USB 3, Thunderbolt or NAS?

[Scottio200]

Hi all

Im getting a new iMac really soon and want to upgrade my 2tb usb2 external drives to something with a bit more speed.

Im stuck weather to go for USB 3, Thunderbolt or NAS.

I havent had much experience with NAS and not sure of any speed issues with running over ethernet?

The drives will be used for storage and media playback, dont need any raid configurations just yet, unless the performance is worth the stability risk i keep hearing about?

Will be looking for at least 4TB, have seen a lot of noise on the Hitachi Touro DX3 and am swaying towards that, however there is also the WD My Book Thunderbolt Duo which has caught my eye. Its twice the price as the Hitachi one but obviously has faster Thunderbolt interface

Im totally stuck at what to do, any suggestions?

Cheers
Scottio

[tagy]

Why not get a DIY NAS box. I got the HP N40L micro server for just over £100 after cash back. It is a small box and you can put at least 5 HDs in.

Mine is running freeNAS with 6TB shared amongst mac's and pc's without issue.

[Zippeyrude]

I bougth a dlink dns320 and have popped a couple of 1tb wd drives in. Does the trick and was cheap too, allows ftp and real sharing without the faff of messing with usbs everytime you want to backup etc

[Scottio200]

I have a seperate firewire drive that will be used for backups, with the thunderbolt to firewire adaptor the speeds should be fairly decent for time machine. I just need reliable storage for media files really

[supraman54]

I have a seperate firewire drive that will be used for backups, with the thunderbolt to firewire adaptor the speeds should be fairly decent for time machine. I just need reliable storage for media files really

Time machine doesn't really need a really fast interface.. the faster firewire that the new iMacs use is easily enough.
I have never used my thunderbolt because everyone wants you to pay a huge premium for using it.. I am waiting for enclosures etc to drop to an affordable level before I do.

I would go for the QNAP that works at gigabit speed and has so many more features and is just idea for what you need... it's also perfect for raid when you want to use it

[Rick Sanchez]

Go with a NAS as they are easily upgradable. I ditched FreeNAS never to return, I replaced it with unRAID