Look Ma, No Dongles...

[newellj]

I am the kind of computer user who gives up slowly on wires. OK, my mouse is Bluetooth and I connect to the internet by wifi. I still prefer to transfer files with USB sticks, connect external drives by cable and use an accessory card reader if the computer doesn't have one built in. The rMB obviously challenges those preferences.

I'm actually still not completely decided on the rMB, but Amazon had the 1TB Seagate Wireless Plus external drive on sale yesterday for $120, so I bought one. The reviews and specs look good. As a plus, it includes an SD card reader, too, so it actually kills two wired birds with one wireless stone.

Has anyone else been thinking about a similar change?

 

[Trhodezy]

Has anyone else been thinking about a similar change?

Firstly, nice find!

I too will be going for wireless drives once I've moved all my TB's of data (I run a web design, video editing and music production company; we back up several times but I like to keep personal backup for my portfolios etc) from my thunderbolt hard drives to the cloud (OneDrive) and then to the wireless hard drives (and a couple of USB drives for redundant backup).

I am determined to kill all wires, save for power sources, in my home and on my desk. The rMB will help me.

A couple of things I've learnt over the past couple of years of slowly "going wireless"

1. USE THE CLOUD. Dropbox, OneDrive, Amazon Cloud - whatever your preference - being able to access 99% of your files from your phone or Mac on-the-go is a fantastic feeling. It's like having your office/resources with you 24/7.

2. "Backup" wirelessly (see above) but do a wired backup. Simply because it's better to be safe than sorry.

That's my two pence regarding files/file storage and wirelessness (not sure if that's a word..).

Good luck!

 

[Samuelsan2001]

I have friends that use these....

I am the kind of computer user who gives up slowly on wires. OK, my mouse is Bluetooth and I connect to the internet by wifi. I still prefer to transfer files with USB sticks, connect external drives by cable and use an accessory card reader if the computer doesn't have one built in. The rMB obviously challenges those preferences.

I'm actually still not completely decided on the rMB, but Amazon had the 1TB Seagate Wireless Plus external drive on sale yesterday for $120, so I bought one. The reviews and specs look good. As a plus, it includes an SD card reader, too, so it actually kills two wired birds with one wireless stone.

Has anyone else been thinking about a similar change?

Image

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kingston-Co...TF8&qid=1427892714&sr=8-2&keywords=mobilelite

They are excellent and you can use all your current storage depending on what you want to carry from SD cards to usb hard drives...

They'll also recharge your phones and tablets and stream to them as well, not to mention providing a wifi hotspot when need if you have a wired connection available.

 

[Mildredop]

Amazon review:

Plus Points:

1) Streams without an issue to a number of devices
2) Stores your files as any other USB drive does
3) Um........

Downsides:

1) The security is woeful - make sure you change the security settings before you do anything else
2) The battery is a bit rubbish - it can just about make it through an HD film. If you have a long journey ahead and don't have a power socket or USB port spare then don't expect too much entertainment.
3) The wifi doesn't work if it is plugged into your laptop which means other devices can't access it for streaming
4) It needs gentle treatment of file changes - I bricked mine by trying to transfer 30 HD films in one go from my mac to it. Nothing I did could sort it out and it resulted in me having to send it back to Seagate (who provided a refurbished replacement)
5) Can't be used for Time Machine backups if you want to use it normally (TM reformats the disk)
6) You have to log on to its own wifi network (you then use the device to login to the main wifi network)

 

[Queen6]

Have been using a SanDisk Media Drive for some time with my Mac`s and Tablet. Works as described super small and light 64Gb on board storage and expandable by Micro SD Card. Most impressive is the battery run time being solid state the Media Drive can easily run as long as your Mac.

Have had eight hours of use and the drive can be charged by USB, or generic Powerbank.

Q-6

 

[zainjetha]

Unnecessary I'd say. Everything at this stage can be done through the cloud. A wireless future (without the need for accessories) is already upon us. People's reluctancy to embrace it is baffling.

 

[Queen6]

Unnecessary I'd say. Everything at this stage can be done through the cloud. A wireless future (without the need for accessories) is already upon us. People's reluctancy to embrace it is baffling.

Equally it`s a touch difficult to connect to the Cloud at any decent speed, when your located in remote areas. It`s not reluctance, it`s redundancy

Q-6

 

[aristobrat]

Unnecessary I'd say. Everything at this stage can be done through the cloud. A wireless future (without the need for accessories) is already upon us. People's reluctancy to embrace it is baffling.

