Wireless Hard drive

[ChrisA]

What I am looking for is a drive that won't be limited by the network connection itself,

So you want a drive that is connect to a computer by some kind of network connection and you want it to be able to transfer data at a rate that is faster than the network connection. This is logically imposable.

I assume what you really want is a drive this is limited ONLY by the connection technology. So if you used Gigabit Ethernet the drive would push data at "wire speed". This is possable today. High end system can push data out of mutiple Gigabit Ethernet interfaces. The trouble is cost.
Today the most cost effective route is to build one yourself. You need a PC chassis with room for many drives, maybe a redundant power supply You need a modern CPU and some interface cards for Gigbit network and wireless andthen you install Linux or BSD. Those with more money can smply buy a Apple Xserve and some Apple fiber channel storage arrays.

 

[tuartboy]

Why care if the transfer rates are slow. You schedule the backup to happen at 2:00 AM and even if it takes four hours it is done by 6:00 AM.

You would not want to run a backup over a wireless link while a computer is being used. The wireless link has only so much bandwidth and the backup would use a good portion of it making other uses of the wireless system very slow. So run the Time Machine backup at night and you will do fine. From what I've seen there is a preferences panel where you can specify the time and frequency of the backup. Just set it ti "every morning at 2:00" and don't let your computer go into sleep mode.

About if Time machine will work over a wire less link. I doubt it will even "know" the connection is wireless.

Why care? Because if time machine has to back up a lot of little files you will get nowhere near 3mbs. If you did a lot that day or had some program modify a lot of little files it could take hours and hours to do that backup over wireless.

2nd, you would have to make sure it was always mounted before you went to bed. A drop in the wireless for a given time and it will disconnect (and finder hates this, locks up and such). Close the lid and it disconnects.

3rd, if it's a laptop, not only do you have to make sure it's connected you have to make sure it's on. You can't close it for the night or it will miss the backup.

Of course it won't know it's wireless, but I just merely stated it would require it to allow the user to select a backup destination on a network share. I haven't seen the prefs, but I have seen the notification that pops up when you put in a new drive. It does require a different drive than your boot drive, but I'm not sure what other requirements there are.

Just for the record: I don't like the idea of scheduled backups here either. The real benefit to me would be a virtual raid 1 where data is mirrored on creation and can be immediately restored in TM. A traditional backup solution has no real choice, but TM could hook into the kernel like spotlight and just make another copy on the external drive in real time. That would be a benefit to me as I am often working on current files and any mistakes would not be caught by a nightly backup.

 

[Aniej]

Well I have not been back here for a while. So I guess the answer is wireless type HDD exist, but are super slow and not such a great idea for time machine purposes. I do on the other hand really love the idea of being able to easily share stored data wirelessly throughout my home. So from what it sounds like I should go and get a good 400-500GB external HD with a usb 800 or firewire connection. Since I do want this wireless aspect, it seems quite feasible to do correct. If I am not mistaking, all you do is get the HDD and then there is also a way to hook it into a wireless router? Correct/expand/reject my point at will