Hello, I'm looking at getting a wireless hard drive for my house so I have a backup of all my stuff and also where I can store stuff that doesn't need to be on my laptop (photos, music, old work records etc). I use both Windows and Mac machines, but if it's a choice between the two the hard drive should work with the Windows stuff. I'm not super good at computing stuff (but I'm not totally useless either) - is it as simple as buying one and then setting it up to talk to my home wifi network? So my computer will see it in the same way it would see a wireless printer? Also is it possible to set it up so that I can connect to it when I'm away from home? (this isn't so essential but might be handy if possible). I've been recommended Synology stuff, but I see that has it's own operating system. I would prefer if it could just appear as a separate network drive within Windows Cheers Roy
You're looking for a NAS (Network Attached Storage) drive. Synology are good, as are many others. They all have their own operating system (usually some lightweight flavour of Linux with a friendly interface), so you can log in and set up the drives, folders, users and access. They're pretty straight forward to use, and can be access by Mac and PC in the same way. Most of them can be set up so you can access them while away from home.
Thanks for the replies. I'm looking at a minimum of 1TB I reckon, price isn't too much of an issue as long as it's the right thing for the job
AFAIK The WD NAS drives have their own file-sync software with them that works in a similar fashion to Dropbox. That would be the easiest way to work it. If you wanted to set it up yourself then its a home server job with a NAS style OS (FreeNAS is one example) there are plenty around. Something I am currently working on doing. Lots of Googling to get it how I want it.
Some of these methods can be quite slow fussy with drives and their firmware (not to mention privacy issues for work files, etc). For speed I use bare drives in a Plugable USB 3.0 SATA Lay Flat Hard Drive Dock for transfer speeds up to and over 100Mb/s
if you have a proper wireless router with network ports in the back then it doesn't have to be wireless, a wired one will do fine. I actually have a qnap ts-209 pro II NAS box I want to get shot of, its a bit old now but its fine just for storage. I used to use it for streaming video and music to my xbox and logitec squeezebox and it did me fine
