that should have been external hard drive setup

i have an imac that i've kinda replaced with a macbook air. i have no problem fitting all of my music on the mba, but want to move all the photos off the imac (and any future photos) to an external drive, then sell the imac. i don't *plan* on doing automatic backups, but it'd be nice to keep it as an option as long as it can understand that the photos stay ONLY on the ext drive.

another option i'd like to have is to use it like a network drive, i guess you'd call it. i want to be able to go to finder, see it in the list of drives, & copy/paste stuff to it. is this as simple as connecting it to the router then finding it w/ the computer? i have an apple airport extreme http://store.apple.com/us/product/FC340LL/A .

i want to go with ~1tb. from most of what i've read, people prefer western digital. should i get a premade external drive or buy an internal + a case (i've read that the internals are more reliable somehow)? am i making too big of a deal about this? if it's not already obvious, i don't know what i'm doing.

[Edited on May 10, 2011 at 5:18 PM. Reason : ]

5/10/2011 5:04:08 PM

western digital +1.

5/10/2011 5:31:54 PM

A couple of assumptions I always make here:
-- A single drive solution is just stupid. If you have the option to hide it in a closet or another room then size and noise are out and data security is the primary concern.
-- Dedicated controllers run circles around the "plug it into the usb on the router" solution. Plus most routers crash above 4TB of space.
-- Almost all devices these days are capable of streaming over DLNA - which encompasses almost all computer OS'es, PS3, XBox360, etc.
-- Apple is still pissy about support. Google the model you like before buying. "Working" does not mean "works well". In many cases turning on bonjour for apple easy setup will halve or quarter your throughput. Mixed environments can cripple some units (IE, streaming to PS3/OSX/Win7 concurrently)

That being said here's my recommendations:

If you're looking to get into the game as cheaply as possible I'd get a refurb Buffalo NAS (with 2 drives and RAID1) from eCost.com. Keep in mind this site does no returns, and usually 30 day warranty. But you can be hooked up and working for around $100.

Next I'd go with a ReadyNAS Duo. They're much more reliable, faster, and can handle a HD stream or two to keep your house humming nicely.

From there you're starting to talk bigger money - $500-$800 range. And in that ballpark you're looking at the ReadyNAS Ultra 4/NV+ and the Drobo FS units. Drobo is much easier to use, has 5 bays, and is basically idiotproof. The ReadyNAS is higher performance (for instance you can probably run 4-5 machines comfortably on this thing - streaming HD content and the works.)

Above them you'd be poking on the enterprise class and now prices are going to be OUTRAGEOUS.

5/10/2011 5:44:17 PM

It's called cost. That's usually the primary concern and why it "normally" rules out multiple drives and NAS solutions.... just saying... and require a Gigabit LAN to be even close to the same speed for backup purposes.

What I don't understand is why you'd mirror your backup, it's like a backup of a backup, I don't see why a single drive external isn't sufficient here (for your average user), unless you want DLNA or print-sharing, etc..

[Edited on May 10, 2011 at 6:53 PM. Reason : .]

5/10/2011 6:51:44 PM

ummm yeah that's waayyyyy beyond what i'm trying to do here. i just want one hard drive. i don't need anything to be automated. i said nothing about streaming and don't need that capability. no printing. just cut/pasting pics from the imac to the hdd. the only device connecting to it after dumping the imac will be this mba (no ps3s, pcs, etc).

my plan was to buy an external drive or internal w/ enclosure, plug into the imac, cut/paste photos. unplug hdd from imac & plug into airport extreme, see drive in finder using airport disk utility. will this work?

5/10/2011 7:19:29 PM

Quote :

"my plan was to buy an external drive or internal w/ enclosure, plug into the imac, cut/paste photos. unplug hdd from imac & plug into airport extreme, see drive in finder using airport disk utility. will this work?"

Yep. Since you have an airport extreme, the USB port on it is made for exactly what you're trying to do. Network attached storage that's available to your devices at all times without having to buy any other special NAS devices. what people like wwwebsurfer will recommend is overkill times about 100.

[Edited on May 10, 2011 at 7:46 PM. Reason : ok, maybe overkill times just 2-3 but overkill, nonetheless. ]

5/10/2011 7:39:31 PM

yes.

5/10/2011 7:39:36 PM

Haha, you guys make me sound super paranoid for backing up my data to a mirrored drive thats syncs to an offsite location. In my defense i use the nas as primary storage, not backup.

5/10/2011 8:19:42 PM

^^^awesome! thanks!

so that leaves ext hdd vs int hdd + enclosure. any preference?

5/10/2011 8:26:25 PM

Quote :

"so that leaves ext hdd vs int hdd + enclosure."

I mean...an external hdd IS an internal hdd + an enclosure. The enclosure part is what makes it external. But any sort of external drive is gonna be nothing more than the same hard drive you can buy for your computer plus an enclosure. It just might have some company branding on it, and the screws might be hidden underneath stickers to discourage swapping out the drive, but it's the same thing. The only downside about buying a kit like that is that you can't always tell the exact drive type when you're buying it. Buying your own drive plus your own enclosure means you get to read reviews for both if you're the kind of person that cares about stuff like that. If you don't care, I'd say buy the cheapest Western Digital Passport or whatever they're calling it these days and be done with it. It will be fine. If you want you can pick out a better/different drive and a case that has features that you might care about (esata ports/heatsinks for better cooling/docking ports for both size drives/thumbscrews etc) that the all in one kit things don't have. It's been several years since I've bought an enclosure, but I have 2-3 that I don't have any complaints with. They're nothing special and I'm not even sure what the name brands are without looking. At the time it was cheaper to buy a cheap 1.5TB HDD and a $15 enclosure than it was to buy an "official" external drive. That might have changed by now. I also have what amounts to a docking station for HDDs that I keep connected to my airport extreme. I can swap out drives in seconds if I want. It even has a dock for laptop sized HDDs too. It doesn't sound like that's what you're looking for, but it is an option. If you do care about keeping a backup you could always buy one of those and back up your pictures onto two HDDs and just keep one in a drawer somewhere. It's not the most elegant solution, but it's better than no redundancy at all.

5/10/2011 9:03:31 PM

okay cool. oh i did forget to mention that i copy *most* of my pics to the 2nd drive on my computer at work. so there's kinda a backup system, ish.

5/10/2011 9:09:57 PM