Which peripheral do I need?

[mgpg89]

OK, here's the situation and what I want to do.

At home, we got a wireless 802.11b/g network set up.
I got a MacBook (sig) and a Iomega Ultramax 1TB Firewire Drive (on my room).

My iTunes library is stored on my MacBook, but the movies and TV shows are stored on the Firewire Drive.


Now, what I want to do is:

Be able to go sit in the living room, kitchen, etc ... and still be able to access that firewire drive (thus making it possible for me to watch those movies in iTunes as well)



As far as I know, and please correct me if I'm wrong, that's why I made this thread ... these are my options.


1) AirPort Extreme: connect the external drive to the AirPort Extreme (USB) and that way I can access it over the wireless network, right? And when I'm at my desk and want higher transfer speeds, I can connect it using the Firewire cable.

2) Time Capsule: I read that 'basically' the TC is an Airport Extreme with a built-in hard drive. Now ... I've wanted to buy a TC for a pretty long time to make back-ups with Time Machine. So could I use the TC as well for the situation explained above?
Connect the external drive to the TC (USB) and access it over the wireless network.
My main concern with this: will I be able to
A) use the TC HD for *just* back-ups, no other storage.
B) use the external HD for other storage, like movies etc.
The TC won't merge the two drives into one 2TB drive, will it? They will still be separate, right?



Thanks in advance, your help is greatly appreciated.

 

[Batt]

I'd go the TC route. It will do everything you want and it supports "N" when you upgrade your MacBook.

 

[mgpg89]

I'd go the TC route. It will do everything you want and it supports "N" when you upgrade your MacBook.

Problem is... our current router is B/G and it's here to stay.
We got a small business at home and there's loads of stuff connected to the current router. (credit card processing, finger print scanners to see what time employees arrive, digital television ... stuff like that)
It's not worth the hassle of having to reset everything just to get 'N' speed.

So my question is, can I use the TC for the stuff I mentioned above, without having it act like a router?
I can connect it to our current wireless network, right?

 

[skorpien]

Yes. Set your Time Capsule/AEBS to bridge mode and allow your current router to do the DHCP. I'm pretty sure that it will allow you to access the USB drive wirelessly as well as the TC's storage.

As for the merging question, the TC is incapable of doing that in the first place, so no, your hard drives won't be merged. Each will remain its own drive with its own letter. It's actually recommended to use the TC's HDD for backup only and if you want additional storage, to use an external USB drive.

Once you get N devices on your network, make sure to set the TC to Wireless N only for the radio mode, set a separate SSID, and this will make sure that any devices connected to the TC will get N speeds without b/g slowdown. Also, with the setup described above, any devices connected to your b/g router will still be able to access devices connected to the TC since the two are on the same subnet.

Take a look at this Apple manual for more information on setting up the network you want:
http://manuals.info.apple.com/en_US/Designing_AirPort_Networks_10.5-Windows.pdf

 

[mgpg89]

OK, I'm probably buying a TC anyway, but I heard video streaming over a wireless b/g network isn't going to cut it ... the speed will be terribly slow.

Any second opinions on this?

 

[dborja]

OK, I'm probably buying a TC anyway, but I heard video streaming over a wireless b/g network isn't going to cut it ... the speed will be terribly slow.

Any second opinions on this?

No problems streaming over a wireless G network here. The trick is to allow your app/device to do buffering...

 

[MacBass]

OK, here's the situation and what I want to do.

At home, we got a wireless 802.11b/g network set up.
I got a MacBook (sig) and a Iomega Ultramax 1TB Firewire Drive (on my room).

My iTunes library is stored on my MacBook, but the movies and TV shows are stored on the Firewire Drive.


Now, what I want to do is:

Be able to go sit in the living room, kitchen, etc ... and still be able to access that firewire drive (thus making it possible for me to watch those movies in iTunes as well)



As far as I know, and please correct me if I'm wrong, that's why I made this thread ... these are my options.


1) AirPort Extreme: connect the external drive to the AirPort Extreme (USB) and that way I can access it over the wireless network, right? And when I'm at my desk and want higher transfer speeds, I can connect it using the Firewire cable.

2) Time Capsule: I read that 'basically' the TC is an Airport Extreme with a built-in hard drive. Now ... I've wanted to buy a TC for a pretty long time to make back-ups with Time Machine. So could I use the TC as well for the situation explained above?
Connect the external drive to the TC (USB) and access it over the wireless network.
My main concern with this: will I be able to
A) use the TC HD for *just* back-ups, no other storage.
B) use the external HD for other storage, like movies etc.
The TC won't merge the two drives into one 2TB drive, will it? They will still be separate, right?



Thanks in advance, your help is greatly appreciated.

For your concerns about the TC being an unsecured access point, you could most likely (I don't know this for certain, I'm just making an assumption) be able to manage the wireless administration over the TC. Simply use MAC address filtering and set it so that your MacBook is the only device that can connect to it. Secure and easy. The TC should separate out the external drive and it's own internal drive, so you'd have 2 x 1 TB drives.

 

[skorpien]

For your concerns about the TC being an unsecured access point, you could most likely (I don't know this for certain, I'm just making an assumption) be able to manage the wireless administration over the TC. Simply use MAC address filtering and set it so that your MacBook is the only device that can connect to it. Secure and easy. The TC should separate out the external drive and it's own internal drive, so you'd have 2 x 1 TB drives.

It doesn't have to be an unsecured access point. You can set it up to be an access point as well as having security. Just set it in bridge mode and set a WPA/WPA2 key for the SSID it broadcasts. If the SSID and key are unique, only those clients with the correct key can connect. And assuming you're not allowing any unknown clients on your b/g network, security should not be an issue. But if you're allowing b/g clients without a password on your other router then they will also be able to access your TC and its contents.

 

[mgpg89]

OK, thanks a lot so far guys.

Just some final questions before I click the 'buy now' button in the online Apple Store.

When I have a Time Capsule, will I be able to:
a) connect my external 1TB drive to access it wirelessly when I'm not at my desk? (Yes.)
b) connect a printer? (Yes.)
c) connect it to my speakers and use AirTunes? (not sure ...)

and most importantly..
d) do all of this at the same time?



And as for 'enabling buffering' when streaming wirelessly ... how do I do that? Is it a setting in iTunes or is it way more complex than that?


Thanks in advance guys

 

[mgpg89]

anyone?

 

[skorpien]

a) Yes
b) Yes
c) No - This is only a feature of AirPort Express (no external speaker jack on TC/AEBS)
d) Yes, but if the printer is a USB printer, you'll need to connect a USB hub. WiFi printers and network (ethernet) printers will work fine w/o a hub. (Remember, there's only one USB port on the back of the TC/AEBS.)

As for your buffering question, not too sure. But I'd imagine so since I haven't come across or heard of any buffering options or anything of the sort through AirPort Utility.