Wireless Hard Drive?

MR_Punk · 12 Dec 2023 at 20:30

Me and the wife are looking at a solution for our new business and its not something I've really looked into before. We do a lot of work with a which would compromise a large amount of photos which we would both want access to at home. Is there a simple wireless hard drive solution out there. Would this also be able to stream to a TV if required. We are probably looking at something 4TB sized. Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

Glanza · 12 Dec 2023 at 20:34

Your probably better off looking at getting a NAS

Meddling-Monk · 12 Dec 2023 at 20:44

I would suggest as NAS as well, but the issue here is, would the place of business have internet access to be able to reach it from home, and how fast would it be?

MR_Punk · 12 Dec 2023 at 20:51

Meddling-Monk said:
I would suggest as NAS as well, but the issue here is, would the place of business have internet access to be able to reach it from home, and how fast would it be?

We work from home so realistically the HD wouldn't need to be accessed anywhere but there. 1gig Virgin so speeds shouldn't be an issue.

Darryn · 12 Dec 2023 at 20:53

Does your router have a USB socket? I thought most recent routers did, allowing all network attached devices to access the usb hard drive connected to it.

MR_Punk · 12 Dec 2023 at 21:00

Darryn said:
Does your router have a USB socket? I thought most recent routers did, allowing all network attached devices to access the usb hard drive connected to it.

Virgin HUB 3 so no USB I'm afraid.

Meddling-Monk · 12 Dec 2023 at 21:25

MR_Punk said:
We work from home so realistically the HD wouldn't need to be accessed anywhere but there. 1gig Virgin so speeds shouldn't be an issue.

Just to confirm, your new business is located at home as well? Or seperate from home? This wasn't explicitly clear from previous unfortunately.

If the locations are different, then you want to have a fast upstream where the business is located at, so your downstream (at home) can receive files and access quickly. Otherwise, that 1gbit at home won't amount to much if you're only getting 100mb upstream (around 10mbyte) from where the drive is based, and files are large (as most images are), and if both of you are accessing at the same time.

MR_Punk · 12 Dec 2023 at 21:43

Meddling-Monk said:
Just to confirm, your new business is located at home as well? Or seperate from home? This wasn't explicitly clear from previous unfortunately.

If the locations are different, then you want to have a fast upstream where the business is located at, so your downstream (at home) can receive files and access quickly. Otherwise, that 1gbit at home won't amount to much if you're only getting 100mb upstream (around 10mbyte) from where the drive is based, and files are large (as most images are), and if both of you are accessing at the same time.

To be clear we both work from home so all this is the same location.

Meddling-Monk · 12 Dec 2023 at 21:52

MR_Punk said:
To be clear we both work from home so all this is the same location.

OK, that's a lot easier then.

Grab a 1 or 2 bay (one or two drive slot, typically go for at least 2 as ideally you want to either expand the drive space down the line or you want them in some type of raid for some redundancy level) NAS (Synology is typically the most user friendly who doesn't want to mess around with much settings) with a 1gb ethernet connection. Have that plugged into your network and it should be accessible to anyone on the network over wired or wireless connections. And if you set it up right, you can access it externally (outside from your home) too. Grab any 4TB+ Drive you want and install it.

Be aware that you need to avoid certain HDD, but I can't remember the exact ones to avoid, they're not designed for NAS use (shingled? or something along those lines), someone should know the exact name and let you know.

MR_Punk · 12 Dec 2023 at 22:11

Meddling-Monk said:
OK, that's a lot easier then.

Grab a 1 or 2 bay (one or two drive slot, typically go for at least 2 as ideally you want to either expand the drive space down the line or you want them in some type of raid for some redundancy level) NAS (Synology is typically the most user friendly who doesn't want to mess around with much settings) with a 1gb ethernet connection. Have that plugged into your network and it should be accessible to anyone on the network over wired or wireless connections. And if you set it up right, you can access it externally (outside from your home) too. Grab any 4TB+ Drive you want and install it.

Be aware that you need to avoid certain HDD, but I can't remember the exact ones to avoid, they're not designed for NAS use (shingled? or something along those lines), someone should know the exact name and let you know.

That is really useful information, any tips on which NAS to get would be great. Not looking to spend a fortune.

Snapshot · 13 Dec 2023 at 08:39

I've gone off Synology as their hardware isn't really keeping up with QNAP and Asustor plus they try to force you to use their own branded HDDs.
I'm an Asustor fanrinkli so I'd recommend an Asustor AS5202T or the newer AS5402T. Then add two WD Red Plus or Seagate Ironwolfs of your chosen capacity. Avoid the basic WD Red drives are they have shingled magnetic recording (SMR), as mentioned by @Meddling-Monk, which is poor for NAS use.
If you're think 4TB is enough then buy 6TB or 8TB as your requirements will rise....

Alternatively, I'm thinking of upgrading one of my NAS which I could sell with a couple of 6TB HDDs so putting something in the Wanted section of the Members Market could be productive.

MR_Punk · 13 Dec 2023 at 17:59

Snapshot said:
I've gone off Synology as their hardware isn't really keeping up with QNAP and Asustor plus they try to force you to use their own branded HDDs.
I'm an Asustor fanrinkli so I'd recommend an Asustor AS5202T or the newer AS5402T. Then add two WD Red Plus or Seagate Ironwolfs of your chosen capacity. Avoid the basic WD Red drives are they have shingled magnetic recording (SMR), as mentioned by @Meddling-Monk, which is poor for NAS use.
If you're think 4TB is enough then buy 6TB or 8TB as your requirements will rise....

Alternatively, I'm thinking of upgrading one of my NAS which I could sell with a couple of 6TB HDDs so putting something in the Wanted section of the Members Market could be productive.

Great idea I shall do exactly that.

JollyJamma · 14 Dec 2023 at 09:34

MR_Punk said:
Me and the wife are looking at a solution for our new business and its not something I've really looked into before. We do a lot of work with a which would compromise a large amount of photos which we would both want access to at home. Is there a simple wireless hard drive solution out there. Would this also be able to stream to a TV if required. We are probably looking at something 4TB sized. Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

Use a NAS connected via LAN.

Do not use USB or wireless. It’ll be slow and painful.

Please put a firewall between your data and the internet, a dedicated system with proper security and an antivirus.

It doesn’t need to be fancy, you can use an old computer for it with 2 LAN ports. Buy a firewall that has malicious program detection like Glasswire.

The last thing you want is your data worth ££££££ to be easily accessible to a hacker via a bug in the NAS software.

Keep your software up to date (within reason, don’t be on the cutting edge of releases but also don’t leave your systems to become so old that you are stuck with an old backup solution).

Also, test your backups from time to time.

Windows had this stupid thing with Exchange where you couldn’t recover data after moving to a new OS version.