[markw10]

I made the choice to get a Airport Express Base Station and actually ordered one today and can't wait to get it. I have a network set up where I have a MacBook Pro and soon my fiancee will be getting a MacBook Pro as well. My main server computer is currently a Windows XP based machine but my original plan was to replace this with a Mac Pro this summer.

We both have our own home based businesses which are as well internet based businesses so a reliable computer network and internet is important. Currently our Windows XP server is not that reliable but most of our data (Office files, inDesign files, PDF's, Photoshop files, as well as Dreamweaver and other web page development files) is actually stored on our laptops themselves. Also, even many of our media files (mp3's, some videos, and especially photos is stored on our laptops. Larger files such as final cut pro projects we are working on as well as other media files we don't store on our laptops and files that we share in our businesses or rarely used files are stored on this server hard drive but most often this server acts as a 'backup hard drive' for our laptops in case we were to lose one or have a hard drive crash and it acts vice versa of course also. It also works as a printer server for a usb all in one fax/copier/printer.

The more I looked at the airport base station I realized this could act as my server. Obviously the usb printer could be hooked in to it to act as a network printer but now that it can accept one or more hard drives it looks even more likely. I can see myself purchasing a 250-500 gig usb external hard drive and simply plugging it in to make a 'network' drive which my server currently has.

1. Reliabilty: My main concern is reliability. When I first switch to Mac a couple months ago I was warned that when it comes to external drives use firewire, not USB, since USB is not as reliable. Maybe someday airport base stations will offer firewire but how reliable are these usb hard drives?

2. Speed: I know USB 2.0 offers 480Mbps which seems like more than enough speed but does that offer enough speed compared to if I had a hard drive directly in the computer? For example if I'm using Final Cut Pro working on a video file will it work okay working across the network at 'n' networking speeds or will it want me to be doing it on a computer with the hard drive actually inside that specific computer?

3. Which hard drive: For internal drives I've always preferred Maxtor but now that it's coming to External drives is there any specific type, brand, etc? that I should look for? I have seen some very nice, under $200, 500GB drives. As well, I like the western digital portable hard drives and have seen a 120GB model for around $100 which would be great to use as a backup drive (which can then later be stored in a safe) or even on the go in a laptop bag.

4. Backup Type: In addition to the main hard drive and printer I want to use a hard drive at times for backup. Is there any specific Mac sofware that is great to do either a file by file backup or one large file (compressed file) backup to a network hard drive?

5. Hubs: Obviously with these multiple devices I need a good USB 2.0 hub but beyond that do I need any specific hub?

I know this won't totally satisfy my desire for a desktop Mac. I'm sure I'll get one with time but at least I can put off my purchase longer having a reliable network drive/printer and also when I purchase a desktop Mac I can likely get a less costly setup.
I know this is a lot of questions but thanks in advance for any help.

[kamina]

1. USB is just the interface used to connect the drive to the machine. It's just as reliable as Firewire, but it's differance. USB might reach the same speeds as Firewire 400, but will use more cpu-power to do so. This is the reason people will recomend Firewire.

2. Your bottleneck will be the 100mbit lan, or the wireless, not the drive itself. Over 100mbit lan you can transfer at about 12MB/s, the USB will manage 30-40MB/s. Internal drives can go over 60MB/s (or more).

3. Hitachi has had some nice 500GB internal drives.

4. Dunno, just make sure all the important files are located on atleast 2 drives at a time.

[ghporter]

The big thing in the Mac community about firewire drives over USB drives is the belief that firewire tends to be faster than USB. With PowerPC processor-based systems this was true; it stems from how the drivers are written, and in general PPC/Mac firewire drivers are better than PPC/Mac USB drivers, while Windows USB drivers are typically better than Windows firewire drivers.

Now we introduce the Intel-based Mac and suddenly a lot of existing USB driver code that works great on Windows is available for writing Mac USB drivers.

In addition, the USB interface this all started with was USB 1.1-which was all the USB Macs had for quite some time, and frankly it stinks for anything beyond a keyboard or mouse anyway.

So go ahead and get a USB external drive. I have a couple that are just fine and more than fast enough (one is also my network attached storage box-USB 2.0 is MUCH, MUCH faster than ethernet!!!).

Speed is an issue on a network, and either USB or firewire is so much faster than ethernet that either is a great choice for network storage. And remember that ALL wireless systems' "theoretical max throughput" rates are MUCH higher than actually achievable "net" data rates. For example, with 802.11b, with a theoretical max of 11Mbps, if you get 5Mbps net throughput you are doing Very Well-you are very close to your access point or router, the moon and stars are aligned, and your bad cholesterol is low while your good cholesterol is right where it should be. The difference is due to overhead processing and data that tracks both signal quality and data integrity, and there is nothing you can do about it except sit closer to your access point or router.

Further, Apple doesn't list numbers on their primary pages for the new base station, but they say "Up to five times the performance and up to twice the range compared to the earlier 802.11g standard." So let's assume that we're talking about a theoretical max rate of 280Mbps (5 X 56Mbps). If you have a perfect connection at very close range, you may be able to achieve 140Mbps net throughput. In very good conditions, wired ethernet connections can get up to around 70Mbps net throughput, so you are looking at a potential, theoretical max of about twice what 100BaseT ethernet can give you.

Note that kamina's post gives numbers in MegaBytes per second, while it is customary to list wireless (and usually wired) network speeds in Megabits per second, so a USB connected drive can get you theoretically 240-320Mbps (8 bits per byte, so 8 X 30-40MBps). Thus any USB 2.0 connected drive should give you WAY faster connections to your network than you can possibly, realistically expect to be able to use.

[BZ]

I am thinking along the same lines and am considering the following:

OWC (Macsales) enclosure with a 250GB drive + Apple Airport Base Station in closet.

