Which hard drive?

[dtr_angel]

I use an external hard drive to back up our pictures, documents, and home videos to. Unfortunately the one I had been using is no longer working (luckily I have CD/DVDs of everything on it) so I am in the market for a new one. After reading a thread on here recently about a wifi type external hard drive that I could use to store movies and things on for an iPad I am getting soon. I'm wondering if I could get one hard drive that would serve both purposes. I'm getting a wifi only model of the iPad and I'm still a little confused how you can access movies off of a hard drive in the car when there is no wi fi available? I'm not sure exactly what the hard drive I'm looking for is called, either. Thanks!

 

[rock_doctor]

You can't. It is basically a hard drive and a wifi router. So you plug it in and turn it on and add it as a network drive to your computer. Then you save to it as you normally would. But you have to be in your home in the same system or if you want to be fancy you probably could VPN to it from work but that would be complicated to set up. It is not cloud storage where you would save your files via the internet and could do with the pad if it had a cellular connection (when wifi isn't available) or a wifi connection. Network area storage (NAS) drives are nice as all of your computers can use it and you don't have to move it around. You may consider having the NAS drive for home use and something like google or Microsoft skydrive (now one drive) as your cloud storage. Just use a computer to keep the important things synced across the NAS and the cloud. If you have a cell phone maybe check into tethering to it, which is sharing its data connection with a computer or pad.

 

[manning]

Hard drives are dirt cheap now and they will, not if, fail.

Get two of them and have a duplicate backup. Had that happen to me with a brand new one. I went out bought a new one and made another backup. Saved the hassle of dealing with CD/DVD.

 

[ssawka]

You can't. It is basically a hard drive and a wifi router. So you plug it in and turn it on and add it as a network drive to your computer. Then you save to it as you normally would. But you have to be in your home in the same system or if you want to be fancy you probably could VPN to it from work but that would be complicated to set up. It is not cloud storage where you would save your files via the internet and could do with the pad if it had a cellular connection (when wifi isn't available) or a wifi connection. Network area storage (NAS) drives are nice as all of your computers can use it and you don't have to move it around. You may consider having the NAS drive for home use and something like google or Microsoft skydrive (now one drive) as your cloud storage. Just use a computer to keep the important things synced across the NAS and the cloud. If you have a cell phone maybe check into tethering to it, which is sharing its data connection with a computer or pad.

You can set up a personal cloud, but it is pretty involved and you would need a fast Internet connection to your home (Faster than the typical cable or DSL connection) and you would probably need unlimited Internet on your phone.

 

[RitaE]

I have a Western Digital … I can't remember exactly what it is called … MyBook? MyPassbook?

Anyway it functions as a Cloud in that we have apps on our phones and tablets that can pull files from it when we are away from the home.

You have to have an internet connection though where you are. I can't stream from our Hard Drive to my Kindle Fire when I'm in the car because my Kindle Fire only has WiFi and I don't have WiFi in my vehicle. That's actually a good idea to get two of them because they are very affordable now.

I double back-up the most important things like pictures or other things to a couple different Cloud Services. Dropbox, Amazon, Apple. I have free accounts at all of them so I send different devices to different places because I don't have enough space at any one service to hold everything.

 

[wiigirl]

Hard drives are dirt cheap now and they will, not if, fail.

Get two of them and have a duplicate backup. Had that happen to me with a brand new one. I went out bought a new one and made another backup. Saved the hassle of dealing with CD/DVD.

 

[dawnhaze]

I wouldn't bother using a wifi hard drive as my main backup disk. It's not cost effective, you're spending extra money for no reason. Get a regular wired external drive for backups of your computer.

The wifi hard drives being discussed for use with iOS devices in that other thread aren't cloud or network storage, they're just hard drives with hardware that allows them to create their own local wifi network. They don't provide internet access, just a wireless connection between the drive and the device accessing it. These could be used just about anywhere, but you have to have the drive itself with you.

The key is that all your data needs to exist in more than one place at any given time, because any and all storage solutions are subject to failure.

 

[Shelly F - Ohio]

My DH who works in the IT field got us the My Book 3 tb external drive. Runs $125 - $130

 

[DizzyStitch]

I now use an external hard drive for my ITunes stuff. I also added Apple TV so I can access the hard drive for my TV. But I do have to be in the house on Wifi. Everything uses so much space now!

 

[Lewisc]

The Seagate drive mentioned by a poster in another thread has built in Wi-Fi for streaming. It is powered by an included lithium battery. It will stream content to up to 8 devices. You'd bring the drive with you. The cost for a 1T drive is around $180. The prices is reasonable, if you're going to take the drive on the road. Makes a lot of sense if you'll be bringing multiple smartphones/tablets with you.

You'll be paying for features you don't need if you plan on leaving the drive at home.

 

[ssawka]

You have to have an internet connection though where you are. I can't stream from our Hard Drive to my Kindle Fire when I'm in the car because my Kindle Fire only has WiFi and I don't have WiFi in my vehicle. That's actually a good idea to get two of them because they are very affordable now.

You can toggle to your phone for Internet access. You probably don't want to do this unless you have unlimited Internet though.

As for the Hard drive, it is likely that the cloud server on the HD did the router configuration for you. Some routers also have the ability to plug in a standard USB hard drive and use it as a cloud drive.