Questions about future possible NAS build

[NeatSquidYT]

Hi,

So my dad is looking into getting an external HDD to back up to from his Mac, but I kind of want him to use a NAS so I can steal all of his music (shhh), and he said the reason that his WD MyCloud was so slow is due to Ethernet restriction, to which I replied "USB 2.0 has half the theoretical speed of CAT 5e". Is he right?

This is the build btw:

[PCPartPicker part list](http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/NT6jqs) / [Price breakdown by merchant](http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/NT6jqs/by_merchant/)

Type|Item|Price

:----|:----|:----

**CPU** | [intel Celeron G1820 2.7GHz Dual-Core Processor](http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/part/intel-cpu-bx80646g1820) | £26.87 @ CCL Computers

**Motherboard** | [MSI H81M-P33 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard](http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/part/msi-motherboard-h81mp33) | £30.97 @ Scan.co.uk

**Memory** | [Kingston 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory](http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/part/kingston-memory-kvr16n118) | £54.43 @ CCL Computers

**Storage** | [Western Digital Red 2TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive](http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/part/western-digital-internal-hard-drive-wd20efrx) | £71.52 @ Aria PC

**Case** | [Zalman ZM-T4 MicroATX Mini Tower Case](http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/part/zalman-case-zmt4) | £21.49 @ Amazon UK

**Power Supply** | [be quiet! 300W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply](http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/part/be-quiet-power-supply-bn220) | £31.64 @ Aria PC

| | **Total**

| Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available | £236.92

| Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-10-19 10:08 BST+0100 |

[NeatSquidYT]

Bump

[SuperSoph_WD]

Hey there, @NeatSquidYT! 

 

In theory, yes! But it depends on a lot of factors. The max transfer speed using Ethernet/Gigabit is 1000 Mbps, which with a Wi Fi modem/USB is about 150-160 Mbps.Again it also depends on your Internet service provider... usually both connections will have the same speed if you are limited to a maximum Internet speed of, let's say, 10 Mbps. 

But if we are talking about the connections themselves, Ethernet is faster. You will definitely notice difference in speed if you transfer a large amount of data (>4GB), though. 

CAT5 enhanced supports networking with Gigabit Ethernet speeds up to 1000 Mbps as I already mentioned; whereas the USB 2.0 theoretically supports a max data rate of 480 Mbps.

 

I'm sorry to hear about the slow speed transfer of your My Cloud though. You can check out this thread for faster transfer speed ideas:

http://community.wd.com/t5/WD-My-Cloud/Transferring-Large-Amounts-of-Data-to-the-My-Cloud-and-a-Coupl-e/td-p/620219

 

As for your NAS build, it looks legit. However, I'd probably take another look at the mobo and swap it for a one that has USB headers, you never know when it might come in handy. You might want to have that option, if you later on decide to back up some sort of an external storage or a flash drive onto the NAS.

 

Hope I helped.

SuperSoph_WD