Question about NAS

I was looking to buy a router and as I was going through the options I was reading how netgears new rebranded WDNR3700 AV or whatever it is called has a USB interface to attach external hard drives, which I have also been planning to buy. I had also been looking into NAS for collection of videos and stuff. So now does it make more sense to just buy the netgear router and external hard drive or is there any advantage to NAS over this set up? I have a PS3, would love to have a central site of media to be accessed by PS3 or laptop or ipad.

Thank you very much for any response.

 

if you would have bought a single drive NAS then there isn't a reason really. you are good with the router + hdd.
If however, you are going for data security, i suggest buying a two bay nas drive, with a RAID 1(mirror) set up, so if 1 drive fails you still have your data.

Bottom line - it really depends on your needs.

 

Also keep in mind that NASes run on routers are rather slow (7-12MB/s typically)
Don't treat it as NAS per se- it has somewhat limited capabilities in this respect and limited speed by for general home use it may be enough.

 

Thank you guys for your responses. If you don't mind could you elaborate on what the limitations of router +hdd would be other than speed. In any case even those speeds should be enough to play HD stuff on it in say my ps3, right? Thanks.

 

if you are going to connect your ps3 with an ethernet cable to the router, i think you'll be good.
WIFI streaming of HD content wouldn't work though, regardless of NAS type.

 

The main problem is that the even best routers like WNDR3700 have a CPU of only 680MHz (some other good ones are closer to 500MHz). So running a NAS in addition to the usual routing stuff is pretty challenging for them.
That may sometimes result in slower speeds (it may not be perfectly consistent all the time), configuration is a bit limited compared to what NAS offer and having a HDD connected via USB doesn't help wither (sometimes it just may become inaccessible until you restart the router).
If you go to smallnetbuilder you can see what hardware is used to build NASes (up to Atom 1.8GHz CPU and 1GB RAM) you are going to see why routers are limited in this aspect.
As for transfer 12MB/s is on the optimistic side- if you end up with 5-7MB/s don't be surprised. It should be enough for 720p HD- as for 1080p- I don't know as I've never used it.

 

as a side note i'd like to recommend a great and reliable NAS solution.
The QNAP TS-210 is a two bay nas drive, it has a 800 MHz CPU and 256MB of ram, it is very configurable and reliable. Highly recommended.

 

Raid is a fallback, it eliminates downtime, it's not a backup.
Far too many are sold on the idea that mirroring is a backup.

 

Never mentioned the word backup in my post. Sure it's not a backup, backup implies you have the data in at least two places.

Don't see why you quoted me when you claimed what you claimed..