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Are there compatibility issues using any of these solutions with Macs?
guise said:Im running a Synology 209 aswell across windows & mac.
my only regret is not buying bigger, faster disks to put in it. now im out of space and using attached USB storage which defeats the point of RAID. Teaches me for skimping on my original purchase
Pctx said:As someone who works as a Helpdesk manager in IT, I can't find a good reason for a NAS server for the general masses.
Obviously if you're looking for fault tolerance, then by all means, backup all your shit to a NAS and run streaming movies, TV shows or whatever but even my friend at Intel who is developing Intel's consumer NAS division says they're struggling in making them a "must have" item in a home for the overall populous.
beaten.Ninja Scooter said:Smarten up Nas.
Pctx said:As someone who works as a Helpdesk manager in IT, I can't find a good reason for a NAS server for the general masses.
Obviously if you're looking for fault tolerance, then by all means, backup all your shit to a NAS and run streaming movies, TV shows or whatever but even my friend at Intel who is developing Intel's consumer NAS division says they're struggling in making them a "must have" item in a home for the overall populous.
Well file sharing and media streaming works quite well on my Mac with the H340 (uses the SMB protocol). Although there are issues with Time Machine due to Apple restrictions, and the control software is Windows-only, so keep that in mind if you use a mac as your main computer.404Ender said:Are there compatibility issues using any of these solutions with Macs?
Marty Chinn said:I can definitely see them as a hard sell. I mean it's hard enough to convince someone to buy an external hard drive for the sole purpose of backing up their computer. I've got my server as a NAS for two reasons:
1) A centralized storage that any computer or device can access. This way I can share access to documents, music, photos, or whatever files that I may need to access on multiple computers. As a result, storage on individual computers isn't needed since content is stored mostly elsewhere. This also works great for multiple media devices that are hooked to different TVs since it never requires a specific computer to be on.
2) I made it my new year's resolution for 2009 to not lose any files due to corruption or hard drive failure. Thus, an automated back up solution was required where you would never have to think about backing anything up as its all done for you by the NAS. It's all hidden so nobody has to worry about it but its there in case. It also is set to make sure nothing stored on the server is loss too. I was guilty about being lazy about backing things up because why use that hard drive space for back up when I could store more stuff on it. You just gotta take the plunge and I'm better off for it.
Those are two primary things you have to convince people that they need or should be doing if you're never going to get a NAS in the hands of more people. Another area is when we start having network media devices that want to pull stuff off the network, it'll be a good way to push such devices to store and access that content on multiple TVs or devices.
I think the rate of which the non-flash drives are dropping in price thanks to the flash based drives, maybe in the next 3 years we'll see something like this.VALIS said:I investigate NAS solutions every 6 months and come up with this conclusion every time. Right now I could set up 10TB of external USB hard drives for about 700 bucks, if not cheaper (1TB external drives used to cost me $700 a piece 3-4 years ago!). One of these 5-bay servers with five 2TB drives in it would be about a grand, minimum. There are also plenty of software apps out there for all kinds of media streaming to all sorts of devices, plus software to run auto backups. External HDs just seem to be getting cheaper and cheaper thanks to their popularity.
I really wish there was a "one box, one connection" solution that would give me 10TB+ for about the price of the same in external HDs, but there isn't as far as I can tell.
VALIS said:I investigate NAS solutions every 6 months and come up with this conclusion every time. Right now I could set up 10TB of external USB hard drives for about 700 bucks, if not cheaper (1TB external drives used to cost me $700 a piece 3-4 years ago!). One of these 5-bay servers with five 2TB drives in it would be about a grand, minimum. There are also plenty of software apps out there for all kinds of media streaming to all sorts of devices, plus software to run auto backups. External HDs just seem to be getting cheaper and cheaper thanks to their popularity.
I really wish there was a "one box, one connection" solution that would give me 10TB+ for about the price of the same in external HDs, but there isn't as far as I can tell.
