NAS vs. external HDD attached to router

[absinthe]

Hi all,

I have an Asus RT-N56U "Black Diamond" router on order. This unit of course has 2 USB ports, to which I could attach an external storage device which would be available across the network. Obviously, an NAS would provide more functionality (I think), but I'm trying to decide if a simple attached external drive will suit my needs.

My question is: Let's say the attached drive is formatted NTFS (to allow for large files). I have two Mac devices in my home (not to mention various iPhones and iPods). Will all these Apple devices be able to write to this NTFS drive attached to this router?

The router does provide FTP functionality so that the attached drive can be accessed remotely, so I wouldn't need an NAS for that purpose.

I'm new to the concept of NAS, so any and all advice is appreciated.

Thanks!

-abs

 

[thiggins]

The NAS drive format matters only to the NAS. The network file system supported is what matters to devices accessing the NAS shares. All NASes and most all modern OSes support SMB/CIFS. So Windows PCs and Macs will be fine. And I believe there are apps that support SMB access for iOS devices.

What you will find is that using an NTFS formatted drive will result in much slower file sharing. But as long as you're just doing basic file access and not streaming HD, you'll be fine. As long as you don't mind waiting longer for large file transfers.

 

[absinthe]

I guess my followup Q is: Can a simple external HDD attached to a router simply be formatted to use SMB in this way (or might the answer to this be specific to my particular router)? Or can this functionality only be provided by a NAS?

 

[thiggins]

No. SMB if not a file format. It's a network filesystem protocol.

 

[absinthe]

So, in other words, if I'm going to shared files over the network using a simple external HDD attached to my router, I'm essentially limited to FAT32 if I want to be able to read and write from/to both Macs and PCs.

However, a Google search found an article from this very site stating "A key difference [in the RT-N56u] from the RT-N16 is that the USB sharing feature supports SMB file sharing as well as FTP. So shares will show up via network browsing with any device that supports SMB."

That sounds promising ...

 

[teknojnky]

So, in other words, if I'm going to shared files over the network using a simple external HDD attached to my router, I'm essentially limited to FAT32 if I want to be able to read and write from/to both Macs and PCs.

Wrong, it does not matter if the usb drive is NTFS or FAT32 as long as the router can read/write either format.

The drive is shared by either FTP and/or SMB.

What Tim is saying is that NTFS formatted drives are typically much slower than FAT32 formatted drives relative to each other on the same device.

So, NTFS can handle larger files, the peformance will be slower tranfers.

FAT32 can not handle larger files, the performance will be (somewhat) faster transfers.

In any case, while usb hdd attached to routers has become a common feature, no router will ever compare to a dedicated nas device performance-wise.

However, a Google search found an article from this very site stating "A key difference [in the RT-N56u] from the RT-N16 is that the USB sharing feature supports SMB file sharing as well as FTP. So shares will show up via network browsing with any device that supports SMB."

So you would want the RT-N56u version if you want to share across your network using windows explorer or mac finder, etc.

Otherwise you would have to connect via an FTP client.

 

[stevech]

My experience is that embedded microprocessors in routers (mostly Linux), that can read and write NTFS volumes, are dreadfully slow in doing so, as compared to FAT32 (simpler software) speeds. But FAT32 has its issues with date/time problems in file creation and file modification dates.

 

[absinthe]

Could I not format the drive ext3, or even Mac OS? Would that not also work, and with increased performance?

If I were to purchase an NAS, how should the drive(s) be formatted? If I purchased one with drives included, how might I expect those drives to be formatted, or do they normally come formatted out of the box?

 

[teknojnky]

Could I not format the drive ext3, or even Mac OS? Would that not also work, and with increased performance?

that is entirely dependent on the device/router you plan to use it with, whether it understands ext3 or HFS file systems, and if there is any performance benefit.

If I were to purchase an NAS, how should the drive(s) be formatted? If I purchased one with drives included, how might I expect those drives to be formatted, or do they normally come formatted out of the box?

Every nas that I am aware of, formats the drives to its own supported file system (generally ext3 or ext4 for linux based nas).

However the thing to understand about any nas, is you typically can not use disks with existing data (any disk used in a nas array will be erased/formatted for use with the nas/raid).

Also, generally you can not simply pull a nas disk out and plug it into a a pc/mac and expect to access the data.

Most nas do have usb or esata ports where you can connect external drives for backup/restore of existing data.

In any case, since you stated you already have the router on order, all you have to do is plug in an existing usb drive and see if it works to your satisfaction. If it does, then you are done.

If its too slow or you otherwise have problems, then you may want to start researching more into dedicated nas devices.

 

[thiggins]

Thanks for jumping in, guys. I apparently wasn't communicating clearly enough.

 

[stevech]

To do an emergency-read of a Linux type file system on a PC, one could boot a Linux Live-CD and mount the drive.

I sort of recall seeing freeware for mounting Linux file systems on Windows. That too would do.

 

[nackerton]

Howabout lifespan, will external HDD die well before a real NAS? As far as I know, some NAS devices can spin down disks if there is no usage for a while to conserve them and so on.

 

[stevech]

Some USB external drives spin-down on inactivity. The Seagate 2TB USB2 I have does so. It's LED indicates such.

It has a 5900RPM "LP" suffixed drive, meaning green/low power, so power-down sleep would be congruent.

 

[Judgeless]

It seems that the router market is a very completive market. None of the current routers with external hard drives offer any speed. It would be great if a router manufacture released a router that can saturate 1Gb Ethernet (125MB/s). It would also be nice to have a USB 3.0 (4.8Gb/480MB) or eSATA III (6Gb/750MB) interface for the external hard drive.

I have a Cisco / Linksys E3000. A while ago I did some benchmarks and never was able to get over 5MB/s out of it. That is way too slow for me. My file sever saturates 1Gb Ethernet. Here is a pic of it transferring 0.933Gb over the NIC and 124MB from the hard drive.

http://mbu.com/232.jpg

 

[stevech]

Perhaps all the consumer routers in the $100 price arena must have rather slow CPUs due to price competition.

If you reformat the drive from NTFS to ext3 or ext4, probably supported by the router's application, you'll probably see a large improvement. If the drive is formatted FAT32, and you change to a LInux native format, perhaps you'll see modest improvement.

The issue is that SMB (CIFS) and TCP for moving file data to/fro takes a lot of CPU cycles.

 

[Judgeless]

Moore's law states that CPU’s double in performance every 18 months. Where there is a need to use more MIPS there is something on the horizon the will fit the need.

Quad core ARM Cortex A9 or eight Core ARM Cortex A15 processors are perfect for this application. They are low cost and lower power. Here is perfect device for the job.

http://images.anandtech.com/doci/4153/omap5.png

64bit, 8 cores, USB 3.0, SATA II on a single low cost chip that put an Intel Atom to shame.