Best/Most Compatible NAS for a Mac setup?

[Dwee8le]

Maybe this is outside the box a bit, but I can't imagine anything being more Apple compatible than Airdisk or Time Capsule.

Actually, for me personally, it's Synology. Apple product may sound like "more compatible", but my Synology DS110j is completely compatible for my Mac+PS3 Network (and it used to work fine as well when I still had a Win7 PC) and it has more features than TimeCapsule (like FTP, DNLA, torrent service, TimeMachine) and a fantastic software client. Damn, I must sound like a sales rep. now

 

[daddy0]

I have the newertech mini stack nas--500 gb--from owc. performs wireless backups without problems. easy to set up on mac.

 

[nightfly13]

You misunderstood what he was asking. He was asking if the iTunes server in a NAS that comes with it can serve video files natively, which it cannot. Sure, if you have a computer turned on you can point the iTunes application on that computer to using the files on the NAS, but you DO need the computer. You can't use the ATV2 to watch videos by pointing it directly at the NAS unless you've jailbroken the ATV2 and are using XMBC.

Basically the iTunes server of a NAS is for audio only. There has not yet been a NAS iTunes server developed that will serve video independently.

Correct, he had misunderstood and thank you for your answer. I wish it wasn't true, but thanks

I like this NAS so much for my specific situation, I might forego the AppleTV in favor of a UPnP box and keep this NAS in consideration. Any suggestions for an AppleTV alternative? Does anyone do NZB downloading with the NAS in question?

My main workstation is an older Mac Pro, and it's a huge power hog, yet I have slow broadband, so it's downloading 24/7. I also live in a place with power outages every single day, often for 2-3 hours at a time, so I'm on a battery backup or generator power, so I basically have the WORST computer in terms of power consumption. To be able to have the NAS handle the 24/7 downloading plus serve portable devices and a set-top box for the kids' TV would be great, then I'd just sleep my Mac Pro when I'm not physically sitting at it.

 

[nightfly13]

Seems a jailbroken ATV2 is the answer (with DS211j)

Upon further reading and researching (especially in my other favorite forum) I think this combination is hard to beat. Thanks for the input.

 

[thermopyle]

Yes, I was going to suggest you take a look at XBMC. I just got a new Apple TV and am trying to decide if I'll bother with that. I don't have a NAS and like the Apple TV interface quite a bit, though, so it's a tough choice. It basically comes down to whether I want to bother converting everything to mp4 or not.

 

[tcador]

A jailbroken AppleTV2 is a good solution but I wouldn't discount using a NAS with ATV2.

I've got a Iomega ix-200 NAS (review from Gizmodo) along with a jailbroken ATV2.

Using XBMC, I'm able to stream directly from my NAS and not rely on my MBP for transcoding like Plex. That said, I'm not a fan of the XBMC interface and rarely find myself using it as compared to Plex. For my Plex setup, I have Plex Server running on my Mac serving up content from the 2TB of NAS storage. Best of both worlds in my opinion.

Plus it has a lot of great features like FTP, torrent, iTunes Server, time machine backups, RAID 0 or 1 and it also has user-replaceable hard-drives.

Very pleased with this setup.

 

[Southpaw32]

LaCie?

What about LaCie products?
This seems to be a good solution, at a great price! LaCie Network Space 2 2TB

 

[robzr]

Hi guys - just a few notes on NAS devices, I am running two, a QNap TS419P w/ 4x 2 TB drives in RAID-5 and a home built Debian Linux with 10x 2TB drives in RAID-6 + Hot Spare

Time Capsule / Airport Extreme is definitely the easiest and most compatible but also about the slowest solutions. Just fine for Time Machine, I'm sure you can even stream 1080p MKVs off them but doing file copies it is a bit painful. I have an Airport Extreme, I don't even use it for it's NAS capacity anymore.

iSCSI is used for SAN (SCSI over IP), not NAS, it's a bit different in that it will show up on your Mac as a disk device that you must then partition, format and mount, and you cannot share it across multiple computers at once. Kind of a niche need, if you don't know what it is you don't need it I think it's safe to say. Also you'll need to download a 3rd party iSCSI initiator driver to use this (like globalSAN's software).