Pre Leopard: DejaVu (or .Mac) backup from iMac + MacBook Pro to drive weekly.

Post Leopard: Upgrade HD to 500GB, TimeMachine to drive from both machines.

A very cool backup solution that keeps the minds off of the worry of DVDs.

BZ

[Dark Helmet]

Originally Posted by ghporter 

The big thing in the Mac community about firewire drives over USB drives is the belief that firewire tends to be faster than USB. With PowerPC processor-based systems this was true; it stems from how the drivers are written, and in general PPC/Mac firewire drivers are better than PPC/Mac USB drivers, while Windows USB drivers are typically better than Windows firewire drivers.

I thought firewire was better because it didn't require half as much CPU as USB 2 connections do?

[mduell]

Originally Posted by markw10 

1. Reliabilty: My main concern is reliability. When I first switch to Mac a couple months ago I was warned that when it comes to external drives use firewire, not USB, since USB is not as reliable. Maybe someday airport base stations will offer firewire but how reliable are these usb hard drives?

Haha, who sold you that FUD? USB and FW are pretty much the same in terms of reliability, with a possible advantage to USB in terms of power management (Firewire is more likely to fry the chips, google for it).

Originally Posted by markw10 

2. Speed: I know USB 2.0 offers 480Mbps which seems like more than enough speed but does that offer enough speed compared to if I had a hard drive directly in the computer? For example if I'm using Final Cut Pro working on a video file will it work okay working across the network at 'n' networking speeds or will it want me to be doing it on a computer with the hard drive actually inside that specific computer?

It's going to be slower than a hard drive inside the computer. Accessing an external disk over the network is going to take a bit hit in latency, and a smaller but still significant hit in bandwidth. I wouldn't edit video over the network; it would be an exercise in frustration. Copy locally before editing.

Originally Posted by markw10 

3. Which hard drive: For internal drives I've always preferred Maxtor but now that it's coming to External drives is there any specific type, brand, etc? that I should look for? I have seen some very nice, under $200, 500GB drives. As well, I like the western digital portable hard drives and have seen a 120GB model for around $100 which would be great to use as a backup drive (which can then later be stored in a safe) or even on the go in a laptop bag.

I like Seagate, they're the only brand with a 5 year warranty. Newegg.com is a good place to shop. Buy a highly rated external enclosure with a lot of votes.

Originally Posted by markw10 

4. Backup Type: In addition to the main hard drive and printer I want to use a hard drive at times for backup. Is there any specific Mac sofware that is great to do either a file by file backup or one large file (compressed file) backup to a network hard drive?

rysnc

Originally Posted by markw10 

5. Hubs: Obviously with these multiple devices I need a good USB 2.0 hub but beyond that do I need any specific hub?

Any USB 2.0 hub should be fine. I'd go with a big brand over some no-name.

[ghporter]

Originally Posted by Dark Helmet 

I thought firewire was better because it didn't require half as much CPU as USB 2 connections do?

It's all about the driver and how much CPU power it needs. I haven't seen any actual code on this, but it looks like people coding for Macs worked hard on the firewire drivers, and made the USB drivers just "good enough" to work. The two interfaces are different enough that there may be no reusable code between the two, and if you're writing for a Mac, with firewire MADE for Macs, would you spend more time on firewire or USB?

[mduell]

Originally Posted by ghporter 

It's all about the driver and how much CPU power it needs. I haven't seen any actual code on this, but it looks like people coding for Macs worked hard on the firewire drivers, and made the USB drivers just "good enough" to work. The two interfaces are different enough that there may be no reusable code between the two, and if you're writing for a Mac, with firewire MADE for Macs, would you spend more time on firewire or USB?

It's not just the driver, the CPU usage difference is inherent to each standard. The FW folks chose to put "more" in hardware, making the chips more expensive to design and fab, but reducing the dependency on the processor. USB decided to do more in software, decreasing cost, but also increasing processor overhead.

[kamina]

I think the main difference comes from the fact that alot of pc's don't have firewire ports. The ones that do often have 4-pin firewire connectors requiring you to use an external power supply more often. It's natural that firewire gained more popularity with Macs since Macs always had firewire connectors, even before USB2 was released.

-Firewire 400 was released, PC's still had USB1.1 (very slow). Licensing fees for firewire where too expensive to include it in budget pc's, so it didn't gain popularity there. All mac's included it so of course people got used to using it
-USB2 came out. All pc's got it, and users pretty much thought it's "good enough". The cpu-usage is higher then with firewire, but if it's all you got, it's all you got.

[ghporter]

Originally Posted by mduell 

It's not just the driver, the CPU usage difference is inherent to each standard. The FW folks chose to put "more" in hardware, making the chips more expensive to design and fab, but reducing the dependency on the processor. USB decided to do more in software, decreasing cost, but also increasing processor overhead.

True, but that's still adapter dependent. I've seen TINY firewire cards that don't have much more than interface chips on them, and larger ones that look like they'll handle filing your taxes as well as your firewire devices. The ONBOARD chipsets tend to be more self contained, and of course that's what Apple has used. And of course, the more the hardware handles, the less the driver had to give the CPU to handle. This is probably one reason why PCI firewire cards on PCs perform more poorly than onboard chips on Mac logic boards-they are either very expensive and fast, or cheap and not so fast due to what hardware is on the card, and the typical PC builder going to go with cheap rather than fast most of the time.

[Dark Helmet]

Is it possible to set the connected hard drive so serve files over the net?

[BZ]

Originally Posted by Dark Helmet 

Is it possible to set the connected hard drive so serve files over the net?

AirPort Disk: Easy Network Storage - O'Reilly Mac DevCenter Blog

Seems to think so.. (from Ars)

BZ