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I hate wires! Re:wireless external HD

N

nimr0d

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 31, 2006
67
0
So i have a MBP, originally i had wires coming out of it on all sides, i fixed this by getting an airport express for my speakers, and getting a bluetooth mouse. Now all i have plugged in is the power(obviously no wireless here) and my external harddrive(USB). I would like to get rid of this wire, even if it means having to buy a new external. Are there any like bluetooth wireless harddrives? The last thing i'd like to do is have to buy one of those network drives, since i'm on wireless, it'll probably be too slow for me.
 
A Bluetooth wireless drive is not something that I think exists, but if it did it would be extremely slow. A network drive over wireless would actually be faster. I think your best bet would be a network drive, or just stick with the USB.
 
vniow said:
http://www.engadget.com/2006/03/13/live-from-cebit-the-widrive-wifi-drive-enclosure/
Click to expand...


hah yea i saw that today, actually thats what inspired this post. I'll probably get stuck getting a cheaper/non portable version of that.

While we're on topic, since i dont have anything plugged into my airport express, would i be able to plug a network drive into the airport express, that way the network drive would at least be in the same room as me(the wireless linksys is 2 rooms away)
 
There are quite a few Network Attached Storage (NAS) products available, both as enclosures (the Asus box above) and full implementations;these would attach to your wireless network. Unfortunately, most of the home versions of NAS all have some kind of severe limitation, usually in max file size and throughput; most of them "die" with any kind of constant backup going on. There are also commercial solutions that probably get around these issues, but they cost mucho dinero (as in thousands of dallars). I looked into this seriously for a while and finally gave up and went for a FW drive enclosure. If you want to pursue this anyway, the one that seems to get the best reviews is the Buffalo LinkStation:

http://www.buffalotech.com/products/storage.php
 
nimr0d said:
no mention of mac compatibility....but theres no reason for it not to work.
Click to expand...
I don't know about this one in particular, but some of the NAS solutions require a special driver on the host end, and if they don't provide a Mac driver then they won't work.
 
If you're prepared to wait, wireless USB is on the way. Wireless FireWire was planned way back when the standard was defined, but Apple isn't putting the same weight behind the standard that it once was, so it's now unlikely.
 
I use a linksys NAS device.....cost £50 and is extreeeeemmmmly customisable & even overclockable !.......do a search on google for "linksys slug"

It has 2 USB2 ports, an ethernet and runs a copy of linux.....

If you put the unslung firmware on it it can do loads of other tasks too....such as web server, ftp server, proxy, itunes server e.t.c. e.t.c..........

It works with both my MAC's and PC's
 
I hate wires too (to get back on thread topic) does anyone know a way to use a 30inch ACD with a MBP without contantly hooking up the cable? a network/usb/BT solution? It gets really annoying, thanks
 
i also hate wires. i loathe them....and one day WILL achieve the ultimate complete wire free setup!!! mostly i hide the wires down behind my desk, and am getting a new belkin hub soon....so that will sit under my iCurve, and will channel all the USB-ness away behind the desk. the power i can do nothing about, as with the firewire cable for my maxtor drive. the network is solvable, but since i live in student halls, wirelss is pretty pointless as the laptop never really leaves my desk during day to day use. plus, i get the added security with the cable, and one more power socket free by not going wireless. i have a BT keyboard, which i love.

overall, ive decided that if you are going to have a good setup wit the pheripherals you want, you are going to have to make wire related sacrifices....screw moores law, the number of wires there are as you buy more devices increases exponentially!!!!!!!!!!!

S
 
SC68Cal said:
Linksys sells that Wireless Storage device for about $100 bucks that would do the job. http://www.compusa.com/products/product_info.asp?product_code=314464&pfp=XSELLPROD&xsfrom=329231&xsdesc=Slingbox

Just plug that all in next to your wireless router, and you're done.

If someone already posted this info already, sorry.
Click to expand...


with something like this, will the drive show up as a seperate drive on my computer? or do you have to use an FTP program to access the drive?
 
nimr0d said:
with something like this, will the drive show up as a seperate drive on my computer? or do you have to use an FTP program to access the drive?
Click to expand...

