Network drives - worth considering?

Hello all -

Lately, I see more and more "network" drives - that is, hard
drives that connect to an Ethernet network and can be
mounted and accessed that way, instead of through USB or
Firewire.

They _look_ interesting - seems to me I could take a
large-capacity drive, partition it, connect it to the free
port on my router, and use it to back up various startup and
data partitions that exist on my two computers (g4 & iMac).

This, as opposed to connecting/disconnecting the drives now,
when I need to do backups.

My g4 (last version of this model before it was
discontinued) has at least 10/100 Ethernet, and I believe
the iMac (2nd generation Intel "white" model) has gigabit
Ethernet (could be wrong about that).

When connected this way, are the data transfer speeds
comparable to Firewire 400?

Are there other issues worth considering, such as "bootability"?

Thanks,
- John

In article ,
John Albert wrote:

> Hello all -
>
> Lately, I see more and more "network" drives - that is, hard
> drives that connect to an Ethernet network and can be
> mounted and accessed that way, instead of through USB or
> Firewire.
>
> They _look_ interesting - seems to me I could take a
> large-capacity drive, partition it, connect it to the free
> port on my router, and use it to back up various startup and
> data partitions that exist on my two computers (g4 & iMac).
>
> This, as opposed to connecting/disconnecting the drives now,
> when I need to do backups.
>
> My g4 (last version of this model before it was
> discontinued) has at least 10/100 Ethernet, and I believe
> the iMac (2nd generation Intel "white" model) has gigabit
> Ethernet (could be wrong about that).
>
> When connected this way, are the data transfer speeds
> comparable to Firewire 400?
>
> Are there other issues worth considering, such as "bootability"?
>
> Thanks,
> - John

If you intend to use Leopard's Time Machine backup facilities,
then you should make sure Time Machine supports your NAS device.

If you are going to use another backup utility that make sure the
NAS (Network Attached Storage) device will work with your backup
utility. The one thing I've seen is cheap NAS devices that only
support 2GB files. Make sure you do not have one of those.

Having said all of this, I use an older iBook G4 as my NAS. Since
it is running Leopard, it supposes all the current Mac OS X file
system protocols. I've attached about a Terabyte of external
storage to the iBook G4, and use it to backup all my systems.

I also take advantage of the 2GB of free Mozy.com storage to
backup some more critical files off-site.

Bob Harris