It's essentially a local cloud. You know, a cloud that actually works when you don't have Internet access. (i.e. you're traveling as a passenger in a car/train/plane, or you're working on-site with a customer that doesn't allow guests on their network, etc).

 

[bjet767]

When you all say "the cloud" do you mean off site storage of your data or something like "dropbox" and iCloud drive? If you mean the latter two I hope you understand on both of these also store the data locally. They really don't always save space or provide extra storage (the acceptation are iOS devices).

I like the idea of BT external drives but I do use the iCloud drive to make my data easily accessible to multiple devices. What I like is I can work on data when not connected and then when my MBA connects later the iCloud drive is updated automatically.

 

[newellj]

Unnecessary I'd say. Everything at this stage can be done through the cloud. A wireless future (without the need for accessories) is already upon us. People's reluctancy to embrace it is baffling.

On the contrary, the cloud is unsuitable in a variety of situations, so I'd say people's rush to embrace it is baffling. Here's two easy cases. First, the cloud is insecure. A major part of the rMB's role for me is work-related and I cannot put (we are prohibited by our clients from putting) their data on cloud servers. Second, believe it or not, in many places the cloud is either completely unavailable or unreliable due to access limitations. Either of those alone would completely justify local external storage.

 

[Trhodezy]

When you all say "the cloud" do you mean off site storage of your data or something like "dropbox" and iCloud drive?

Good point. When I say the cloud, I mean cloud storage. So OneDrive, *sigh* Bitcasa, Amazon Cloud Drive. Where it gives you the choice to store on the server or locally as well.

Dropbox is also classed as "the cloud" but in specific terms it's actually a "syncing" platform where it does store a local copy. Which I find to be pretty naff. You basically pay for them to store your own files on your hard drive.


I seriously recommend Microsloth's OneDrive, it's actually pretty awesome. Shame about the rest of their products.

 

[drsox]

Unnecessary I'd say. Everything at this stage can be done through the cloud. A wireless future (without the need for accessories) is already upon us. People's reluctancy to embrace it is baffling.

Security, Ownership, Reliability, Access Times. Shall I continue ?

Personal local Cloud ? Maybe.
On a LAN connected NAS ? Certainly.
With 2 levels of Back-up ? Definitely.

 

[newellj]

Amazon review:

Plus Points:

1) Streams without an issue to a number of devices
2) Stores your files as any other USB drive does
3) Um........

Downsides:

1) The security is woeful - make sure you change the security settings before you do anything else
2) The battery is a bit rubbish - it can just about make it through an HD film. If you have a long journey ahead and don't have a power socket or USB port spare then don't expect too much entertainment.
3) The wifi doesn't work if it is plugged into your laptop which means other devices can't access it for streaming
4) It needs gentle treatment of file changes - I bricked mine by trying to transfer 30 HD films in one go from my mac to it. Nothing I did could sort it out and it resulted in me having to send it back to Seagate (who provided a refurbished replacement)
5) Can't be used for Time Machine backups if you want to use it normally (TM reformats the disk)
6) You have to log on to its own wifi network (you then use the device to login to the main wifi network)

OK, but that's a single review out of 952 Amazon reviews, and it's not representative at all. The comment about not being able to use it for TM backups has to be pure error because I've done exactly that with other Seagate and WD externals without any issues at all, so I think the whole "review" is open to question.

Probably more relevant are the various tech site reviews that uniformly give it very high ratings and equally important don't seem to rate competitive products any higher - this product category has not really finished evolving so you have to look at what's available and assess the compromises. Notably the LaCie competitive product doesn't do any better in most reviews and costs a great deal more. At $120, I think you'd be hard pressed to do better.

 

[Rigby]

I am determined to kill all wires, save for power sources, in my home and on my desk. The rMB will help me.

Personally, I don't see the point. I have a couple of USB powered storage devices that don't need additional power supply. It's just plug and go.

With these wireless drives, I basically exchange the USB cable for a power/charger cable. I haven't simplified anything, but now using Internet and accessing the wireless drive at the same time on the go can be a pain, since you either have to switch back and forth between the Internet Wifi and the drive's local hotspot, or connect through the drive (which typically isn't even possible on networks that use a captive portal for authentication, like e.g. most hotels do).

 

[Mildredop]

Probably more relevant are the various tech site reviews that uniformly give it very high ratings

You mean all those tech sites that get free stuff from Seagate and want Seagate to advertise on their site? Okay...