WickedAngel said:What is the benefit of a NAS over something like a powerful, fully functional media server with a lot of internal storage and something like Acronis True Image?
mrklaw said:I haven't worked out why I need a NAS.
I have a Mac mini as a central server/HTPC/newsgroup client. Attached to that I have a WD studio mirror edition, with 2x1TB drives, set up as a single 1TB drive with RAID backup. It does it internally so I don't have to worry about it.
Need more storage? buy another one of those.
Magnus said:Forgive my ignorance. What are these things? :lol
You can disable turning off hard drives in configuration.DJ_Lae said:The only downside is that it's so energy efficient I have to wait five or ten seconds to access a drive that's been put to sleep, but it's not a huge issue.
claviertekky said:Windows Home Server.
Just works.
I have one powered with two hard drives, 512MB PC333 RAM, and a Athlon XP Thunderbird processor.
Ceres said:Damn you for making it extra confusing by bumping a thread dated exactly one year ago.
claviertekky said:Windows Home Server.
Just works.
I have one powered with two hard drives, 512MB PC333 RAM, and a Athlon XP Thunderbird processor.
this.Zombie James said:D-Link DNS-323
It still gets updated firmware (latest was released on Feb 17th) and it's pretty hackable, too. Nice, quiet little box.
Cheeto said:Too expensive for me... much cheaper to build or buy a super-cheap pc and go that route
I may move on to Freenas later. The idea of running the whole server off a tiny flash disk sounds nice.itxaka said:Freenas is my choice. Cheap, slim and with a nice web interface.
hyp said:glad this thread got a bump since i'm looking for a solution myself.
do any mac users here just use an Airport with a drive attached to it? i'm not looking for anything fancy, i just don't want to have to keep my computer on all day to serve files to all my other devices.
Cheech said:THREAD NECRO ALERT
So, I bought a Synology 211j yesterday, along with a pair of Seagate 2TB drives. Going to put them in RAID 1. I could do RAID 0 and back up to USB, but honestly, I don't trust that kind of service to cheap "green" hard drives. 2 TB will be plenty for my needs.
What inspired me to start looking into this, weirdly enough, was Amazon's Cloud Drive thing that came out last week. I started to see how cool the idea was, but got smacked in the face with limitations. I wanted my full media library, not just a small subset that fits within what Amazon has on offer. I want logins and direct drive mapping, so my family can all use it as well, and allow easy PC backups. Etc. etc...
Well, the Synology devices are certainly the right price, and do what I need and a whole lot more. Sure, I could toss together a cheap Linux box and do the same thing, but this is going to save me a TON of time.
Copernicus said:Make sure you checkout synology's apps from android/ios that let you stream music from anywhere.
I recommend anyone with more than one computer in their house to get a NAS. They are so inexpensive and feature rich, it'd be ridiculous to get a "server" unless you plan on running
virutalization. (Even some of that can be done on NASes now.)
Cheech said:Yeah, I've looked at Windows Home Server, but it is way less flexible than the Synology stuff. However, it's a hell of a lot easier and cheaper than building your own Linux NAS, which is essentially what a Synology is.
The market as a whole is fairly immature; I would be shocked if Apple didn't have a solution for this in a year or so that blows everybody away.
Hah, sorry about that. I just hate creating new threads, I never feel like I can do an OP justice.
xxracerxx said:I love my D-Link 323. I just have two 500GB drives in there now but I want to upgrade to two 2TB drives. Any suggestions on the drives I should get? I would like to stay under $100 for each.
Thanks man!Cheech said:I seriously spent 2 hours research this yesterday. I chose the new Seagate drives, because they aren't the first gen 2 TB drives. They also are very quick for the price; look up some reviews. They were the only 2 TB drives I could find that didn't scare the crap out of me.
404Ender said:Are there compatibility issues using any of these solutions with Macs?
Rentahamster said:Drobos are sloooooow. Just make your own, yo.
Marty Chinn said:How is it less flexible out of curiosity? I would imagine being able to let it run actual Windows software makes it insanely more flexible than other solutions out ther like Drobo.