With most of those, (I apologize, I don't know the exact specs on that model,) you connect to it like you would connect to any network server: Go -> Connect to Server -> Type in name, click connect -> choose 'share' (i.e. the drive,) click connect.

It appears on your desktop as a network drive:
Drives.png

(Macintosh HD and Backup HD are on my eMac.)
 
Mounting FW drive from another machine...

Sorry if this is hi-jacking but I have a related question...

I had two firewire drives connected to my iMac. I use the drives for video editing. I have a G4 Cube connected to my TV down in the basement. The cube and imac are on my network. If I plug the firewire drives into the cube and then connect and mount these drives upstairs on the iMac what type of speed will I get?

Will there be a bottle neck? I use theses drives for video editing and DVD authoring so I'm worried about the data throughput. Will this solution work?

Here is a diagram:

iMac (primary machine)---->ethernet---->G4 Cube-->firewire drive
 
Depending on your network connection, you'll have a 10MBPS connection between the computers with a wireless connection, or up to 100MBPS with ethernet. I don't think that's going to be the bottleneck
 
I brought an old G3 PowerMac for £50, put an 8 port RAID5 SATA card in, and am awaiting delivery of 3x 300GB SATA drives. When they arrive, I'll plug it back into my wireless router.

Problem solved.

I control it with Apple Remote Desktop from my main computer which is a powerbook laptop.

The G3 also runs my home website and media files.

Cheaper and bigger than a NAT. It's nice being able to access 1TB wirelessly from the sofa. For heavy video editing, I put the G3 into Target mode and run a firewire cable to my laptop for higher speed than most NATs can give.

xoox Tomato
 
sigamy said:
Will there be a bottle neck? I use theses drives for video editing and DVD authoring so I'm worried about the data throughput. Will this solution work?

Here is a diagram:

iMac (primary machine)---->ethernet---->G4 Cube-->firewire drive
Click to expand...

Yes, this will work. However you will want to ensure that any scratch space used by your editing app is stored locally on the iMac.
 
SC68Cal said:
Depending on your network connection, you'll have a 10MBPS connection between the computers with a wireless connection, or up to 100MBPS with ethernet. I don't think that's going to be the bottleneck
Click to expand...

Network speeds are measured in 'bits' per second, not bytes. FireWire is measured in 'bits' as well, but hard drive transfer speeds are measured in bytes.

So even 100 megabit is slower (12.5 megabytes per second,) than even the slowest reasonably modern hard drive. The network is your bottleneck, period. (Unless you're using a circa-1998 or earlier 4 GB or smaller drive.)
 
Here's the drive I'm going to order soon for the same purpose.

link

It's just a network attached drive, not built in wireless, but you plug it into your wireless router somewhere hidden away, and it does the same thing. And you can plug in 3 more USB 2 drives, and it will share them on the network. That's awesome! 300gig for around $250 with all those features is pretty reasonable too. If you have a 802.11g router, the speed is enough for streaming Divx no problem.
 
Things to remember with the Networked Attached Storage devices being suggested:

A drive hooked up to the network will run much slower than the same drive connected directly to your computer.

The maximum signaling speed for various connections are; 10 base T ethernet is a 10Mb/s connection, 100 base 10 ethernet is a 100Mb/s connection, USB2 is a 480Mb/s connection, 1394a is a 400Mb/s connection, 1394b is an 800Mb/s connection. Drives hooked up internally run at; IDE ATA/66 runs at about 533Mb/s, ATA/133 is around 1.064Gb/s, SATA is on the order of 1.2Gb/s with SATA II pushing 2.4Gb/s. These are the signaling speeds meaning that data throughput will be lower due to communication overhead and limitations with the speed of your drives.

Many of the cheap NAS devices only support the SMB protocol. This is great if you are accessing the NAS from MS Windows since the SMB protocol is modeled after Windows filesystem concepts and limitations. When your primary purpose is to access the NAS from OS X, being stuck with the SMB protocol can cause serious problems. The obvious problems are those related to file size limits and file naming issues.

If you are focused on a NAS for use with OS X, you should try to find one that supports Apple File Sharing (AFP), or second best is Network File Server (NFS) support.
 
I'm going to have to test my solution (map FW drives from one machine to another via wired ethernet network) to see if there is any lag or bottleneck for video editing. I'll test it this weekend and report back here.
 
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