already have the Time Capsule, know how to use it, just plug in another drive & be done with it.

 

[EwanMcTeagle]

Thanks guys,
that's what I've been slowly leaning towards to. And you're probably right about me overthinking it

I think I'll go with the Toshiba since it's cheaper than, for example: WD Passport ($105 vs $165) and it seems that it's more accessible in case I want to replace the hard drive in the future. I don't need a portable drive (got Flash drives for that) and I have lots of space on and around my desk to accomodate the bigger Toshiba.

Once again thanks for your input guys. I needed that outside look at things