I looked at Synology vs. QNap for a while and the hardware is pretty much identical, Synology is a little cheaper, but I prefer the QNap software, there are live demo sites you should check out before buying either:

http://www.qnap.com/liveDemo.asp
http://demo.synology.com

Look at smallnetbuilder.com for benchmarks, they also benchmark Airport Extreme/Time Capsule I think, but with NAS devices you get what you pay for, the more expensive ones tend to be faster as most of these are CPU bound. For the ultimate performance to price ratio you need to go home-brew as a low end Linux on Intel homebuilt NAS (~$300) will be faster than a mid-range ($800) ARM based NAS. Tradeoffs would be heat/noise (Intel draws more power than ARM so energy consumption will be higher and you need to pay attention to your fan/cooling situation), size & aesthetics of the unit. Hot-swap is nice but kind of silly in a 4 or fewer drive device especially for home use when it's not a problem to take it down for maintenance, why not spend the extra on higher performance?

I've never worked with the ReadyNAS devices but when I looked into them they were not even in the running as the performance to price ratio was not very good.

Almost all of these low end / consumer NAS devices run Linux btw, and the good ones (like QNap and maybe Synology) do offer shell access so you can hack away as you like.

As for RAID setups, avoid RAID-0 unless your data is disposable as with two drives you just doubled your failure rate (n * 2; n being failure rate). With RAID-1 you will decrease it exponentially (n^2). RAID-5 is usually a good tradeoff for home use as the data can survive one drive failure. RAID-6 can survive two, and using hot-spares in addition to any RAID level (except 0) is a good idea if you can spare the drive bay.

Drives are so cheap these days, 2 TB for $70 !? Either run 2 drives in RAID-1 or get at least a 4 bay enclosure and run RAID-5 + hot spare or RAID-6, unless you don't care about your data or are taking backups.

Building a home-brew Linux NAS, even using off-the-shelf raid distributions is a great way to learn linux.

Incidentally when you click on the server name in Finder and it says host not found, it's probably an issue with mDNSresponder/avahi, try restarting just that service on your NAS.

Rob

 

[Dapness]

Nice post. Very informative. Thanks Rob.

 

[nightfly13]

Anyone using a Synology for NZB downloading?

I should probably start a separate thread for this, but I thought I'd try this question here.

I want to use a lower-power machine for my overnight downloading (24/7 downloading really) and I use newsgroup/usenet so an NZB download client would be awesome. I run on a battery backup 1-3 hours per day, so my power-hog Mac Pro is a BAD idea in this situation.

 

[maremalin]

how about d-link

Hello All,

I'm fishing for some NAS as well. At home 2 macs no windows (brrrr). I found d-link dns-32 here It's much cheaper then Qnap which friend recommended to me.

Does anyone use this d-link? Is it any good?
I need it for TM backups and itunes/iphoto library.

And once we on it one more question how to make any NAS to work with 2 macs for TM (seperate) and to share itunes and iphoto - is that possible?

 

[occamsrazor]

I want to use a lower-power machine for my overnight downloading (24/7 downloading really) and I use newsgroup/usenet so an NZB download client would be awesome. I run on a battery backup 1-3 hours per day, so my power-hog Mac Pro is a BAD idea in this situation.

I use an old Mac Mini G4 1.4Ghz for a similar purpose, as a bittorrent client 24/7. Mac Minis are great for this type of thing - small, silent, and low-power.... Or an older MacBook would do the same thing, AND have a built-in UPS a.k.a battery....

 

[amrogers3]

Hi guys - just a few notes on NAS devices, I am running two, a QNap TS419P w/ 4x 2 TB drives in RAID-5 and a home built Debian Linux with 10x 2TB drives in RAID-6 + Hot Spare

Time Capsule / Airport Extreme is definitely the easiest and most compatible but also about the slowest solutions. Just fine for Time Machine, I'm sure you can even stream 1080p MKVs off them but doing file copies it is a bit painful. I have an Airport Extreme, I don't even use it for it's NAS capacity anymore.

iSCSI is used for SAN (SCSI over IP), not NAS, it's a bit different in that it will show up on your Mac as a disk device that you must then partition, format and mount, and you cannot share it across multiple computers at once. Kind of a niche need, if you don't know what it is you don't need it I think it's safe to say. Also you'll need to download a 3rd party iSCSI initiator driver to use this (like globalSAN's software).

