Network USB Hub

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Hi

I'm looking for a USB Network Hub to connect a Verbatim 1TB USB Hard Drive to my home network so that it can be accessed by my 2 x macs and 1 x PC. The only one I can find is:

Belkin Network USB Hub: Amazon.co.uk: Electronics & Photo

However although it looks the business and will sit nicely next to my predominately gloss black home technology environment it appears to be just to damm slow when it comes to data transfers.

My main reason is so that I can use it for Time Machine on my macs but also somewhere to stick all my music and photos and be able to access them on each PC without having to plug and unplug my hard drive in.

I know I can by an Ethernet HDD or an Ethernet Enclosure for an HDD but the HDD I just bought is brand new.

Anyone know of a model with better transfer rates, or has BELKIN sorted out this problem with a firmware update?

Many thanks.
 

cwa107


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What you really need is a NAS drive. Anything else is just a hack (this included) and will probably not work well with Time Machine, if at all.

The easiest thing you can do, whilst retaining the drive, would be to get an AirPort Extreme and attach the drive to its USB connector.
 
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JonnyAlpha
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What you really need is a NAS drive. Anything else is just a hack (this included) and will probably not work well with Time Machine, if at all.

The easiest thing you can do, whilst retaining the drive, would be to get an AirPort Extreme and attach the drive to its USB connector.

I looked at the Airport Extreme and one of the reviews seem to point out that it too suffers from USB data transfer if a USB HDD is plugged into the Airports USB port:

Con's
-File transfer speeds incredible slow to external USB drive, especially when using with Backup. Perhaps the time capsule is better? Around 2.0MB/s, which is apparently due to its ability to its process to process the information rather than actually transfer it.

You can transfer much faster to any other computer (or external hard drive attached to that computer) connected to the base station. A 25Gb fresh backup this way took about 1hr, which is pretty good.

Overall DO buy this if you want a good, fast router/ home network, perhaps DON'T if you want to seriously use an USB attached drive
.

Can you only plug 1 x USB device into the USB port or can you attach a USB Hub and attach say an external HDD and a Printer (which is what I need to do).

What if I attached my external HDD to my imac and can I set up Time Machine to use an external HDD attached to another machine.

Looks like I may have wasted my money on the verbatim HDD, when what I needed was a network drive.
 
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Seems to me that you have the cart before the horse. Choose where do you want to end up, then choose best gear to achieve that. My thoughts;
keep these factors in mind
Time Machine is not a bootable back up as such.
Time Machine keeps great record of historic changes.
In case of catastrophic HD failure it is nice to be able to continue working with out days lost for replacement and restoring.
Fire or Theft can really screw the scrum if you have not planned for it.
My scheme, SuperDuper and an off site Firewire 800 for speedy weekly backups.
Time Machine - the router/ethernet hub/500GB drive for day to day back up as well as a 5GHz 802.11n connection for an iMac and MBP and off that an Airport Express with 11g for wireless printing to Brother from either Mac and for iPhone wireless.
When my MBP failed i booted of FW 800 thru wifes iMac and kept going for the 2 weeks before the MBP was fixed. Then just updated back to the MBP from the FW800 for changes in the 2 weeks.
 

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