HD USB connected to a wireless network

The closest thing I know of is Apple's new AirPort Extreme Base Station, but it doesn't contain a "modem" of any kind. There are several brands of NAS (Network Attached Storage) devices that can easily be connected via Ethernet to a wireless router.

"Luca" hath wroth:

Forget using USB for storage. There are huge numbers of NAS (network attached storage) boxes that use ethernet. You can plug that directly into any wireless router, and it will work. No need for a dedicated device.

However, before you buy a wireless file storage box, you might play with the performance numbers.

(Thruput is measured in MBytes per sec)

802.11g at 54Mbits/sec will give you about 25Mbits/sec TCP thruput maximum. That's about 3MBytes/sec thruput. With the usual overhead, you'll be lucky to get 2.5MBytes/sec thruput.

If you dumped the wireless, and just connected with 100baseTX ethernet between the computahs and the NAS storage, you'll be getting about

90Mbits/sec raw rate, or about 10MBytes/sec with overhead. If you get a gigabit ethernet interface, it will be MUCH faster at perhaps 100MBytes/sec (if your computers can handle it).

Now, there's nothing wrong with 3MBytes/sec read/write speed, but you might be disappointed if you're expecting wire speed performance. See the read/write performance figures on the chart for a clue. Be sure to read the NAS tutorials, how-to's, etc on the URL above.

Also, you might wanna run your own benchmarks. See IPerf at:

Ask if you need help getting results with IPerf.

Just an aside, i use these

a ethernet AND usb NAS device, on the wap/router via ethernet for normal times, and when I do backups and want lots of speed, hook em up direct via USB.

And on another network, I have these

(buffalo tech NAS), that works on the wap/router but also allows for extra USB hard disks to be plugged in and used seperately (again for backup or whenever you want high speed)...

If bascially all you want is both wireless and USB, look at some of the wap/routers, and then devices that can do both ethernet and USB for storage off it.... Haven't tried the buffalo one with a hub, however it does work with the elcheapo 500 GB USB drives (under $350), so I suppose if I had a few sitting around, I could try it with a hub... However, was in best buy today, and they have 1 Terabyte drives for under $400, (500 GB for $170!) would try one of those on the buffalo if I wanted more storage, rather than a hub and two 500 GB drives....

Then its enough buy an external box for a standard HD pata or sata which the lan rj45 connection and connect it at the wireless router. In this case the lan detect the HD automatically?

Thanks a lot, i'm a newby :-) Luca

Usually yes... I have 3, and two work that way, and one another (actually that's the USB drive plugged into the ethernet linkstation, however I have that set as a different drive letter). So for your question about can you plug an ethernet drive into a wap router, absolutely yes, and they sell many external hard disks with ethernet connections that just plug into the router, and you can access them from any device on the network...

Don't know where you are at (in or out of the US), but here's a link for a network storage device with sizes and specs that may help you (and if in the US, has buy now links for the products to actually order it), that not only works on it's own, but even has two USB ports (for more storage and a printer) (this is one of the ones I have, I'd give it a thumbs up for a recommendation).. Main disk is detected automatically, and I have the external USB one (that wasn't set automatically, however now it's set with a share), hanging off that.

I came from Italy :-)

Just behind you

Thanks a lot for all Luca