Time Capsule, NAS, speed, Wi-Fi, iTunes

[Doc69]

I'm trying to solve a storage space and backup problem for a friend with a rMBP. She needs an external drive for her time machine backup. She also needs to keep her iTunes Music folder on an external drive because the internal drive is too small.

Now, she doesn't want a locally attached drive, which is why I'm thinking about a Time Capsule. But she already has a wifi router so it seems unnecessary to pay for an extra router. Is there any reason to go with the Time Capsule over another NAS etc?

Also, in the past I have mounted a drive with my iTunes Music Folder over a wired Gigabit network, and it was very slow. I can imagine it is even worse over wifi?

Is it realistic to use a Time Capsule or NAS over wifi in place of a directly attached drive? She wants to have to drive mounted on her desktop and be able to transfer files as easily as if it was attached via USB, and perhaps even work on documents or photos from the networked drive. Will this be very slow and unreliable?

She also has an iMac where she could share an external drive over the network. Would this work in the same way and with then same speed as a Time Capsule or NAS? And would Time Machine be able to back up to iy over wifi?

Any thoughts or comments would be greatly appreciated.

 

[entrywounds]

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Nifty-MiniD...ory_Card_Readers_Adapters&hash=item3f20bf6678

Added with this,

http://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-micro...1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1357679969&sr=1-1

Also this is a drive I have had a lot of luck with as far as speed and it is 10.8 Time Machine backup compatible.

http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-FreeA...357679895&sr=1-2&keywords=seagate+goflex+home

 

[leman]

Well, my Time Capsule is able to copy 7Gb data in around 8 minutes, its not too bad but its also far from being fast. I wouldn't want to work from it directly. It is a rather fast router though and for backups its really convenient.

EDIT: this is transfer speed over WiFi. Actually, on a seconds though, thats pretty fast. Thats around 15 Mbytes/sec over WiFi.

 

[Tomorrow]

Now, she doesn't want a locally attached drive, which is why I'm thinking about a Time Capsule. But she already has a wifi router so it seems unnecessary to pay for an extra router. Is there any reason to go with the Time Capsule over another NAS etc?

No, not really. Pretty much any NAS will do.

If her existing router has a USB port, a simple external drive would do the job for MUCH less money compared to a NAS.

Also, in the past I have mounted a drive with my iTunes Music Folder over a wired Gigabit network, and it was very slow. I can imagine it is even worse over wifi?

I tried this once, and it was excruciatingly slow to load the iTunes database. Streaming the music itself wasn't so bad.

I'm curious why you were having so much trouble over gigabit, though. Something seems off there.

Is it realistic to use a Time Capsule or NAS over wifi in place of a directly attached drive? She wants to have to drive mounted on her desktop and be able to transfer files as easily as if it was attached via USB, and perhaps even work on documents or photos from the networked drive. Will this be very slow and unreliable?

I do this with a NAS. I only really notice a problem with speed when I'm transferring a large amount of data (like a movie or video file). Otherwise it seems to work well. And I haven't had any trouble with reliability.

She also has an iMac where she could share an external drive over the network. Would this work in the same way and with then same speed as a Time Capsule or NAS? And would Time Machine be able to back up to iy over wifi?

The limiting factor is almost certainly going to be the speed of your wifi. If you have an exceptionally fast and consistent connection I don't expect you'll have a problem. As far as backups go, the point of a Time Capsule was to use Time Machine over wifi, although the initial backup can take a very long time (days), as I understand it. I just use a locally attached USB drive, it's faster and pretty inexpensive.

 

[jomirrivera]

I'm trying to solve a storage space and backup problem for a friend with a rMBP. She needs an external drive for her time machine backup. She also needs to keep her iTunes Music folder on an external drive because the internal drive is too small.

Now, she doesn't want a locally attached drive, which is why I'm thinking about a Time Capsule. But she already has a wifi router so it seems unnecessary to pay for an extra router. Is there any reason to go with the Time Capsule over another NAS etc?

Also, in the past I have mounted a drive with my iTunes Music Folder over a wired Gigabit network, and it was very slow. I can imagine it is even worse over wifi?

Is it realistic to use a Time Capsule or NAS over wifi in place of a directly attached drive? She wants to have to drive mounted on her desktop and be able to transfer files as easily as if it was attached via USB, and perhaps even work on documents or photos from the networked drive. Will this be very slow and unreliable?

She also has an iMac where she could share an external drive over the network. Would this work in the same way and with then same speed as a Time Capsule or NAS? And would Time Machine be able to back up to iy over wifi?

Any thoughts or comments would be greatly appreciated.

Simple solution = MyBookLive
Advanced solution = Synology