What type of external hard drive should I get?

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Level 1

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What type of external hard drive should I get?

First, I'm not sure were I should have posted this question but here goes....

I am officially 100% an Apple home environment now. I have an iMac, a Macbook Pro, and an Airport Extreme. I want to add an external hard drive and I need suggestions for what to get. I know the Time Machine router is available but I'm looking for a less-expensive option.

I want to add an external hard drive but I want to make it available to the entire home network so that both the iMac and Macbook Pro can write and access files on one shared external drive. I also want the ability to have both computers to be able to use Time Machine to back up to the external drive. External file access (i.e. via a cloud option/app) for accessing files from my iPhone or iPad is not necessary but would be appreciated.

Also, is it just as easy as hooking the external hard drive up to the network by USB cable to the USB port on the Airport Extreme?

iMac, OS X Mavericks (10.9)

Posted on Feb 2, 2014 7:31 PM

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Answer 1

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rkaufmann87

Level 10

140,532 points

Feb 2, 2014 8:02 PM in response to lipseyt

There is no such thing as a Time Machine Router, however I think you are referring to a Time Capsule. Time Machine is an application for backing up. Time Capsule is something else entirely different.

If you want to hook up an external HD to an Airport Extreme that will work just fine as a network drive however DO NOT use it to back up using Time Machine, at best it's unreliable for using Time Machine.

Finally if you are looking for a good quality EHD I strongly recommend using OWC (www.macsales.com) Mercury Elite Pro series.

If you want to back up multiple Macs to a single EHD then you need the Time Capsule. You can get them refurbished from Apple. For example:

http://store.apple.com/us/product/FD032LL/A/refurbished-time-capsule-2-tb

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