NAS or just external hard drive?

[Walt]

Hi everyone,

I was wondering if it was worth getting a NAS over just external hard drives. My internet speed is only 40mb up and 2 mb down. Is this too slow?

I already got some hard drives left so I need to know if I want to buy a barebones NAS or empty hard drive cages. If I'm using external hard drives it will be with thunderbolt. 

Thanks!

[NMS]

It depends on the purpose. External drives are mostly used for backups. While NAS provide you with a personal cloud.

[Lurick]

4 minutes ago, Pangea2017 said:

You can rent a NAS/server in a computing center or run it at home. If you operate it local you will likely limited to 100 mb/s.

 

To tell if you need a external drive or which nas it is important to know what you want to do.

Unless they have a really crappy and/or old router they should have gigabit ports for faster local transfers.

 

 

OP,

An external drive is good if you don't mind carrying it with you and need to just backup your personal stuff.

A NAS is good for sharing content on the local network, backing up multiple devices (phones, desktops, etc), and having a central location for saving everything.

[Lurick]

15 minutes ago, Pangea2017 said:

thx, i always forget what gigabit and gigabyte in letters is...

Big b is bytes, little b is bits

[Walt]

3 hours ago, Lurick said:

Unless they have a really crappy and/or old router they should have gigabit ports for faster local transfers.

How does this work and how do I know if I have a gigabit port?

[Lurick]

Just now, Walt said:

How does this work and how do I know if I have a gigabit port?

What model router do you have?

[Walt]

1 hour ago, Lurick said:

What model router do you have?

-

[Lurick]

1 minute ago, Walt said:

Fritzbox!7581

Yup, you've got gigabit ports

If you look for LAN ports in the specs it will usually tell you but in this case it's just listed as 4x gigabit ethernet

https://en.avm.de/products/fritzbox/fritzbox-7581/technical-data/

[Walt]

3 minutes ago, Lurick said:

Yup, you've got gigabit ports

If you look for LAN ports in the specs it will usually tell you but in this case it's just listed as 4x gigabit ethernet

https://en.avm.de/products/fritzbox/fritzbox-7581/technical-data/

How do I use this if I have a NAS? (I mean for a faster connection then my normal speed) Or do I just need to put the NAS into a gigabit port and all the computers that I want to use the NAS with?

[Lurick]

1 minute ago, Walt said:

How do I use this if I have a NAS? Or do I just need to put the NAS into a gigabit port and all the computers that I want to use the NAS with?

Ah! Yah, you just plug the ethernet port on the back to the box itself and anything wired or wireless on the local network will be able to access it via the IP address you assign or it picks up. I would recommend setting it statically, that will vary depending on what NAS you get, but usually the instructions for setup will walk you though that for the box

 

Edit:

If you don't have any free ports you can get a 5-port or 8-port gigabit switch for like $20 and just plug one cable from the router to the switch and then everything additional you need to connect goes into the switch and it's done, you've got more ports