Wireless Hard Drive

When it comes to wireless hard drives, there seems to be a multitude of options for possible options for the route to go.  From buying a ready made option like the Apple Time Capsule to buying a router that will have a way to attach a separate hard drive to them, you have not only several companies, but also these two distinct ways to create a wireless hdd.  That said, this post will be solely focused on the ASUS wireless hard drive.

Wireless Router with USB port(s) for Hard Drive by ASUS

So exactly how does an ASUS router become a wireless hdd?  Well much like any wireless router, you connect to it via your wireless connection on your wireless device.  The ASUS router works to get you connected to the internet and your local wireless network.  So that is how you connect to the router, but you need to connect to the hard drive. 

This is accomplished by attaching a hard drive of your choice via USB to the ASUS router.  On the back of the router there are 2 USB ports  where you can attach whatever you like.  From here it is as simple as finding the hard drive in your windows explorer or similar to transfer files to / from the drive.

A great example of an ASUS router that you can use wirelessly as a hard drive is the ASUS WL-5o0GP wireless hard drive.  You can buy them several places, but normally the best price can be found at Ebay.

Once you have purchased your ASUS wireless router you need to find an external hard drive to connect via the USB ports to the router and make your entire wireless hard drive system.  When it comes to what type of storage device to use it really is up to you.  It could be as simple as a thumb USB drive, or as big as a 1TB wireless hard drive.  Given the relative price of storage these days and how it invariably goes from more than you could ever imagine to not even close to enough capacity, I suggest going for about twice as much as you likely think you need.  Really 1 terrabyte is a lot, but it won't be long where it won't be, especially if you get into BlueRay DVDs or similar.

Built In Wireless Hard Drive by ASUS

Now if you are more of a one stop shop kind of a person, you can go the route of the wireless router with the hard drive already built into it.  For this application, the ASUS WL-700gE wireless hard drive is perfect for the job.  It has all the wireless capabilities of a wireless router, but also comes ready installed with a hard drive in the router itself.  A little more money than your standard router, but you don't need to worry about hooking anything up or purchasing a separate hdd.  Again, they can be purchased many places, but Ebay often has really good deals on these.

Hopefully this will help you in determining if the ASUS wireless hard drive is right for you.  Please submit a comment if you have any further questions.

Gone are the days of measuring external hard drive capacity with gigabytes (GB).  Or at least the days are seemingly numbered.  With today's external disc drives measuring 1 terabyte (TB) and more you can see why.  A terabyte is about 1,000 gigabytes (1,024 to be exact) and renders many of your storage issues moot.  To put into perspective how much memory 1 TB of disk drive capacity is, let's compare how many common household computer files it will hold.  Nearly every person in the USA has a digital camera these days.  And since the price has come down so precipitously, a 10 megapixel camera is pretty standard fare these days.  When taking pictures with a 10 megapixel camera each picture requires about 4 MB of memory.  If you were to fill up a 1TB wireless hard drive with only pictures from your 10 megapixel camera you would need to 250,000 pictures.  That is a lot of snapping and downloading!  Suffice it to say, unless you are a professional photographer you are not likely to have anywhere near this many photos (and yes I am including you new parents that take outrageously too many pictures of their kids and newborns much like I did when they were young).

How about another common household file, the mp3 or similar music file.  In general these files take up a similar space as a 10 megapixel picture, maybe slightly less.  If we can assume a song will take up approximately 3 GB that would equate to about 333,000 songs.  I know that most people have impressive CD/music collections, but it likely will not compare to those number of songs!

But really where the 1TB wireless hard drive comes in handy is with movies.  It is becoming increasingly common for people to digitize their DVDs, BlueRays and the like to their hard drives.  Given the exploding capacity hunger that these file types require, it really becomes clear why the move to terrabyte is so pronounced.  The average DVD is about 8 GB in size, and therefore you can store about 128 DVD to your 1 TB hard drive.  That is a lot of DVDs, but I know lots of people that have plenty more than that.  However, when looking at BluRay discs, the story changes entirely.  A 1 terrabyte drive only hold approximately 20 BluRay movies.  That is a surprisingly low number.  If you own a BluRay player, odds are you had that many discs in only the first 2 months, let alone the next year and so on.

1 TB sounds like an astronomical number until you consider the voracious appetite of today's file types and then it becomes clear why a move to a 1TB wireless hard drive is a good move for the technologically savvy consumer.