I looked at Synology vs. QNap for a while and the hardware is pretty much identical, Synology is a little cheaper, but I prefer the QNap software, there are live demo sites you should check out before buying either:

http://www.qnap.com/liveDemo.asp
http://demo.synology.com

Look at smallnetbuilder.com for benchmarks, they also benchmark Airport Extreme/Time Capsule I think, but with NAS devices you get what you pay for, the more expensive ones tend to be faster as most of these are CPU bound. For the ultimate performance to price ratio you need to go home-brew as a low end Linux on Intel homebuilt NAS (~$300) will be faster than a mid-range ($800) ARM based NAS. Tradeoffs would be heat/noise (Intel draws more power than ARM so energy consumption will be higher and you need to pay attention to your fan/cooling situation), size & aesthetics of the unit. Hot-swap is nice but kind of silly in a 4 or fewer drive device especially for home use when it's not a problem to take it down for maintenance, why not spend the extra on higher performance?

I've never worked with the ReadyNAS devices but when I looked into them they were not even in the running as the performance to price ratio was not very good.

Almost all of these low end / consumer NAS devices run Linux btw, and the good ones (like QNap and maybe Synology) do offer shell access so you can hack away as you like.

As for RAID setups, avoid RAID-0 unless your data is disposable as with two drives you just doubled your failure rate (n * 2; n being failure rate). With RAID-1 you will decrease it exponentially (n^2). RAID-5 is usually a good tradeoff for home use as the data can survive one drive failure. RAID-6 can survive two, and using hot-spares in addition to any RAID level (except 0) is a good idea if you can spare the drive bay.

Drives are so cheap these days, 2 TB for $70 !? Either run 2 drives in RAID-1 or get at least a 4 bay enclosure and run RAID-5 + hot spare or RAID-6, unless you don't care about your data or are taking backups.

Building a home-brew Linux NAS, even using off-the-shelf raid distributions is a great way to learn linux.

Incidentally when you click on the server name in Finder and it says host not found, it's probably an issue with mDNSresponder/avahi, try restarting just that service on your NAS.

Rob

Rob, you have any ideas why I would get 6 Mb/s transfer over AFP on a Synology 211J?

I have CAT5e from macbook to switch and CAT5e from switch to macbook.

 

[slewsys]

Rob, you have any ideas why I would get 6 Mb/s transfer over AFP on a Synology 211J?

I have CAT5e from macbook to switch and CAT5e from switch to macbook.

Some common causes for slow network throughput:

1) Routing loops - e..g, Internet accessed via Airport, NAS accessed over ethernet.
2) DNS not configured, or incorrectly configured,
3) File permission-caching not enabled.

Maybe try testing throughput of a large file first. If it goes fast, then check (3). If multiple network interfaces are enabed, try disabling all but one on each device. If throughput is still suffering, then check DNS. Both forward and reverse.

Mac OS X network routes can be prioritized by selecting network order. Without a routing daemon, Linux sometimes gets confused. Although (2) and (3) may seem irrelevant, authentication and authorization can bring a network to its knees. Good luck!

 

[amrogers3]

Some common causes for slow network throughput:

1) Routing loops - e..g, Internet accessed via Airport, NAS accessed over ethernet.
2) DNS not configured, or incorrectly configured,
3) File permission-caching not enabled.

Maybe try testing throughput of a large file first. If it goes fast, then check (3). If multiple network interfaces are enabed, try disabling all but one on each device. If throughput is still suffering, then check DNS. Both forward and reverse.

Mac OS X network routes can be prioritized by selecting network order. Without a routing daemon, Linux sometimes gets confused. Although (2) and (3) may seem irrelevant, authentication and authorization can bring a network to its knees. Good luck!

OK, I do not think 1 and 2 pertain to my setup if I understand your post correctly.
1) I do not have multiple network interfaces set up on either the DS211j or the macbook.
2) I do not have a DNS server. I use AT&Ts 2Wire router. Both 211 and macbook are connected to same switch.
3) How do you enable file permission caching? I am not familiar with this.

 

[iMerik]

I've been debating for a long time on whether to purchase a new 2011 iMac and add additional "dumb" storage to that or purchase the upcoming MacBook Air along with something more sophisticated for file management and hosting. I keep coming back to QNAP vs. Synology and my internal debate boils down to the management interface since both have speedy products and appear to be very Mac friendly.

Synology has DiskStation Manager (DSM)
QNAP has its QPKG platform

If you were to primarily store, manage, and host all your files from a NAS, what would you go with?

I should also ask what you would prefer for managing and hosting your files, a dedicated NAS or a Mac connected to mass storage? Thanks!

 

[r0k]

I've been debating for a long time on whether to purchase a new 2011 iMac and add additional "dumb" storage to that or purchase the upcoming MacBook Air along with something more sophisticated for file management and hosting. I keep coming back to QNAP vs. Synology and my internal debate boils down to the management interface since both have speedy products and appear to be very Mac friendly.

