Looking for good External Hard Drive for Airport Express Base Station-USB Hub

[markw10]

I have one of the new Airport Express Base Station's on the way and will be using a Hard Drive on it as a server for my home network. I"m interested in suggestions. Since this is bieng used on a large desk I don't need anything compact but definitely want a reliable drive and I"m looking at sizes of 540Gigs to 1TB.
I have looked at the Lacie's Little Big Disk as well as Western Digital's My Book Pro series and some of maxtor's offerings such as the One Touch III. I didn't see anything impressive from Seagate. Any other companies I should look at? I obviously need USB 2.0 but as well I'd like Firewire 400 and if possible Firewire 800 so I can use these when I need to hook into the computer locally for faster speeds. I think Ethernet would be nice for future proofing as a network drive but as well as long as Apple has this disk feature in the Base Stations it's probably not a necessity to me. Or am I better off just going with a good Gigabit ethernet drive and not using this USB 2.0 feature?
As well, since I'm going to be hooking up a printer to this as well I'm looking for a good USB 2.0 hub.

 

[janitorC7]

I have one of the new Airport Express Base Station's on the way and will be using a Hard Drive on it as a server for my home network. I"m interested in suggestions. Since this is bieng used on a large desk I don't need anything compact but definitely want a reliable drive and I"m looking at sizes of 540Gigs to 1TB.
I have looked at the Lacie's Little Big Disk as well as Western Digital's My Book Pro series and some of maxtor's offerings such as the One Touch III. I didn't see anything impressive from Seagate. Any other companies I should look at? I obviously need USB 2.0 but as well I'd like Firewire 400 and if possible Firewire 800 so I can use these when I need to hook into the computer locally for faster speeds. I think Ethernet would be nice for future proofing as a network drive but as well as long as Apple has this disk feature in the Base Stations it's probably not a necessity to me. Or am I better off just going with a good Gigabit ethernet drive and not using this USB 2.0 feature?
As well, since I'm going to be hooking up a printer to this as well I'm looking for a good USB 2.0 hub.

I may be wrong but I dont think that APE will have the ability to use a USB hub

Also when it comes to external drives, I like Seagate and Western Digital. I can tell you that I have had issues with many External HD's but I have never had problems with these 2

 

[ironjaw]

Well I am not to sure which continent your from but in the UK there is a great offer on a SEAGARE external 400GB USB2 hard drive fro £90 from Maplin UK. I've just bought one and it's great.

Other than that I would recommed getting the WD MyBook Pro that supports USB2, FW400 and FW800. But if your only going to use it for the AE then its kinda of waste buying with FW400 and FW800 just get the cheaper alternative with USB2

 

[plinden]

I may be wrong but I dont think that APE will have the ability to use a USB hub

Depends on whether the OP ordered the Express or the Extreme. He said Express, but he did talk about the "new Airport Express Base Station"

 

[skunk]

I've got a Micronet Minimate 500GB drive with USB hub. Same form factor as the APE, and the USB hub will allow me to share a printer and the drive across my network.

 

[janitorC7]

Depends on whether the OP ordered the Express or the Extreme. He said Express, but he did talk about the "new Airport Express Base Station"

Does the Extreme let you??

 

[plinden]

Does the Extreme let you??

Yes

 

[janitorC7]

Yes

well guess you're right. Got me there

 

[markw10]

I meant to say Extreme, that definitely makes a difference.
I thought of another question. If I get a drive that has firewire 800 and/or 400 in addition to USB 2.0 can I use the USB 2.0 on the Extreme Base Station across the network and as well for a local desktop computer (I plan to get a Mac Pro within a year) can I hook the firewire directly into that.
In otherwords use it as a netword drive across the computer but yet with the mac pro use it directly as a system drive?

 

[Krevnik]

I meant to say Extreme, that definitely makes a difference.
I thought of another question. If I get a drive that has firewire 800 and/or 400 in addition to USB 2.0 can I use the USB 2.0 on the Extreme Base Station across the network and as well for a local desktop computer (I plan to get a Mac Pro within a year) can I hook the firewire directly into that.
In otherwords use it as a netword drive across the computer but yet with the mac pro use it directly as a system drive?

Yes, BUT... you still have to disconnect it from the basestation if you want to plug it into your Mac Pro, and vice versa. Drives don't exactly like being connected to two 'hosts' at once.

 

[logandzwon]

Maxtor One Touch III does not do firewire 800, but the One Touch II does. I have a 500 gig One Touch II and I love that drive.