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Wireless hard drives. (PCs)
WaterfallSandSun
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Thinking about "upgrading" the traditional setup of computer(s) + wired external hard drive(s) for backup ... to computer(s) + wireless hard drive for storage (accessible to all computers [PCs]), with wired external hard drive(s) for backup.
This way, in my mind, would be most efficient since now all my computers would just be a shell for accessing congregated data from one source. If one of the PCs go corrupt, then it would be no problem completely reformatting and reinstalling the OS, or if the wireless hard drive goes bad, then I can just get a new one and reload the backed up data to it stored in a wired external hard drive.
But I will need to know the reality of this setup. I foresee possible issues with inefficiency limited to the power/range of the of the hard drive itself.
So just curious of anyone has this type of a setup and how it affects:
- Viewing pictures/watching videos through the wireless hard drive. (Are the image load times and video performance (buffering time) unnoticeable?)
- What about using the external hard drive to store + access iTunes + its files? Smooth performance? (& How would this be setup?, install iTunes into the wireless hard drive and access the program itself from the wireless hard drive from all computers? Or just have the iTunes files stored on the wireless hard drive and have the program itself installed onto each of the PCs? Which is possible? If both, which option is more efficient?)
- How about using it to install things (such as games) on there then accessing it with multiple computers? Does it work out that way?
Also, if you have this setup yourself and will be sharing from your experience, what is your wireless hard drive brand/model/specs and how far is your wireless hard drive from your PCs?
The first 3 questions are listed in order of importance, with the third one really not that important, just curious.
Thank you for your help.
This way, in my mind, would be most efficient since now all my computers would just be a shell for accessing congregated data from one source. If one of the PCs go corrupt, then it would be no problem completely reformatting and reinstalling the OS, or if the wireless hard drive goes bad, then I can just get a new one and reload the backed up data to it stored in a wired external hard drive.
But I will need to know the reality of this setup. I foresee possible issues with inefficiency limited to the power/range of the of the hard drive itself.
So just curious of anyone has this type of a setup and how it affects:
- Viewing pictures/watching videos through the wireless hard drive. (Are the image load times and video performance (buffering time) unnoticeable?)
- What about using the external hard drive to store + access iTunes + its files? Smooth performance? (& How would this be setup?, install iTunes into the wireless hard drive and access the program itself from the wireless hard drive from all computers? Or just have the iTunes files stored on the wireless hard drive and have the program itself installed onto each of the PCs? Which is possible? If both, which option is more efficient?)
- How about using it to install things (such as games) on there then accessing it with multiple computers? Does it work out that way?
Also, if you have this setup yourself and will be sharing from your experience, what is your wireless hard drive brand/model/specs and how far is your wireless hard drive from your PCs?
The first 3 questions are listed in order of importance, with the third one really not that important, just curious.
Thank you for your help.
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In terms of latency and access times, this will depend entirely on your network. I have the tower hardwired to a fairly nice Asus router, so my transfer speeds are typically around 30-40MB/s, which is good enough for me. The server can push fluid Bluray quality streaming too, so while I haven't tried music playback directly I can't imagine it would be a problem.
Games are tricky, not sure about more modern titles but I know a lot of older ones get angry if you don't have the right registry entries on the machine playing the game. You could always stream them through Stream, which I do occasionally - it works okay but not as well as a native install would. For games that don't require native registry entries on the machine, the Dolphin Gamecube/Wii emulator is probably the most demanding thing I've tried to run over the network and that worked brilliant. Startup times were slightly longer when initially loading the .iso but otherwise couldn't tell a difference.
Hardware specs:
Router: Asus RT-AC66U
Server: HP Z420 workstation - 8GB RAM/Xeon E5-1620
Hard Drives: uhhh some OEM bare drives I picked up off the shelf at MicroCenter. Western Digital I think? 2x 2TB 7200 RPM
You can't give someone a pirate ship in one game, and then take it back in the next game. It's rude.
You can do it but you're going to have massive loading issues. Instead of taking 2 minutes to load a map in something like half life or GTA, it might take 5+. Games you'll want to keep local if at all possible.
