wireless external hard drive ?

mrgas

mrgas

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is this posssible ?

I want to buy an external hard drive to store my pics on

Anyway, how can I connect this to my router to make it wireless and then how would I stream files from it? Would it be possible?

Thanks all
 
You want an NAS, Network Attached Storage device. Loads of them about.

It becomes part of your network, you don't need a PC switched on for it to work.
 
trapper501 said:
You want an NAS, Network Attached Storage device. Loads of them about.

It becomes part of your network, you don't need a PC switched on for it to work.
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thanks for that

is there any you could recommend either to buy/avoid ?
 
mrgas said:
thanks for that

is there any you could recommend either to buy/avoid ?
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People always recommend and defend the one they have usually.

we bought the Buffalo linkstation pro 500Gb, and it was as the reviews said, took longer to take out of the box than it did to set up.

The one we got has been superseded but I have a buffalo USB too and they seem a good make.

You can set it to back up regularly to a USB drive plugged into the back of it, then get it to send you an email to say it is a happy bunny.
 
I'm running an Apple Time Capsule, that does the job, I've not used anything else so can't really comment on them.
 
Another Apple Time Capsule here (got a bargain one at £100 recently) - great thing is the time capsule has a USB port on so you can add in extra external hard drives and for wireless printing too.

Auto backs up my Macbook without having to faff with wires. Loves it!
 
MichaelPlace said:
Another Apple Time Capsule here (got a bargain one at £100 recently) - great thing is the time capsule has a USB port on so you can add in extra external hard drives and for wireless printing too.

Auto backs up my Macbook without having to faff with wires. Loves it!
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will these only work with Macs ?
 
It's worth doing your research and deciding whether you want to mirror your disks for resilience - most people would not, people like me who work with servers in IT tend to be overly-paranoid so we do.

Wireless NAS are expensive, however cable connected start at just over £100 depending on capacity. For ready made ones Buffalo and Western Digital have good crits, LaCie are cheap but have a very poor reputation (which stopped me buying a 1TB one for just under £100 on iBood the other day).

If you do not want to cable it in to your router, then you can get a pair of power plug devices and use those to network - it's what I'll be doing as I want to place my NAS (once I get one) away from my PC and networking.
 
dapprman said:
It's worth doing your research and deciding whether you want to mirror your disks for resilience - most people would not, people like me who work with servers in IT tend to be overly-paranoid so we do.

Wireless NAS are expensive, however cable connected start at just over £100 depending on capacity. For ready made ones Buffalo and Western Digital have good crits, LaCie are cheap but have a very poor reputation (which stopped me buying a 1TB one for just under £100 on iBood the other day).

If you do not want to cable it in to your router, then you can get a pair of power plug devices and use those to network - it's what I'll be doing as I want to place my NAS (once I get one) away from my PC and networking.
Click to expand...

thanks for your reply

basically what i'm trying to do is use it as storage for my images i only have a laptop , hence the reason i want it to be wireless

do you think i've got the right idea or are there better options ?
 
mrgas said:
thanks for your reply

basically what i'm trying to do is use it as storage for my images i only have a laptop , hence the reason i want it to be wireless

do you think i've got the right idea or are there better options ?
Click to expand...

I think there is a bit of confusion of terms here.

The NAS as I described is plugged into a port on the router, but communication with the lap top is then wireless.

I'm assuming you use a landline for broadband within the home, so your router is already sat plugged into the mains and the phone system, you just stand the NAS next to it.
 
mrgas said:
will these only work with Macs ?
Click to expand...

The auto backup only works with Macs, but the normal wireless hard drive stuff will also work with PCs.
 
trapper501 said:
I think there is a bit of confusion of terms here.

The NAS as I described is plugged into a port on the router, but communication with the lap top is then wireless.

I'm assuming you use a landline for broadband within the home, so your router is already sat plugged into the mains and the phone system, you just stand the NAS next to it.
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yes i want to put the drive near the router and realise i'll be plugging it in there , i'm on Virgin media so its a coax broadband to the router

thanks for your help
 
neil_g said:
i dont recommend it for home users who want to use it as a single point of storage. in fact its a bad idea.
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I think NAS with a USB drive plugged in the back is sufficient for gear failure, though in order to protect against house fires you need to keep a copy off site too. That can be another USB drive..
 
trapper501 said:
I think NAS with a USB drive plugged in the back is sufficient for gear failure, though in order to protect against house fires you need to keep a copy off site too. That can be another USB drive..
Click to expand...

yup as long as its 2 separate devices.

ive seen server grade RAID controllers fail and wipe all attached drives and spent until 3am restoring data from tape so RAID isnt uber safe as some people suggest. granted its rare but do you really want to take that chance?
 
I ahve two Lacie NAS drives that I use. These are just plugged into my wireless router so are acessable from my laptop when ever I want.

They are good - never had any issues with them
 
This seems a good offer (well I think it is, because I bought one a few weeks back)

http://www.hotukdeals.com/item/443499/netgear-readynas-expansys-148-90-de/

Netgear are giving a 500gb drive with it......... you can buy a further HDD to utilise the back up facilities...

if you are storeing pics on it, it has a nice piece of software that allows you to send slideshows of you pics to people, that they then view from your NAS...

It's pretty cool

Cheers

Phil
 
As mentioned above you need to do your research.

I nearly bought a wireless "Mybook" 250G (I think) from Currys. It was around £80. Would have just plugged into the back of my wireless router, allowing access to all my music and photos. I believe it is Mac/ Windows compatible

I didn't go for it, in the end deciding to go for a second 500G redundant drive to mirror my existing drive. Resilience before functionality! I think someone mentioned this above.


Regards

Graydon
 
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