Reading your post made me go to Amazon to buy one. But that review (and the many others) showed-up its cons that people might not be aware of, including using it with Time Machine.

 

[newellj]

You mean all those tech sites that get free stuff from Seagate and want Seagate to advertise on their site? Okay...

Reading your post made me go to Amazon to buy one. But that review (and the many others) showed-up its cons that people might not be aware of, including using it with Time Machine.

The Time Machine comment in that Amazon review is nuts, unless I'm missing something big. I have a WD 2tb external on my Mini and a Seagate 2tb external on my rMBP, both running TM and media. No problems at all. The only thing I can think of is that the person who wrote that expected to be able to use a disk formatted for Mac OS Extended Journaled on a Windows machine, which won't work at all.

 

[magbarn]

The Time Machine comment in that Amazon review is nuts, unless I'm missing something big. I have a WD 2tb external on my Mini and a Seagate 2tb external on my rMBP, both running TM and media. No problems at all. The only thing I can think of is that the person who wrote that expected to be able to use a disk formatted for Mac OS Extended Journaled on a Windows machine, which won't work at all.

Let us know if TM works on this drive as my experience with TM over the years is that it's extremely fickle at times. Even Apple's own Time Capsule HDD has given me TM issues over the years. Assuming that a wifi portable HDD via wireless will behave the same as a directly connected USB HDD with TM is naive.

 

[crsh1976]

Unnecessary I'd say. Everything at this stage can be done through the cloud. A wireless future (without the need for accessories) is already upon us. People's reluctancy to embrace it is baffling.

Wireless is great until it stops working/isn't totally reliable, for those times having a plan B to fall back on (ie. wires) is nice.

 

[newellj]

Let us know if TM works on this drive as my experience with TM over the years is that it's extremely fickle at times. Even Apple's own Time Capsule HDD has given me TM issues over the years. Assuming that a wifi portable HDD via wireless will behave the same as a directly connected USB HDD with TM is naive.

Will do. As mentioned, I have had no issues with either a WD or a Seagate drive on my Mini and rMBP, so I'm optimistic. Who knows...strange things can happen.

 

[fisherking]

Wireless is great until it stops working/isn't totally reliable, for those times having a plan B to fall back on (ie. wires) is nice.

i backup to crashplan these days, but also, regularly, to a usb drive (thru carbon copy cloner). no harm in doing both things...

 

[Queen6]

Good point. When I say the cloud, I mean cloud storage. So OneDrive, *sigh* Bitcasa, Amazon Cloud Drive. Where it gives you the choice to store on the server or locally as well.

Dropbox is also classed as "the cloud" but in specific terms it's actually a "syncing" platform where it does store a local copy. Which I find to be pretty naff. You basically pay for them to store your own files on your hard drive.


I seriously recommend Microsloth's OneDrive, it's actually pretty awesome. Shame about the rest of their products.

If your going to use the "Cloud" you should ensure your provider provides client side encryption. or your privacy is out the window.

Dropbox has selective sync, so you can choose what you keep locally and on the servers, equally there are more secure solutions.

Q-6

 

[Trhodezy]

If your going to use the "Cloud" you should ensure your provider provides client side encryption. or your privacy is out the window.

Dropbox has selective sync, so you can choose what you keep locally and on the servers, equally there are more secure solutions.

Q-6

I do. I encrypt any sensitive information (such as bank statements) my side, then upload when uploading to a service that doesn't encrypt client side. I used to be an advocate of Bitcasa until they sca-roooooed their customers over.

Good point on the Dropbox SS, although their capacity pricing is outrageous. I don't class them as a viable storage solution.

 

[MrNick95]

Not sure I'm asking this im the right thread, but could I use my Time Capsule as a external Hardrive? I bought one when I bought my iMac and I've never used it to restore my Mac or anything....

 

[PDFierro]

I don't need to connect a hard drive or anything. The only time I've ever used the USB port on my 13" rMBP is to charge my smartphone or connect an external Blu-ray drive. So I guess the rMB is perfect for me.

 

[newellj]

I don't need to connect a hard drive or anything. The only time I've ever used the USB port on my 13" rMBP is to charge my smartphone or connect an external Blu-ray drive. So I guess the rMB is perfect for me.

Good man! I think I'm realizing that even for someone like me with a lot of cord-clutter, being a wire cutter may not be as hard as I was thinking.