Ethernet v USB2 v Firewire for NAS

[Banzai_Joe]

Hi guys,

i need to buy an interim NAS for data storage on our network.
It seems ideal to buy a box that has a gigabit AND USB2 connection. The reason being i want to be able to periodically remove the NAS and take it to a remote office, where i can plug it into a pc via usb and transfer data that way too.
There are also NAS's with Firewire connections too, but which do you think would be the best, Ethernet (100 or 1000) usb2 or firewire.
usb2 = 480mbits/sec
firewire = 400mbits/sec
100baseT = 100mbits/sec

But...isn't the ethernet still faster for data transfer. Most usb2 devices say 480mbits/sec then in brackets it says max. transfers 12mbits/sec which would be much slower than ethernet.

Your opinions would be appreciated, thanks

 

[HomerJ]

Ethernet is is prererable especially is you are suing it in the network and yes having USB as well is good. USB speeds depend on the NAS if it supports USB 1 which is 11 or 12Mbps max or if it support USB 2 which is a 480Mbps max. You need to check that the NAS uses USB 2 as I have seen some that do not also if it has a USB port that it can be used to connect and transfer as the D-Link DNS-323 NAS has a USB port but I think you can only use it to add a printer to the NAS so you can have a networked printer.

 

[Banzai_Joe]

yeah... most of em seem to have usb type A, not type B, so the nas acts as a host for other usb devices.
Although there are a couple that have usb type B so they can be plugged into a pc for single user use, which is the option i want to have also.
As far as speed goes, i'm always dubious about this. Usb2 is 480mbits/sc, so in theory it should transfer data at approx. 60mbytes/s, whereas 100base-T would be approx. 12.5mbytes/s. But in reality its never really like that is it? Usb2 doesn't transfer data at 5x the speed of ethernet, not in my experience anyway. Am i missing something here?