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ian-frs

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Apr 12, 2007
532
201
ATL
I am looking at purchasing a Seagate external HD to back up all of my music and documents. The catch is I want to plug it into my airport extreme so that all of my computers can access it. 2 PC's and 1 Mac at the moment. Has anyone had any experience with this setup?.
 
I don't like hooking up HDs to the Airport. It's USB and the Airport's tiny little brain doesn't have the horsepower to manage the USB bus at full speed, so performance s*cks.

If your configuration will take it, I would shoot a little higher and get a hard drive that has a direct network connection built in (also called a NAS - Network Attached Storage) drive, and attach it by wired Ethernet.
 
I am looking at purchasing a Seagate external HD to back up all of my music and documents. The catch is I want to plug it into my airport extreme so that all of my computers can access it. 2 PC's and 1 Mac at the moment. Has anyone had any experience with this setup?.

Look for an Ethernet NAS appliance. I have 2 of the LaCie and they work great. Performance is strong. They are the size of a rack-mounted blade server, switch, etc. - not portable at all. I have seen smaller (and cheaper)ones.

You CAN 'share' a volume in a peer-to-peer environment. That is cheaper and less efficient. It would be fine for a back-up target. However, that would make it attached to a computer on the network, not directly to the router. Not really what you are attempting to accomplish.

If you do not care about 1000 Base-T, this is an option.

This unit is 1000 Base-T.

These are just example products. I am not recommending either one. A little searching will point you to the best technology/price for your particular situation.

.
 
Thanks for the info. I think I am going to take a look into HD cases and plug in a regular HD to that. I just have to find a case with NAS now.
 
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