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NAS or Hard Drive hooked up with my Linksys WRT1900AC

Tags:
  • Macbook Pro
  • NAS / RAID
  • Linksys
  • Hard Drives
  • Wireless Network
September 8, 2014 11:27:02 AM

Hello all ,

I recently about a month ago purchased a Linksys WRT1900AC.
I own a Macbook Pro with 256 GB of on-board storage so its always running out of space.
Before i had the wrt1900ac i just used to copy my files over to the portable external HDD (1 TB Seagate Backup slim | http://www.amazon.in/Seagate-Backup-Portable-External-D... ), i was not much into Time machine backups (i never did one yet).
So Currently i have the HDD hooked up with the router via usb 3.0 ( I get a speed of ranging from 4-10 MB/s[write] and 15-28 MB/s[read] over wireless (5GHz 802.11ac). I used Blackmagic Disk Speed test to check the read and write speed.

I only have devices connected over WiFi (No lan connections). I have also tested playing movies (mkv 1080p Brrip) directly from the hard drive attached to the router simultaneously on 8 devices connected to both 2.4Ghz and 5 Ghz bands [I did fast forward , rewind , seek to different time stamps simultaneously on all devices] and the performance was pretty good in the video playback there was little to no lag, all the devices combined were only utilizing 300-400 Mbps of bandwidth at peak load.

But i have some concerns

1) the hard drive when attached to the router never goes to sleep will it be catastrophic over time ? will it eventually fail after some weeks(assuming its not supposed to be on all the time) ? When attached to my mac or pc it goes to sleep when not accessed .

2) When copying something from my mac or android device's storage to the hard drive hooked to router over WiFi , I get terrible speeds (it takes longer than copying something to the drive via usb 2.0). Copying files from HDD to local storage on devices is abit slow but still can be lived with .

3)I dont have a backup HDD so i fear of losing all my data if the the HDD fails .


I do plan on using Time Machine to Backup my mac if i get a NAS (if it provides good write speeds)
(If i get a NAS) I will be getting a 2TB external HDD to backup my NAS periodically just to prevent data loss.

I have not tested the performance of the hdd attached to the router via USB3.0 on a wired gigabit connection (as my macbook pro doesn't have a ethernet port).

So what do you guys suggest ?
Do I need to buy a NAS or just deal with the sloppy slow write speeds on my HDD hooked to the router ? [I have to buy another external HDD to Backup my current one or a NAS and use the current one to backup the NAS periodically]




(I am considering Western Digital : My Cloud [2TB] or Seagate Central [2TB] ) I prefer the Seagate Central as it has better write and read speeds over a wired connection compared to WD: my cloud , BUT Seagate Central has a usb2.0 port for backing up data on an external HDD and on the other hand WD: my cloud has a USB3.0 for backing up the NAS to a external HDD . ( The read/write speeds over gigabit wired connection were 90-100 MB/s on Seagate Central and 60-70 MB/s on the WD:My cloud [Source some Youtuber benchmarking them side by side] )



One more question will only get slow speeds over wifi ? No matter if it is a NAS or A HDD attached to the router ? (The link speed b/w my mac and router is 867 Mbps most of the times)

I highly appreciate your feedback



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