Macbook air, which external HD to use?

Question

Hello all,
Here is the solution I want but i don't know what device to use.
Im looking to buy a macbook air, and a thunderbolt bolt display an ~2TB external HDD.
Now I have a large HD video collection which naturally will have to be stored on the external HHD due to small SSD on the macbook air. Now what worries me is the transfer speeds I want something thats transfers fast. Idealy I would like the hard drive to be either thunderbolt or usb 3.0 connected into the thunderbolt display, then i could connect the one thunderbolt cable to the air when i dock it, and bobs your uncle.
Now the more difficult bit. What if i also wanted this HHD to be wireless, so I could use the machine say on my lap in bed, and still be able to transfer files to and from the HDD, and the apple TV will also be referencing it to play the files stored on it. I know the transfer speeds at this point wouldn't be as great as the wired connection but thats ok as this would only be on the odd occasion.
Am I looking for something that doesn't exist? or have you got any suggestions?

Answer 1

Both thunderbolt AND wireless. That's alot to ask,especially when you realize that there are but a handful of Thunderbolt drives yet available.
If you want both blazing fast, and wireless capability, I don't see how it could be practically done with one volume. I mean, you could use a Thunderbolt drive, that also has USB capability, then alternately connect such drive to your network drive enabled wireless router, or directly to your MBA by the thunderbolt connection, but it seems like a bit of a hassle.
I use both the Seagate GoFlex w/T-bolt adapter and the LaCie Little Big Disk (thunderbolt), to get really fast external storage. I prefer the Seagate solution, for flexibility reasons (and cost). I mean, I can actually connect a bare SSD to the Seagate Thunderbolt adapter and get transfer rates that rival the internal drive (in excess of 450 MB/second). That is smoking fast. Seagate has a 7200 RPM GoFlex portable drive, that when connected to the T-Bolt adapter, provide a very reasonably priced (in relative terms), fast drive setup. You could easily connect the same drive to the included USB 3.0 adapter, and then hook it to your network drive enabled router, for wireless operation.