Posted: 4/7/2014 1:00:01 PM EDT
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Getting my wife and I laptops today (Apple Mac Airs). What I want to do is get. 2 / 3 TB external HD we can access wirelessly to share all of our pictures, movies, music, etc.
This is the HD I was looking at. Fantom Drive Anyone have any experience with these or recommend a different one? |
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Quoted:
I can't comment on the drive, but loading a TB or two onto an external drive wirelessly, might, um, take a while. I copied almost a full terra from a 1T Passport to a 2T toshiba and it took a few hours IIRC. It wasn't like it tood days or anything. Only the 2T was a USB 3.0 so I am sure it could go faster from a internal to external USB 3.0 |
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Quoted:
Getting my wife and I laptops today (Apple Mac Airs). What I want to do is get. 2 / 3 TB external HD we can access wirelessly to share all of our pictures, movies, music, etc. This is the HD I was looking at. Fantom Drive Anyone have any experience with these or recommend a different one? I take it you will connect the external hdd to your router via usb for wireless access to files? I hope you have a high performance router with usb 3.0 ports. Otherwise you will likely have a mediocre experience. As for HDD's, I would look at these: http://www.amazon.com/Book-Hard-Drive-Mac-WDBYCC0020HBK-NESN/dp/B00E6N9GS4 |
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You say external drive, but I think you mean a NAS (network attached storage). A NAS device will allow you to store files and access them over the network. That said, if you're really talking about terabytes of data, then maybe a plain ol' external drive that you can just plug in when needed is more practical.
The drive you linked is just a normal USB external drive. |
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Right now we are using the router - modem from Xfinity. We also have the Apple Airport Extreme.
My idea was to have a large capacity hard drive that we will only use to share music, movies, pictures etc. Is this not a good idea I'm not extremely computer savy so any help is appreciated! |
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It's very possible, but you should understand the capabilities of most drives. If you are just talking about an external USB drive, then you would have to find some way to get it on the network. If your router has a USB port, you could possibly plug it up to the router. Not all routers have this "NAS" (network attached storage) functionality. So, you will have to look into your router to see if this feature is included. Another alternative is to get an external hard drive that actually has the wireless feature built into it. These are great, but the downside is they are more costly on average than a regular external USB hard drive. A third option is to plug up the external hard drive to a computer that is on the network and then "share" it so other computers can access it. The downsides here are (1) you must have some other computer or laptop turned on (2) connected to the network and (3) "shared" in order to access the drive from other computers. Finally, a forth option is to get a small device which plugs up to the external hard drive (or even a USB thumb drive) and will allow you to wirelessly connect to the drive with other computers. In effect, these devices turn a basic, standard USB drive into a wireless device. Some of these devices also perform double duty as additional battery power for a cell phone or other electronic device. Here is a good example of one that is somewhat popular: http://www.amazon.com/RAVPower%C2%AE-FileHub-Wireless-3000mAh-Battery/dp/B00AQUMZRA/ref=sr_1_25?ie=UTF8&qid=1396963226&sr=8-25&keywords=wireless+mobile+storage So, as you can see there are many different options to consider which allow you to access the drive wirelessly. Just look into these and see which one fits your needs. |