[SOLVED] If I connect a harddrive via USB (to share media), will it slow down my WiFi speed?

[barkersofgeraldine]

I recently found out that you can connect a harddrive to your router and make it accessible to computers connected to it

My questions is what effects will that have on my WiFi speed? Will it burn out my router as it will have an extra peripheral connected to it?

 

[madmatt30]

It will use WiFi bandwidth obviously when you're reading/writing from/to it

I assume you mean will it affect your Internet speed is what you're actually asking?

The answer would depend on what your average network speed is and what your download/upload speeds are.

If your WiFi network is 5ghz and your Internet speed is 100mbps or lower then no you won't notice a difference.

Will it burn out your router?
No of course not, your router was built with that capability, it's there to be used.

 

[bill001g]

You likely will not even be able to tell that you have connected it other than you can now share files.

Now it does put some load on the cpu of the router when you are actually coping files to the USB but it is a rather slow disk sharing solution so it should not have much impact. Not sure it is one of those add on features that routers have but are not really used by someone who needs high speed performance. The USB interface tends to be the bottleneck many times.