NAS, Networked Harddrive or Time Capsule?

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Alright so my external harddrive just died on me and I have a feeling its because it was bumped around a bit too much seeing as I don't have an actual desk and it moved around a bit.

So now I want to network a 1tb harddrive to be used with my macbook, a macbook pro, PS3 to Store iTunes music, Movies and Torrents I would be seeding.

I already have a AEBS and could plug a external harddrive into that via USB but I found that painfully slow even when streaming media off it.

I've been contemplating buying a Time Machine but I can't see it going much faster then the networked AEBS drive

I've also been looking at NAS' particularly this one Home Media Home Media Network Hard Drive Storage: Share files over your home network and was wondering if this would be any better then the other options.

I'm definitely open to any ideas you guys may have but I'm trying to keep it in the neighbourhood of $250
 
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Your Mac's Specs
iPod Nano 4gb, 20" 2.66 GHz Core 2 Duo, 2GB of ram, ATI HD 2600 pro
So are you looking for one with the drives included or ones without?

If without I'd look at the D-Link ones, netgear, linksys

With HDD, western digital and some of the other hard drive makers provide some good options at a good price.
 
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Your Mac's Specs
MBP 2.33 4GB: MacPro 8 Core 2.8, 16GB: MacMini 2.26 4GB: MacMin 2.53 4GB: iPhone3GS 32GB
Personally I use the AEBS with external drive approach and have never had any issue in terms of performance with video, audio streaming etc. If you are having issues with the AEBS approach, then a TimeCapsule isn't going to be that much different.

One thing I am wondering is the speed of your old drive and whether or not this may have been an issue you were having before.

My only thoughts on the product you posted above, I have had issues in the past with media streaming to my Mac from devices using SMB (Windows file protocol) which invariably this device would have to do. That would be my only hesitation.
 

cwa107


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14" MacBook Pro M1 Pro, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD
I would not purchase an IOMega product, personally. Just have a long history with their craptastic product line-up over the years.

Personally I use a D-Link DNS-323 and like it quite a bit. The Time Capsule is expensive and has no redundancy. It's also pretty limited in terms of capability. Most NAS units can do a lot more (FTP server, uPNP, iTunes, Bittorrent and more).
 
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When I tried using the drive with AEBS it take a really long time to add music to iTunes and would basically lock up the app also when I would stream a avi it would intermittently stop and go for maybe a fraction of a second which could get annoying.

I had a Samsung (1TB) (32MB) (7200RPM) (SATA II) in a Simpletech Pininfarino enclosure.

I could just throw a new harddrive into that enclosure which would prob be cheapest but I definitely can't have that kind of lag. Could it be it's the combo of enclosure and harddrive? What kind of external are you using prince?
 
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Your Mac's Specs
MBP 2.33 4GB: MacPro 8 Core 2.8, 16GB: MacMini 2.26 4GB: MacMin 2.53 4GB: iPhone3GS 32GB
I use a variety of drives my main ones are the WD My Book Studio II 2TB. However, I have a few Seagate drives in external enclosures that also work fine. I am not even sure of the external enclosure make/model. I know that they were quite cheap.

Note, again, I have never seen the type of lag you are seeing using the AEBS and external drives of any kind, not just the WD drives I am using as my main media devices.
 

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