Internal Network Drive Verses External Network Drive

[Illustrations]

My family was planning on getting a Network Drive for backing up their files. I'm debating between a External Network Drive (I'll refer to this as END) and a Internal Network Drive (I'll refer to this as IND). (The IND would be located in my new pc build)
I made a list of the advantages and disadvantages of both drives. Here they are:
Both

• ■ Everyone can access and manage their folder of items
  ■ I can manage the users and their viewing of the files (person one can't see/edit person two's files and vice versa)
  ■ I can automate backups
  ■ Plenty of storage (5TB)
  ■ same price ($140)

External Hard Drive

• 
  ■ Never moves or is jostled
  ■ Runs hot

Internal Hard Drive

• 
  ■ Rarely moved/may be jostled
  ■ Would be cooled by ventilation
  
  (not sure about these ones please verify)
  ■ I would get faster back up times
  ■ Bandwidth restricted when others are backing up

Thank You in Advance!

EDIT:

Wondering if I could get your help choosing what drive to get

IND

Toshiba 5TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive

END

Seagate Backup Plus 5TB USB 3.0 Desktop External Hard Drive STDT5000100

Seagate Expansion 5TB USB 3.0 Desktop External Hard Drive STBV5000100

Seagate Backup Plus 5TB Desktop External Hard Drive with 200GB of Cloud Storage & Mobile Device Backup USB 3.0 (STDT5000100)

Thanks Again!

 

[Calculagator]

I'm having some difficulty understanding what you are trying to set up. You list internal and external drives-none of which have any network capabilities on their own.
For the internal drive, you would install it into a desktop and then share the drive using windows file sharing or something similar-if I understand correctly.
Would you do the same for the external drives or do you have some other way to share them over a network?

For internal VS. external drives, I would almost always recommend internal drives unless you need portability or don't have enough space/ports for the internal drives. The disks inside of each are basically identical, but external drives have more ways that they can fail and in my experience, are more prone to fail.

For backups and network storage, however, I would recommend you either purchase or build a dedicated NAS (network attached storage). The ones built by Synology are easy to set up and have decent performance. You can purchase a NAS either with disks already installed or you can easily add drives yourself.

 

[Illustrations]

I'm having some difficulty understanding what you are trying to set up. You list internal and external drives-none of which have any network capabilities on their own.
For the internal drive, you would install it into a desktop and then share the drive using windows file sharing or something similar-if I understand correctly.
Would you do the same for the external drives or do you have some other way to share them over a network?

For internal VS. external drives, I would almost always recommend internal drives unless you need portability or don't have enough space/ports for the internal drives. The disks inside of each are basically identical, but external drives have more ways that they can fail and in my experience, are more prone to fail.

For backups and network storage, however, I would recommend you either purchase or build a dedicated NAS (network attached storage). The ones built by Synology are easy to set up and have decent performance. You can purchase a NAS either with disks already installed or you can easily add drives yourself.

From what I've been reading, you can connect the external drive to the router and then configure the drive either through the router or through the network on windows file explorer

As far as the internal drive, you are correct, I would use file sharer to share the drive.

Question: is File Sharer compatible with Macs?

I'll look into the NAS, Thanks for bringing it up, I didn't know about that

Thanks!

 

[Calculagator]

Only some routers have a USB port. I wouldn't recommend using a router for backup storage. You will probably be connecting at USB 2 speeds. If you have a USB 3 router, using the USB 3 may cause signal interference. If you have multiple people backing up significant amounts of data, I would recommend a better solution.

 

[Illustrations]

Only some routers have a USB port. I wouldn't recommend using a router for backup storage. You will probably be connecting at USB 2 speeds. If you have a USB 3 router, using the USB 3 may cause signal interference. If you have multiple people backing up significant amounts of data, I would recommend a better solution.

The NAS seems to be out of our budget, so our only two options is the IND and END

Wouldn't the external drive attached to the router give the same back up speed as a shared internal drive?

I would be configuring the back up schedule, so I should only have one person backing up at a time per day so bandwidth shouldn't be a problem

 

[Calculagator]

There are a number of factors that affect speed. Using gigabit ethernet to back up to an internal drive you can get maybe 75 megabytes per second. If you use a USB2 port on a router you will get more like 8. You will get even less if you use wifi.

 

[Illustrations]

There are a number of factors that affect speed. Using gigabit ethernet to back up to an internal drive you can get maybe 75 megabytes per second. If you use a USB2 port on a router you will get more like 8. You will get even less if you use wifi.

How would this work for the others that would be backing up to the internal drive? would it just be terribly slow for them?

 

[Calculagator]

How would this work for the others that would be backing up to the internal drive? would it just be terribly slow for them?

It would depend on the speed of the network connection both to the computer backing up and the computer with the drive. If they connect with gigabit ethernet, you could get up to 75 megabytes per second data transfer. Wifi will be slower. If the backup transfer is mostly small files, it will be slower.

 

[Illustrations]

It would depend on the speed of the network connection both to the computer backing up and the computer with the drive. If they connect with gigabit ethernet, you could get up to 75 megabytes per second data transfer. Wifi will be slower. If the backup transfer is mostly small files, it will be slower.

Okay, Thank you we've discussed it and decided on the internal network drive. Thank you for all your help!