Adding USB Drive to Router
I am looking to expand the amount of storage I have. For back up, I am going to get a four bay enclosure I saw on Amazon and I can stick in 3TB drives. That will give me up 12 TB storage. That'll plug directly into my desktop via eSATA and I can switch it on as needed to back up. I have looked at NAS drives as my main storage. They are expensive for a 4 bay ones. I see various routers have a USB port allowing storage devices to be connected. My wireless is through a home plug and can be a little patchy so I was thinking that I could get a new router with a USB port and simply buy another one of the USB enclosures above and plug it into the router. I saw this router: http://www.amazon.co.uk/TP-Link-TL-WR1043ND-Ultimate-Wireless-Gigabit/dp... I already have a TP Link ethernet switch whichs works fine. They're not the prettiest of brands but seem to do the job. The only thing is that the USB connection is 2.0. Is this fast enough to stream HD video? There are routers with 3.0 ports but these are priced around £100. For instance, there is a Netgear one, but it receives very mixed reviews. Any info would be great.
So you'll be quadrupling your chances of losing the data due to drive failure? BARGAIN!!!
So you'll be quadrupling your chances of losing the data due to drive failure? BARGAIN!!!
My thoughts exactly! The point of having 4x3TB drives is to have some of redundancy (RAID of some sort) so that your data is resilient against (at least one) disk failure...
Anyway, four enclosure NAS are not that expensive if you buy them without the drives. For example, a ReadyNAS NV+ 4 enclosure is on Amazon for £150.96. So £150 premium to get X-RAID, RAID-X (whatever NetGear have) above 4 single disks.
So you'll be quadrupling your chances of losing the data due to drive failure? BARGAIN!!!
I think in your haste to belittle me you've not bothered to read what I plan on doing. I would have one enclosure plugged into the back of the router and with which I would access my data. On the product I looked at hard drives can be added as needed. I would then have another enclosure plugged directly into my computer which would act as my back up. Again, hard drives being added as needed.
I dont think USB is a good idea.
Although USB2 has a data rate of 480Mb/s (60MB/s) - the quoted transfer rates for a usb drive connected to that router are only about 6-8MB/s. It will takes ages to copy stuff onto it, and may not be enough to play HD back without stuttering.
IMO in the long run the best (and most convenient) approach would be a 4-bay NAS (raid5).
Just a couple of comments:-
1) Be very wary of just plugging a multi tb hard drive into your router. Alot of external hard drives have no cooling and get very hot which shortens their life span and increases the risk of loss of data. It is always best to have them in an enclosure with a large fan keeping them cool and back ups are essential. Also bear in mind any RAID solution will not help you in the event of fire or theft.
2) E-Sata connections to a multi drive enclosure are great but only if your sata controller supports port multipliers. Many onboard solutions do not in which case you will only see one drive connected (the first) - check before buying otherwise you are limited to USB.
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If you're talking about plugging four 3TB drives into a router's USB socket I wouldn't build your hopes on it working too well. I can only speak from experience. My Netgear DGN2200 has a USB socket, it's ok with most USB sticks but getting it to sense and use even one USB hard-drive plugged directly to it is very hit 'n' miss. As for being fast enough..well theoretically USB is fast enough because I've streamed 1920x1080 video from a USB stick without dropouts or stuttering, but plugged into the back of a router, assuming it even senses the drives in the first place, I wouldn't count on it.
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