Wireless hard drive to use with Time Machine (and other questions)

I have an iomega Home Network Hard Drive 1TB, and it's time machine compatible. I can backup to it wirelessly no problems, it's as slow as a Time Capsule, but at least I know it's more reliable lol ... Also, if I wanted to put a 2TB drive later, it's a matter of taking two screws out, and putting a new drive in.

 

I've never seen a NAS with inbuilt wi-fi, If your O2 Wireless Box II has ethernet ports on it, there are loads of NAS devices that support Time Machine, I use a 2TB WD My Book World Edition connected to my ADSL / wi-fi broadband router.

If you've only got one computer I'd buy a USB disk drive and connect it direct to your iMac, it will backup quicker than over wi-fi and be cheaper.

 

Search for NAS / Network attached storage & Apple Time Machine in the specifications.

It would connect over the wi-fi to the O2 box then via the Ethernet to the NAS.

USB2 = 480 Mbit/s, I'm not too sure what speed firewire is, but I'd say USB is more flexible.

LaCie do some nice looking external drives that wouldn't look out of place next to an iMac.

 

The Time Capsule is a clean solution but there seem to be many reports of them dying after 1.5 years or so. It's also pricey.

If you've got a USB port on your current hardware you could attach an inexpensive drive and do your Time Machine backups to it with some finagling. People seem to have varying degrees of luck with this approach and it's the way I went.

 

WD do a 1TB drive, the problem is the USB powered devices tend to use laptop hard discs, these tend to cost more and are have less capacity

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=807

 

NogbadTheBad, hope you're still reading this?!

I'm looking at getting the WD Ethernet Drive that you have. I've looked at their specs and videos and a USB drive can be attached to the drive. Do you think the following is possible:

1) attach the 1TB drive to my wireless router and store everyone's data on it so it can be accessed by the 3(!) computers we have in the house? I'm thinking maybe iTunes and iPhoto stuff, and certainly all other docs and files.

2) attach a seperate USB 1TB drive to the WD unit.

3) get Timemachine to back up to this 2nd drive, also wirelessly?

This is my perfect scenario, to have everything in one place, and all the backups in one place, in case one of those 2 discs fails.

I'd be interested to know if this would work.

Many thanks,

Adam

 

You'll more than likely like I had to do when time Machine first came out is do a little few commands from terminal to overwrite it and tell it to be able to use as a hard drive for Time Machine.

I only have 1 computer and I'm waiting till I can get enough money and then get a 2TB Time Machine.

 

Cleaver,

I had the 1TB WD MYBOOK WORLD the first edition when it came out. It was extremely LOUD! The fan sucked and the hard drives didn't last to long.

I know you'll be able to do 1 and 3 but when you add on the second drive it's just going to look like more added space unless they have updated some software I'm not aware of.

Nate