Hi
I purchased a 3tb MBL yesterday after comparing the various products available. I read various user reviews on sites like Amazon, and after googling a few common issues arrived here which seems a good source of info on problems.
One issue i saw mentioned before was that older systems only support drives up to 2tb, but i it was never really explained properly (something about MBR and GPT?). So before i unbox my MBL i thought i would check on here if it is likely to work, otherwise i will go back and swap it for a 2tb (shame as the 3tb is better value.)
My laptop at home is an older model running Vista 32bit, and has a small 80gb drive formatted as MBR. I also have a netbook running XP which stores most of my photos currently, although i can easily move them back to the main laptop.
I also have a networked TV that can stream video and photos etc over DLNA or via the xbox.
I mainly want the drive as a back up for my photos and so they can also be accessed remotely. Plus i will dump a load of tv shows and films on the drive to stream to either the TV or laptop.
So the question is can i simply unbox the drive, plug it in and run the install disk and will this give me 3tb of space?
Another question that i haven;t really seen explained all that well on here is the issue of dumping a large initial chunk of data onto the drive. I know the speeds over wifi aren;t always great, so if i wanted to dump 1tb of data onto the drive initially what is the best way to do it? I’ve seen some people suggest plugging the drive directly into the laptop instead of the router? Will it detect straight away and mount as a usable external drive?
Sorry for the basic questions, i’m new to the whole NAS thing. I did have a search through the previous threads yesterday but couldn;t see anything that gave a straight answer on the issues.
thanks for any help.
James
