Hard drive for use with airport extreme and sometimes direct to mac

[PDE]

I'm about to get a new drive for backing up two macs on my network. I know airport extreme airdisk is slow, but I don't mind because I can just leave it on at night and let it all take care of itself. I just want something reliable, durable and nicely designed...from a company that will stand by their products.

I've been looking at these drives:

newertech ministack v2 and v3

newertech ministack NAS (USB2 and ethernet)

Lacie D2 HD Quadra

500GB Lacie Enet Disk Mini



Any good advice? Thanks!

 

[lag1090]

Buying a NAS is probably not your best option if you plan to use the drive with USB 2.0 devices. The AirPort base station has an USB 2 port for drive sharing, so the extra cost for the ethernet interface on the NAS is unjustified. If you're planning on using more than one drive over the network, a NAS would make a good additional drive, as your USB 2 port on the router would already be occupied by the first drive.

 

[PDE]

Buying a NAS is probably not your best option if you plan to use the drive with USB 2.0 devices. The AirPort base station has an USB 2 port for drive sharing, so the extra cost for the ethernet interface on the NAS is unjustified. If you're planning on using more than one drive over the network, a NAS would make a good additional drive, as your USB 2 port on the router would already be occupied by the first drive.

thanks. Is the bottleneck the airport extreme or the drive connection? Is an ethernet connection preferable to a USB2 connection?

Just trying to figure out the advantages/disadvantages of using NAS and USB2 over the wireless network. From what I've read, it seem the router is the bottleneck so perhaps it doesn't matter much which drive I get.


Any experience with the drives I mentioned? Or maybe there are better ones out there?

Thanks again!

 

[numbersyx]

Ethernet is much better than USB. Sounds like you have the older Airport Extreme which is still better than USB. The new AEBS is actually gigabit ethernet and if you had that you would be far better off getting a gigabit NAS to attach via ethernet.

 

[lag1090]

Ethernet is much better than USB. Sounds like you have the older Airport Extreme which is still better than USB. The new AEBS is actually gigabit ethernet and if you had that you would be far better off getting a gigabit NAS to attach via ethernet.

The OP is backing up via wireless, so an ethernet NAS isn't going to do anything over an USB drive. The chief bottleneck is the network connection itself. Now if the OP were connecting the computers to the base station via ethernet, that'd be a different story.

 

[lag1090]

Any experience with the drives I mentioned? Or maybe there are better ones out there?

I would just buy a regular desktop drive and shove it into an USB 2 enclosure. It'll be much cheaper than a packaged enclosure with the drive already in it (the type of drives you mentioned). Otherwise, find a NAS enclosure and put the regular drives in it. NAS enclosures can be expensive, so make sure you get one that isn't too unreasonable. As for installing the drives in the enclosures, it's not a problem for most people. It's just a matter of mounting the drive with the included screws inside the enclosure and connecting two cables.

 

[PDE]

Thanks. I ended up buying the segate freeagent pro 500gb for $180 shipped, which I think was pretty reasonable given that it has a 5 year warranty. I also realized that that the airport backup is just not fast enough so I'll leave that until future technology improves things.

Anyway, thanks for all the advice!

 

[numbersyx]

The OP is backing up via wireless, so an ethernet NAS isn't going to do anything over an USB drive. The chief bottleneck is the network connection itself. Now if the OP were connecting the computers to the base station via ethernet, that'd be a different story.

I have tried both and the NAS is noticeably faster than the AirDisk option