Which external storage option

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Hi,

I'm in the fortunate position that my wife to can get me an iMac via salary sacrifice, so I'm going to go ahead with this as my current computer is knocking on a bit. My dilemma comes in choosing what external storage to use with it, i have the option of

Western Digital My Cloud 3TB at £3.56 month after tax savings

Airport Time Capsule 2TB at £5.90 a month after tax savings

The WD drive has more storage is remotely accessible, where as the Apple Airport drive is designed to work with apple and I'm drawn to the apple design and functionality (their marketing clearly works on me). The drive will be mainly for backup, I will use a USB 3 drive to extend storage on the iMac.

So my question which drive do you think would be better suited to my needs? I'm sure i missed something, but will answer when the question is asked.

Thanks

Kev
 
I will use the iMac mainly, but also have an old mac book which i will use for editing and in time an apple tv for viewing images on on the TV. So i need something to act as a central storage for everything and a back up device, this may well be 2 different devices, and if it is i will use usb drives for back up on each individual device.

As you can probably tell i'm not sure what my needs are, do i want a backup device or centralised storage, and i'm not sure, I think a secure back up solution would be best initially, then i can look at centralised storage.


Sorry Neil that probably confuses things even more.
Kev
 
The latest iMac uses 802.11ac WiFi protocols so it can ( in theory) move files at Gigabit speeds over WiFi. The latest Time Capsule also uses 11ac so this would make a good partner for the iMac. Time Capsule also has the ability ( according to Apple) to connect an external hard drive to it. The only problem is you do need a hub that can handle these devices. BT's Home Hub 5 will do this. Not sure about other providers though

Apple TV doesn't yet support 11ac ( although rumours are a new model is immanent ) so this could slow the whole network down.
 
the atv would be the bottleneck but it wouldnt slow the whole network down, only its own link.

you dont need anywhere near that bandwidth for HD though.

(the 1gbps speeds depend on antenna config also)
 
Personally, if you have a MAC, I'd go for the Time Capsule option - it is more expensive, but it just works! And I use and build PCs and it pains me to admit just how good the Time Capsule is :-)
 
Thanks Jools23

Will the time capsule also work as a type of NAS with a seperate external had attached do you know?
 
Thanks for that Chappers,

I need to learn to read better:) i could have found that out myself.

Does anyone know if adding an external hard drive to the time capsule increases the storage of the time capsule or if it shows as a separate drive, which, as it it says on the apple website is available to all wireless devices?

Thanks

Kev
 
Not precisely on point, but if what you're backing-up includes original photos or other irreplaceable items, I'd also seriously consider an online automatic back-up option. I pay about £30 ish a year for Backblaze (which I prefered having tested carbonite and some others). I've over 4TB of drives connected, so it took over 2 months to get it all uploaded at night, but I'm a lot happier knowing that it's there.
 
You should consider a Synology NAS, that way you get Time Machine backup functionality, whatever storage requirements you want, RAID if needed, and offsite sync to Amazon S3 or other cloud service.

Never looked back since....
 
Thanks NeilC

Unfortunately I don't have the option of getting a synology drive on salary sacrifice, if I did I would jump at the chance.

I think from what's been said here the time capsule is looking like the best option. But if anybody else has thoughts or experiences in any of the drives please let me know.

Thanks

Kev
 
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