External hardrive...Wireless???

[reflexboy]

The other half wants an external hardrive (prob 1TB). The ones I have found online seem to be USB. Do any of you knowledgeable people know if wireless external hardives are available? Having a USB wired one sort of defeats the object of a laptop! TIA

 

[wemorgan]

Is this for home use only? If so, then you can by HD that simply plug in to your router modem, so all laptops in the house can use it if needed. I'll give some links if this is of interested. I have this system and also use it to back up my data.

Edit: either way the HD will need power, so some wires are inevitable.

 

[reflexboy]

Yes! It will be for home use---Links will be appreciated. Thank you

 

[wemorgan]

These will plug into the RJ45 (network) port of your home router. Check that your router has at least one spare first.

dabs.com - LaCie 500GB Network Space (NAS) Gigabit Ethernet 7200RPM (301387EK)

dabs.com - Buffalo Drivestation 2 Share 500GB Network Attached Storage With USB 2.0 Port (HD-CE500LU2)

The USB port on the HD usually means you can daisy-chain another smaller more portable HD on to it, if needed. Make sense?

HTH

 

[reflexboy]

So the external drive itself isn't actually wireless, but if I have a wireless router (I do-BT homehub) that makes it wirelessly accessable?

 

[Stratman]

Yep. As long as you have a spare ethernet port on your router.

 

[Merc Owner 2B]

All very good advice Reflexboy.

I have a wireless router and three Zyxel NAS drives attached which are accessed wirelessly.

NAS (Network Attached Storage) is the technology you are looking for.

Some are available "bare" i.e you add your own drives. Some contain pairs of drives that can be set up in RAID config to give mirrored copies if the data is important.

 

[reflexboy]

All very good advice Reflexboy.

I have a wireless router and three Zyxel NAS drives attached which are accessed wirelessly.

NAS (Network Attached Storage) is the technology you are looking for.

Some are available "bare" i.e you add your own drives. Some contain pairs of drives that can be set up in RAID config to give mirrored copies if the data is important.

Straight over my head.....bare???

I just want a drive to back things up on, or store larger files like music/films without clogging up the laptop/pc.

Thank you for all your comments guys

 

[Geezer]

Brilliant thread. I've been plugging my extra HD in my lappie to do a weekly backup!

 

[wemorgan]

Straight over my head.....bare???

Bare, as in empty. You can buy empty cases with just the electronics and you provide your own HDs.

Of the two links above I'd get a NAS like the Buffalo.

BTW: when your printer dies, buy a printer with a network port and plug that in to your router too. Then all the laptops in your house will be able to print to it via wi-fi. No need to buy an expensive wi-fi printer.

 

[Dryce]

.[/B]

Last time I looked for a printer the deals on wi-fi ones were better.

 

[Bobby Dazzler]

I just bought a router for a friend that has USB ports to connect external hard drives to.

Not set it up yet - £60 from PC World.

 

[HughJarse]

I can recommend this
Western Digital My Book World Edition 1TB Home Network: Amazon.co.uk: Office Products

 

[Rory]

I bought a NAS enclosure from D-Link and put a drive in it, and attached it by ethernet cable to the router. Make sure you get one that powers down itself (the D-Link said it did, but didn't until they did a firmware upgrade) then you can just leave it connected all the time.

They are a lot slower than USB attached drives though - no problem in normal use, but if you're doing huge backups then that might be an issue.

Also, these things do have uncertain reliabilty - I lost a Western Digital one after we had a power-cut and the file system was wierd and it couldn't be easily recovered. Therefore don't be tempted to see all that lovely space and move your entire photo collection etc onto it. Use it for backup only so you've got copies of everything in at least 2 places. They also make transferring files between machines very easy.

 

[blondebier]

I bought a NAS enclosure ...

These get the thumbs up from me too.

I bought the Linksys NAS200 that takes 2 drives. You can configure these in a RAID configuration. I've set mine up so that they mirror each other so that I know my data is pretty safe in case one were to fail.

The other bonus with these enclosures is that you can buy "good" (as in reliable) disks and get them in the size you need.

Some off the shelf NAS drives are sealed so you'd have to send them away to be repaired. (I know of a WD drive where this was the case and the owner paid through the nose to get his data off it)

 

[Rory]

Some off the shelf NAS drives are sealed so you'd have to send them away to be repaired. (I know of a WD drive where this was the case and the owner paid through the nose to get his data off it)

WD, at least on the NAS unit of theirs that I had, use a weird file system. Mine lost its network share and couldn't be recovered with "home" tools, but there are places that will do it for about a grand. Common problem with that drive, apparently.

The key thing, as I mentioned above, is not to MOVE stuff so that it's on the drive exclusively, use it to keep a copy.

 

[HughJarse]

AS I didn't get a thank for my wonderful addition and most others did I don't why im bothering to asnwer, however I shall. The D-link ones ( that you put a drive in ) use ntfs and thus are not compatible with macs. The western digital mybook above 1tb are raid offering redundancy backup- ie they provide additional failure backup. They also have built in backup software to an additional usb hard drive if needed -ie they can back themselves up to an additional drive.
As they also run a form of linux, they can have software installed on the to allow webserving, torrent download, NZB download etc.

They claim to be 30% more green than before and allow power down.


Not sure why I bother though.

 

[HughJarse]

Cheers guys ( I was kidding though, just in case anyone tought Id spat the dummy - or in fact even cared!)

 

[Rory]

^ That's an ironic thanks.

 

[HughJarse]

^ So's that!