The rest of it? Easy. NAS work just fine for documents, pictures, songs, movies. You can stream 1080p with LAN.
You'll want gigabit though, so upgrade all your tech, or else you will notice some buffering here and there if you stick with typical 10/100 network gear you get on the consumer level. The router for your internet can stay the same (as long as you don't plug all your gear directly into it). Instead, you'll want a gigabit switch (there are 5-10 port ones that are cheap, check out trendnet) and some cat6 or cat5e cabling.
Alternately, higher end routers have a USB3 port on them specifically for external hard drives, so they can be their own make shift NAS. It's not as fast as a dedicated NAS, but you won't notice the difference when wireless, because the wifi speed itself is the limiting factor.
If you have a higher end router, I would go the second route, and plug an external USB3 hard drive up to it. It'll take a little bit of time to figure out how to configure everything correctly, but it's a cheap & quick way to get a NAS up and running.
Personally, I'm not a fan of the "wireless hard drives" like the Western Digital My Passport Wireless Pro. These devices are really just cheap NASes (Network Attached Storage) and the performance leaves a lot to be desired.
Rather, if you want to offload your file storage to a device at home, buy a real NAS. Just my recommendation.
A typical setup might be:
QNAP TS-251 Turbo NAS ($250)
2 x Western Digital Red 4TB NAS HD (2 x $150 = $300)
Total cost: $550
(Personally, I prefer Synology NASes over QNAP, but they're both good.)
I recognize that this is about 2-3x the cost of a wireless hard drive.
Benefits of doing it this way:
1) Real NASes like Synology and QNAP allow you to use multiple hard drives in a mirrored (RAID-1) configuration, which means if one drive dies then the second one still has your files.
2) Faster performance.
3) Better security. Vulnerabilities on wireless hard drives are patched more slowly, sometimes not at all.
4) More features.
Note that in general, a NAS is going to connect via Ethernet cable to your wifi router.
Either way, on to your questions:
Pictures shouldn't be a big deal.
Videos... it depends. In the ideal setup, your HD/NAS is acting as a streaming media server with something like DLNA or Plex. Worst-case scenario is your laptop or tablet tries to load the entire video file before playing it.
Make sure whatever device you buy can act as either a DLNA server or a Plex server.
You'd have iTunes installed on the computer and then you'd direct iTunes to an external library.
In general, no.
Some applications will run fine off of a networked drive across multiple computers. Some will run fine off of a networked drive but only from one computer. Some won't do either. You're going to run into two common problems:
1) Speed. Older SATA drives transfer at about 1.5 - 2.0 Gb/s. A household 802.11ac wifi router can push around 150 Mb/s - 250 Mb/s under good conditions: line of sight, short range, laptop with current wifi hardware, nothing else sharing bandwidth on that wireless channel. In other words, one-tenth to one-sixth the speed. I run small applications off of a network pretty often, but the key word there is "small."
2) Registry settings or files stored on your computer that are necessary for the application to run. Many programs won't install to a network drive at all because of that. Others might, but will only run on one computer. (macOS is a lot better about this than Windows, BTW.)
For any wireless hard drive or NAS you buy, the question isn't how far the hard drive is from your computer.
The question is how far the drive is from your wifi router.
Any such HD/NAS you buy is going to connect to your wifi router (either with a wire or wirelessly), and your router is going to manage the connection between your drive and your computer.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
My one piece of advice if you go down any of these fronts, is to bite the bullet and shell out for a real ass-kicker of a wireless router. I got a D-Link 3200 after I set the MyCloud up because the streaming was just super crappy because of my cable modem/router combo being a POS.
My router actually had an usb port (not sure if it was USB 3.0, its tucked away in an area not easily accessible) and have a USB 3.0 backup drive. Just never put two and two together. I kept thinking wireless hard drive = one that emitted its own wireless network that you connect to, independent of your existing LAN. So I will try out what I currenty have, and if it works out then maybe in the near future I will invest in a more current router just to improve overall efficiency now that there will be a central storage for data.