Time Capsule as fast as USB hard drive?

[nStyle]

Just a simple question.

The idea of the AirPort built in entices me to go with the Time Capsule, otherwise I would go with an external hard drive.

Primary use will be storage for streaming movies through Plex on my iMac to clients on the network (TV/iPad/etc...)

Anyone know if this will be as good?

 

[Intell]

It has the potential to be faster than a USB hard drive, but I've never used one so I can't really say.

 

[monsieurpaul]

TC uses Gigabit Ethernet, so if you have the right cables and the right router/switch it should be faster than an USB 2.0 drive.

I don't own a TC, but I have a Gigabit NAS and it is noticeably faster than my USB drive.

 

[Lennyvalentin]

According to the Anandtech review posted a couple months ago, the current TC tops out at about 80MB/s, best-case. This is when reading large continuous files with a wired connection. Writing, or smaller file access is slower. Much, much slower in case of small random accesses, because ethernet isn't really suited to such activities and the processor and other hardware in the TC isn't super duper fast either one might add.

 

[nStyle]

So two people are saying it is as good or better and Lenny is saying it isn't as good (as 80mb/s wouldn't be as fast as USB 2.0)

 

[skorpien]

MB/s (or MBps) != Mbps

The first is megabytes per second. The second is megabits per second.

80 MBps = 640 Mbps.

Here's AnandTech's review:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4577/

It actually compares speeds of the hard drive connected directly to an MBP as well as a Time Capsule and an AEBS in addition to the speeds of the internal Time Capsule HDD.