Wondering if a Gigabit NAS drive with the exact same drive specs, say 5TB 5700RPM would perform the same or better than a USB 2.0 drive 5TB 5700RPM when connected to an AE. I want two way access via Wi-Fi from my laptop. Hope that makes sense. Should I connect a 5TB NAS to the AE or an identical 5TB USB 2.0 drive for maximum two way performance via my laptop . Thanks for the assistance. .
MacBook Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9.5), null
USB 2 is slow.. but so is wireless.. What model AE are you talking about and what speed is your best possible transfer rate??
Gigabit is limited to 1000Mbit.. and over ethernet on modern drives can get pretty close to that figure.. but of course that is ethernet.. a hugely superior network infrastructure cf wireless.
The AE is the new model 802.11a/c. I basically need it to serve random files in and out via wi-fi. I realize if I could hardwire to the AE it would all be faster, but I need to have it act like a wireless Time Capsule server. Trying to figure out if it's worth it speed wise to get a NAS drive to connect to the AE via the LAN port or just use a USB 2.0 drive for serving the files in and out. I would simply do my own real world test if I had a NAS drive handy with the identical internal drive specs as a USB 2 drive I have but I don't happen to have one yet.
Thanks for the help. Anything more definitive? 🙂
In fact, what I'm looking at exactly are these drives connected to an AE 802.11a/c
4TB WD My Cloud Ethernet NAS drive
4TB WD My Book USB 3.0 drive (The AE only supports USB 2.0)
4TB Seagate Central Ethernet NAS drive
4TB Seagate Expansion USB 3.0 drive.
All 4 drives are AC powered off the wall, not the USB port.
I'm not concerned with the features of the drives whatsoever, simply the fastest transfer rates when connected to the AE.
Thank you. 🙂
USB 2 is half the speed of Gigabit ethernet. 480Mb/s as compared to 1Gb/s. USB3 is 5 times faster, 5Gb/s
Thanks Csound. 🙂
Just so you follow.
If you plug the USB3 drive into the AE it is reduced to USB2.
It could never reach 5Gbps because of mechanical drives anyway.. but it can get close to gigabit.
But the USB2 in a router is hard to achieve transfer speeds greater than half of USB port speed.. so 240Mbps.
You do however need to take wireless speeds into account.
Wireless can only manage real world transfer speeds of between half and quarter of the link speed.. so realistically USB2 may not be that slow cf the speed of the wireless.
Nor is a cheap end NAS that fast..
Out of your selection.
4TB WD My Cloud Ethernet NAS drive
4TB WD My Book USB 3.0 drive (The AE only supports USB 2.0)
4TB Seagate Central Ethernet NAS drive
4TB Seagate Expansion USB 3.0 drive.
It is always good to look at the tests in smallnetbuilder.
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/nas/nas-reviews/32109-seagate-central-reviewed
The seagate had a test read of 34MB/s and write of only 18MB/s. This is very poor.
The WD MyCloud performed much better.
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/nas/nas-reviews/32244-wd-my-cloud-reviewed?start= 4
It is still well off the peak speed of gigabit.. but they tested with read speed which is the most crucial one 62.5MB/s although people have reported much slower speed in more real world setups.
Also these tests are PC world stuff.. and Mac efficiency in reading and writing files can be quite different..
However I think in most cases wireless is going to be slower than either USB or Ethernet connected drive.. however to me the ethernet is still more robust.
Thanks LaPastenague That was a lot of good info as well. I reiterate the fact that no matter what I plug into the AE, I will have to transfer files wirelessly. Connecting my laptop to the AE isn't in the cards. Sounds like I should look at the 4TB WD My Cloud Ethernet NAS drive for the best performance of the 4 I have chosen. The benchmarks from smallnetbuilder will be helpful for sure. Never knew about them. Thanks for all the help[. 🙂
Gigabit LAN vs USB 2.0 over WiFi (Faster?)
