External BackUp USB Drive Question

[MULTIZ321]

If I buy an External Back Up USB Drive and connect it to my Router - can I back up Data from 2 PC's on my wireless network to the External Drive?

Also, can I connect my tablet to the External Back Up for a direct backup rather than connecting the tablet to one of the PC's?



Thanks for your help with this.


Richard

 

[tompalm]

My son did have a backup USB drive and did that. It worked great, but I don't know if he did anything extra to make it work, like software or a special hard drive. But, I think all he did was exactly what you indicated, that is getting a USB Drive and plugging it in. All the computers in the house could access it or back info up to it and it was fast. He took it with him when he moved out and we don't have it any longer.

As far as the tablet goes, maybe a tablet that uses google software can do it. I don't think you can do it with an iPad. We have an adapter that connects to the iPad to download pics from an SD card. It was working great until Apple came out with a software update. It no longer works, but maybe there is something new I don't know about.

 

[zinger1457]

It should work for your PC's no problem, you may need an app like 'ES File Explorer' for your tablet (android?).

 

[Ty1on]

My son did have a backup USB drive and did that. It worked great, but I don't know if he did anything extra to make it work, like software or a special hard drive. But, I think all he did was exactly what you indicated, that is getting a USB Drive and plugging it in. All the computers in the house could access it or back info up to it and it was fast. He took it with him when he moved out and we don't have it any longer.

As far as the tablet goes, maybe a tablet that uses google software can do it. I don't think you can do it with an iPad. We have an adapter that connects to the iPad to download pics from an SD card. It was working great until Apple came out with a software update. It no longer works, but maybe there is something new I don't know about.

I believe it has to be a network storage drive for it to work that way. It would have to connect to the network, via either Ethernet or WiFi, and then would appear as a device on your network. They are calling it personal cloud storage these days. In my day we called it a fileserver and it was whole nother computer LOL

http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Central-Personal-Storage-STCG3000100/dp/B00ARB5FLQ/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1439246005&sr=8-8&keywords=network+storage+drive

 

[Ken555]

If I buy an External Back Up USB Drive and connect it to my Router - can I back up Data from 2 PC's on my wireless network to the External Drive?

Yes. If your router supports the addition of an external USB hard drive (many do) then it will almost certainly have the ability to share it on your network as an accessible network volume. It may or may not include third party backup software, but you should use whatever backup software you're most comfortable with as it likely doesn't matter (at this point it's simply a network volume so you should be able to copy anything to it). Based on the software you use, you may need to take another step to keep the two computers backups separate, but most programs should be able to accommodate for it without issue.






Sent from my iPad

 

[MULTIZ321]

Thanks everyone for your help.

Tuggers Rock!

Richard

 

[Ty1on]

Yes. If your router supports the addition of an external USB hard drive (many do) then it will almost certainly have the ability to share it on your network as an accessible network volume. It may or may not include third party backup software, but you should use whatever backup software you're most comfortable with as it likely doesn't matter (at this point it's simply a network volume so you should be able to copy anything to it). Based on the software you use, you may need to take another step to keep the two computers backups separate, but most programs should be able to accommodate for it without issue.






Sent from my iPad

I've never had a USB port on one of my routers. I looked it up, and apparently you can connect more than just USB drives. Cams, etc. Pretty cool. One thing I did read is that only one user can connect to the device at a time.

 

[Ken555]

I've never had a USB port on one of my routers. I looked it up, and apparently you can connect more than just USB drives. Cams, etc. Pretty cool. One thing I did read is that only one user can connect to the device at a time.

It all depends on the make and model of the router. For example, an Apple AirPort Extreme (or Express) may be accessed by multiple computers simultaneously, and used as a Time Machine backup destination. It's really quite simple to implement.


Sent from my iPad

 

[tompalm]

I believe it has to be a network storage drive for it to work that way. It would have to connect to the network, via either Ethernet or WiFi, and then would appear as a device on your network. They are calling it personal cloud storage these days. In my day we called it a fileserver and it was whole nother computer LOL

http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Central-Personal-Storage-STCG3000100/dp/B00ARB5FLQ/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1439246005&sr=8-8&keywords=network+storage+drive

You are right that it was connected with a CAT 5 wire or Ethernet. He said it was faster than connections with an USB wire.

 

[Ty1on]

You are right that it was connected with a CAT 5 wire or Ethernet. He said it was faster than connections with an USB wire.

Well I was right in regard to your son by a lucky guess. I didn't know that these newfangled routers are coming out with USB.

It makes sense that his "Network Attached Storage" is faster than a USB drive. USB was built for universality, not speed.

 

[Ken555]

You are right that it was connected with a CAT 5 wire or Ethernet. He said it was faster than connections with an USB wire.

It makes sense that his "Network Attached Storage" is faster than a USB drive. USB was built for universality, not speed.

Initial uses of USB were primarily for devices such as keyboards and mice and has evolved into much more. When v2 was released, it became popular for hard drives and more, though still relatively slow.

Modern versions of USB are actually quite fast, and the latest version (type-c) is very fast. Compared to Gigabit Ethernet (the more common modern version of networking, though the slower 100BaseT Ethernet is still used in many locations as it requires Cat 5e or 6 cabling) the newer versions of USB are better for accessing storage. Keep in mind that ethernet, and the server hard drives, has overhead so you cannot simply compare theoretical speeds of the cable to others.

Network file servers may perform at 40-70 MB per second on a local network with gigabit Ethernet, which is significantly less than the transmission speed possible with gigabit Ethernet. USB 2, which has been available for many years, works at a maximum of ~60 MB per second. Compare this to USB 3.0 at 640 MB per second. Unfortunately, many devices (especially cheap products) just aren't designed to provide maximum speed so even a USB 3 device may not always perform at these speeds. The new USB 3.1 and Type-C versions are even faster.

And, most NAS devices or inexpensive hard drive sharing solutions (such as connecting a drive to a router) will almost certainly perform poorly when compared to simply attaching it locally via USB 3. USB 3 hard drives are actually quite fast from a practical perspective. In other words, your local drives will likely be faster than any network resource.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigabit_Ethernet

A good review of Gigabit Ethernet here, though some tech changes in recent years have increased performance since this was written:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gigabit-ethernet-bandwidth,2321.html

Brief overview of USB 2 vs USB 3 practical performance:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2360306/usb-3-0-speed-real-and-imagined.html


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[SMHarman]

^ great post.

The other piece to add is 10/100 Ethernet will perform better than that over short distances and still do 10/100 over a 1000 ft cable the max the spec allows.