General question

[Drklord]

As you can tell I'm a n00b, but I looked over the threads and couldn't find any of this information. I recently bought an Asus RT AC66U wireless router, because I thought I was cool. But more things I didn't know AC is essentially useless to me bc I have no AC compatible devices, anywho... I have been trying to set up a central access storage with the USB ports on the router and an external hard drive I have. My goal is to set up my iTunes music and movie off it to be able to access it from anywhere in my apt.(because pluging in the hard drive is too inconvenient. Lol) I haven't had any issues setting it up initially, it's fairly plug and play. But today I was doing some experimenting with two different hard drives and notice one performed better than the other. MY QUESTION IS ... has anyone noticed benefits from using a portable external hard drive (with no external power) VS a traditional external hard drive which requires a socket ? I know setting up the iTunes can be a nightmare.... But the different hard drives question is at this point my biggest concern. Also, does plugging in my HDD to my router constitute a NAS or something lesser ? Thanks in advance... Hope to get some valuable info from y'all...

 

[tofudreamer]

Disk drive power type should not affect drive speed. But drives do come in different speeds: they'r from 4200 to 15,000 RPM. That and a few other things will affect your access speed.
Too bad about the AC. But you should still get pretty decent speed using N if your devices support MIMO.
In my experience, routers make for very poor (read: slow) NAS. You can't beat the speed of a dedicated NAS. Most of them will play all the media types you want and will support iTunes.
To learn more about the setting up a DLNA media home you can read here. And if you want to test the real speed of your home network look here and here.

 

[stevech]

USB powered drives are most always little 2.5 in notebook type drives, and usually 5400RPM rather than 7200RPM as in most 3.5 in drives.

Router's USB file system support is so slowed by the modest CPU in routers that you may see no difference among drives connected to a router.

Best to use externally powered drives as there is very little current available from USB to run a drive. The USB spec says 500mA or more. But often products don't even do that.