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Hardware I am working with

I would like to access the 2TB Seagate drive from within and outside the network. I am also considering running Syncany as my self-hosted syncing platform.

My question

Would it be better to:

a) plug the Seagate HDD directly into the router?

-=OR=-

b) plug the Seagate HDD into the laptop (which is in turn plugged into the router)?

I am asking in terms of performance, pros, and cons. I'm aware of general differences between using a laptop and router. Please compare read/write speed values based on component chipsets.

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9
  • Is the laptop stationary or mobile? I'd just go with b but keep a mirror backup at home if it's mobile. It's just a lot simpler.
    – Larssend
    Jul 18, 2015 at 13:25
  • 1
    The laptop is stationary.
    – Raj
    Jul 19, 2015 at 1:09
  • HDD directly to Router
    – Dave
    Jul 21, 2015 at 8:13
  • In my experience external hard drives are extremely unreliable and have a high rate of failure. You are also creating a single point of failure as you likely only have one drive. To do a NAS properly you should get a dedicated NAS solution. My experience has been with Synology and it has been the optimal way to go. You connect via ethernet instead of USB and you can get a two drive box so that you can set up a raid, that way if a drive goes bad, the raid can recover the data. You can use the Seagate as a back up device to the NAS box.
    – AMR
    Jul 23, 2015 at 3:10
  • Why would people downvote without any mention of an issue with the question?
    – Raj
    Jul 24, 2015 at 7:07

3 Answers 3

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If you connect the hard drive to the router:

  • Storage performance (read/write speeds) may be limited by the CPU power of the router. For your router, this appears to be about 60MB/s read and 35MB/s write (review).
  • You will be able to connect using only the protocols supported by your router
  • You won't need to install or manage any server software on your laptop
  • Netgear's proprietary software could add value (using ReadyCloud to configure external access)

If you connect the hard drive to your laptop:

  • Storage access will consume CPU cycles on your laptop, but access to the storage will be as fast as the device or USB 2.0 connection allows, which is 30 MB/s read, 15 MB/s write (Wikipedia)
  • You can configure whatever services you would like for the device (SMB, FTP, etc)
  • You lose a USB port on your laptop
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If you're connecting it to the router:

  • The NAS will be accessible 24/7
  • You're only bottleneck is the routers speed whereas if it was connected to the laptop, the laptop's NIC speed would also be a factor
  • The router is designed to shave high volume of data whereas the laptop isn't
  • Most routers can configure the NAS via it's web interface

If you're connecting to the laptop:

  • The laptop would have to be on 24/7 which it isn't designed to do
  • If the laptop needs to be restarted, the NAS is unalienable for that time
  • More complicated to manage across devices
  • Need to share your computer login details to gain access to it which poses a security risk
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  • a) means it might have performance issues as usb can interfere with wireless
  • b) this will work if you dont mind slower speed, if you are using wireless for the other devices, its baiscly as fast as wireless goes anyway
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  • USB cannot interfere with wireless
    – qasdfdsaq
    Jul 24, 2015 at 11:28
  • well intel says otherwise intel.com/content/www/us/en/io/universal-serial-bus/…
    – nwgat
    Jul 24, 2015 at 15:06
  • You don't seem to have read or understood the paper you are referring to. Their research shows no real world impact in the B/G band 2.4Ghz and no interference whatsoever in the A/AC band at 5Ghz. And if you believe the (broken) signal readouts from Intel's own wireless cards, even at 2.4Ghz it's four times weaker than undetectable.
    – qasdfdsaq
    Jul 24, 2015 at 15:21

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