Another NAS Thread

[daveplotty]

Hi all,

Before anyone says search through the forums I have and done some research.

I have recently bought the AirPort Extreme and am no look at buying a NAS. Now my issue is at the moment I can't afford to buy one of the Synology NAS setups as I am looking at £500 to get started. I need to get some new storage soon as my MacBook is getting pretty full. Now I was thinking of getting one of the 3TB WD MyCloud devices and plugging that into the AE but have read some mixed reviews online.

Is there anyone who has one who can vouch for it and will do for what I need until I am able to splash out a bit more for the Synology setup?

Thanks.

 

[skorpien]

If you're looking to spend around £500, you can still afford a Synology solution. I tried to find what the going rate is in the UK (this is an assumption of your location, apologies if it's wrong) for a DS213J, but every site I browsed wanted me to log in to see prices.

But I do know that at a local PC parts store, the DS213J is going for CAD $240. Accounting for a bit of markup, I'm sure you can buy everything including a couple of hard drives for it for around the price point you're looking at.

They also have single bay devices that may cost less.

 

[daveplotty]

Sorry I didn't explain that I don't really want to spend £500+ just yet.

In the end I would like a multi bay RAID setup just in case one device fails so not really looking at the single bay Synology NAS drives.

 

[skorpien]

Ah, I see. I'm not sure what to tell you then. Unfortunately in my experience, multiple bay NAS devices are hard to come by on the cheap. As you stated, WD's solutions get mixed reviews at best.

As for myself, I only have experience with a D-Link DNS-323 NAS and I wouldn't recommend it to anybody, let alone an OS X user. Most other 2 bay NAS enclosures are going to run you around $150-$200, without the hard drive. Hopefully somebody else can chime in.

I do want to make a note though, RAID1 is not a viable backup strategy. Yes, it provides you with some level of redundancy, but it is still possible to lose all the data on both drives simultaneously. I would look into backing up your NAS, either automated or manual, to another drive and possibly store it offsite to mitigate the risk of data loss.

 

[balamw]

Sorry I didn't explain that I don't really want to spend £500+ just yet.

In the end I would like a multi bay RAID setup just in case one device fails so not really looking at the single bay Synology NAS drives.

What are you really looking for in a NAS?

Can you just get by by adding a drive to your Airport Extreme.

The cost of a decent multi-bay enclosure beyond JBOD will be close to that of a multi-bay NAS otherwise I'd say get something like that and use your Airport Extreme to connect it to the network...

EDIT: Also RAID1 isn't great. I've had it increase the probability of failure as when data was corrupted on one drive, the corrupt data was replicated to the other drive.

B

 

[daveplotty]

Another NAS Thread

Ah my mistake. I have got the Airport Express not the Extreme.

I want to be able to store all my video files on it so that I can play them all through my ATV.

 

[skorpien]

I want to be able to store all my video files on it so that I can play them all through my ATV.

As far as I know, there's no (official) way to be able to stream content to an Apple TV from a NAS without having iTunes act as a streaming device. Even with a NAS, you'd need to have your MacBook running to stream.

Have you considered just getting a USB HDD and storing your videos on it?

PS - balamw, awesome avatar by the way.

 

[balamw]

As far as I know, there's no (official) way to be able to stream content to an Apple TV from a NAS without having iTunes act as a streaming device. Even with a NAS, you'd need to have your MacBook running to stream.

Unless your ATV is jailbroken. Or you use Airplay to mirror content from the NAS via an iOS device...

plotters Overall hooking up a USB or TB drive to your Mac is unfortunately the best solution.

B

 

[daveplotty]

I don't mind having iTunes running on my MacBook if there is a storage device connected to my AE. I move around the house with my laptop which is why I think a NAS on the AE would be a perfect solution. I'm not sure if I have explained myself clearly.