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General discussion

NAS or external hard drive? which to choose

by riisor Sep 19, 2005 2:16PM PDT

I am about to purchase some additional storage for my system and am thinking on getting a network storage device from maxtor, western digital or buffalotech. The buffalo gigabit linkstation has advantage over the other two since it supports FTP services. The questions I have are: a) will these solutions be slower than a regular external hardisk attached thru USB (or firewire).I read that the ethernet interface is a bottleneck of sorts especially if its simply 10/100 mbps (versus gigabit). b) are there compelling reasons to select one over the other or should I be considering other products entirely. Im looking to add around 300GB to my 2.53ghz, 512mb ram WinXP SP2 system.

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If you're just wanting extra storage for a single system

by Steven Haninger Sep 20, 2005 10:51AM PDT

an external drive offers cost savings over NAS devices. Depending on the NAS you would consider, these have some advantages in certain applications. If you want extra storage on a network with multiple PCs a networked device might be a good choice. They offer some management and security features depending on what you get. Some are expandable as well and some come with XP imbedded but I doubt these would be simple solutions for home use. As for speed, I don't see that as an issue with either since data transfer can just happen in the background.

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