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General discussion

Help with external storage drive purchase

Mar 30, 2011 5:11AM PDT

Dear Forum,

I need an external storage drive (1 or 2 TB) to use with my Macbook Pro (and only my MacBook Pro, which uses USB 2.0) in order to store photo files, etc.

There are many attractive options, but what I don't understand is whether there is a kind of drive that I could somehow access remotely - that's, when I am far away from my at-home wireless network. I don't have a server at home, so I'm not sure whether that's even possible.

Thanks for any advice and/or product suggestions. Thanks!

Andy

Mac OSX 10.5.8
MacBook Pro, 2.53 GHz, 2009
One FireWire 800 port (up to 800 Mbps)
Mini DisplayPort
Two USB 2.0 ports (up to 480 Mbps)

Discussion is locked

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"store photo files" = DANGER.
Mar 30, 2011 5:17AM PDT

All external drives have shown a tendency to lose contents to outright fail. Be sure your plan is to have a backup copy of what you can't lose when this happens.

About remote access. There are drives that you put on your network and give SLOW!!! remote access. Even when at home these run at a fraction of the speed when you connect them with USB 2.0.

Be sure to not over invest is network capable drives since between setup which is not easy enough to the speed issue most folk disconnect them and go back to direct connection.

Having written all that, why not an Apple solution like http://www.apple.com/airportextreme/features/harddrivesharing.html
Bob

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Remote
Mar 30, 2011 5:21AM PDT

The Apple option is intriguing, but ultimately it may not be necessary. Thanks for the tip.