Hard drive to connect to Superhub 2
 

Bit of advice please I have a superhub 2 and am looking to connect a hard drive to use to share across other devices in the house. Is this possible and what do I need please.
Many thanks

Re: Hard drive to connect to Superhub 2
 

Yes and you need a NAS (Network Attached Storage) of some kind.

Re: Hard drive to connect to Superhub 2
 

Thanks looking at Amazon now, any model ideas?

Re: Hard drive to connect to Superhub 2
 

does the USB even work on superhub 2?
i thought it was disabled by the firmware

Re: Hard drive to connect to Superhub 2
 

I use the Synology

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Synology-DS2...dp/B00CDG2XHC/

Re: Hard drive to connect to Superhub 2
 

There's no USB port on my Superhub 2 any way.
thanks

Re: Hard drive to connect to Superhub 2
 

There is, it's just covered by a bit of tape.

In fact, on Virgin's own site, they often show the USB port without the tape:

http://help.virginmedia.com/system/s...TICLE_ID=27659

Re: Hard drive to connect to Superhub 2
 

Sorry, thanks for the info.
So it does nothing then?

Re: Hard drive to connect to Superhub 2
 

Well it looks quite pretty?

Re: Hard drive to connect to Superhub 2
 

Trouble is,once you've seen one USB, you'seen them all.

Re: Hard drive to connect to Superhub 2
 

... but is the non-working USB port 2.0 or 3.0?

Re: Hard drive to connect to Superhub 2
 

I have the QNAP TS-412, it's a nice NAS as well.
And, yes, the USB on the SH2 is non functional, hence the need for a NAS.

Re: Hard drive to connect to Superhub 2
 

Does that mean you have to buy your own router to use the USB and NAS?

Re: Hard drive to connect to Superhub 2
 

Yes but it is an investment that gets you a wealth of useful features as well.
No, just make sure to get an ethernet based device.

Re: Hard drive to connect to Superhub 2
 

That's pretty much the definition of any NAS device on the planet.

Re: Hard drive to connect to Superhub 2
 

But you don't need USB to use a NAS, it's attached to the network.
NAS = Network Attached Storage.

Re: Hard drive to connect to Superhub 2
 

To use a NAS you really need to connect via a Cat5/6 cable

Re: Hard drive to connect to Superhub 2
 

It doesn't matter as it's not active. May as well stand for UselesSBus.

It's 2.0, FWIW.

Re: Hard drive to connect to Superhub 2
 

Just out of curiosity, any ideas why they deactivated the USB socket? Seems like it would have been a fair "selling point".

Re: Hard drive to connect to Superhub 2
 

But open up a whole new can of worms for the Support Desk ..... ;)

Re: Hard drive to connect to Superhub 2
 

Truth..

Re: Hard drive to connect to Superhub 2
 

A little NAS like the Synology or Qnap models will do the trick. They are simple and do the job.

If you have a computer that is always turned on, then you could just use windows sharing to share a folder on it. Should be able to do this with any usb connected drive, although it's not something I have tried.

Re: Hard drive to connect to Superhub 2
 

Thats why you buy a seperate Router and you can control it your way,

Re: Hard drive to connect to Superhub 2
 

Speed.

Re: Hard drive to connect to Superhub 2
 

I have got a Seagate NAS and a Buffalo Terastation, I defo prefer the Buffalo.

Re: Hard drive to connect to Superhub 2
 

Does any NAS get anywhere near 1Gbps write transfer speed?

What are the constraints? Like is Windows 7 a serious constraint?

Re: Hard drive to connect to Superhub 2
 

Mine read around 97MB/sec and write between 55-63. If i send a tonne of stuff across in one go it normally flattens out at 55.

Re: Hard drive to connect to Superhub 2
 

Mine gets 10Gbps write transfer speed, but being mine, it's basically cheating.

Windows 7 isn't a constraint, quite the opposite, Windows 7 contains new high-throughput features that most NAS devices don't support.

Re: Hard drive to connect to Superhub 2
 

Mine was a shock compared to my old Windows Home Server I built on an HP Server.
The replacement NAS is nowhere near as fast, in fact with a large number of small files, it's pretty poor. Can't remember the figures off the top of my head, but it's not great.

However, the upside is the electric bill :)

I really didn't realise how much the WHS was costing to run 24X7 ......... the NAS is very, very economical in comparison.

Re: Hard drive to connect to Superhub 2
 

How much did you figure it was running, adduxi?

Re: Hard drive to connect to Superhub 2
 

WHS doesn't inherently use any more electricity to run than any NAS. It's the hardware you run it on that uses the electricity.

WHS can easily run on a machine that uses less power than a VM Superhub.

Re: Hard drive to connect to Superhub 2
 

Can't put a figure on it now, my memory is getting on a bit! But it sure made that much difference it was very noticeable on the quarterly bill.

The QNAP runs at most 20w with 3 disks, and 11w when it's in sleep mode.

However the HP Server was loaded with 6 disks and a 500w PSU. Granted it was never in sleep mode as it did slightly different things over the NAS, e.g. backed up all WHS clients on every login.

So not quite a true comparison.

---------- Post added at 18:39 ---------- Previous post was at 18:38 ----------

As always, I can't argue with that ;)

Re: Hard drive to connect to Superhub 2
 

I should also mention, for other readers' sake, if you're thinking of building a power-efficient NAS, an old laptop with a few USB drives would be a decent bet. Laptops are, after all, designed around maximum efficiency and minimum power usage.