Synology has DiskStation Manager (DSM)
QNAP has its QPKG platform

If you were to primarily store, manage, and host all your files from a NAS, what would you go with?

I took a look at both synology and QNAP. Much like Drobo, they are both as expensive as they are impressive. I was on my way to pick up a Drobo at a local Microcenter store when I stumbled across a LaCie NAS drive. It costs a little more than the usual gimped Windows centric $100 NAS offerings from Buffalo, Iomega, Seagate or Western Digital but impressed me so I gave it a try. I recommend LaCie as a good quality Mac friendly NAS drive. The model I have is network storage 2. If I were in the market for a higher end model, I would definitely consider QNAP, Synology or Drobo but I'm quite happy with LaCie for now.

 

[amrogers3]

I would not recommend Synology products.

I just bought a DS211J. I have yet to see above 8 MB/s. All gigabit connections and using CAT5e cable.

Although Synololgy advertises 40+ MB/s transfer speeds, this is not the case for Apple products. There is an issue with AFP. I'm not the only one, check out the Synology site for more information on this.

 

[zhenya]

I would not recommend Synology products.

I just bought a DS211J. I have yet to see above 8 MB/s. All gigabit connections and using CAT5e cable.

Although Synololgy advertises 40+ MB/s transfer speeds, this is not the case for Apple products. There is an issue with AFP. I'm not the only one, check out the Synology site for more information on this.

Funny that most of the Google results for this issue seem to come back to you (or mysteriously someone else new to that particular forum, and posted relatively recently). Certainly not widespread.

It's either you and/or others have switched to NFS or iSCSI which have more open protocol standards.

 

[amrogers3]

Funny that most of the Google results for this issue seem to come back to you (or mysteriously someone else new to that particular forum, and posted relatively recently). Certainly not widespread.

It's either you and/or others have switched to NFS or iSCSI which have more open protocol standards.

I can only warn you. It's up to you to find out for yourself. I spent $350 on a 211J and 2 2TB hard drives. Took me days to transfer 500 GB. Here is a couple posts about slow transfer speeds:

http://forum.synology.com/enu/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=37758
http://forum.synology.com/enu/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=31521

 

[zhenya]

I can only warn you. It's up to you to find out for yourself. I spent $350 on a 211J and 2 2TB hard drives. Took me days to transfer 500 GB. Here is a couple posts about slow transfer speeds:

http://forum.synology.com/enu/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=37758
http://forum.synology.com/enu/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=31521

Those links show that a few people have trouble with network transfer speeds. Well knock me over with a pillow! Home users who don't understand networking not getting full network speeds! Never heard of such a thing. The guy in your second post is complaining he isn't getting full advertised speed, but is getting 88Mbps on a 100Mb connection. That IS full speed!

 

[UnSainted]

FreeNAS

I built a budget NAS using an AMD Sempron (2nd core unlocked) and an MSI board. Installed and boot FreeNAS from a flash drive and have the unit plugged into my network via gigabit switch and My itunes Library resides on the NAS while iTunes runs off an old macbook pro. Been running this way for about a month and not so much as a hiccup.. Been really pleased with it.. Right now i only have a about 1.4 TB of storage but im going to pick up some high capacity drives (2-3 TB) and pop them in there.

 

[strandedinnz]

I recently bought a Thecus N4200Pro for my Apple centric environment and I'm more than happy with it

Specs are :

4 drive bays (RAID levels of 0,1,5,6,10 and also JBOD)
2 * Gigabit
6 * USB 2
2 * eSATA
1 * PCIe slot (thinking of putting a USB3 controller in later on)
Built in mini-UPS which is very handy!

Speed wise, just dragging and dropping a file from my 2005 Mac Mini it writes at a sustained 62Mbytes/second .. not to bad.

AFP works great, Timemachine works great, NFS works great, CIFS works great and iSCSI works great, SDK is available and 3rd party apps are encouraged.

Software for it is a bit rough on the edges but so long as you stick to drives on the compatibility guide it should work well (mine actually aren't but hey

Price ... not the cheapest around, but a little bit cheaper than a Qnap or a Synology.

 

[gabicava83]

I recently bought a Thecus N4200Pro for my Apple centric environment and I'm more than happy with it

Specs are :

4 drive bays (RAID levels of 0,1,5,6,10 and also JBOD)
2 * Gigabit
6 * USB 2
2 * eSATA
1 * PCIe slot (thinking of putting a USB3 controller in later on)
Built in mini-UPS which is very handy!

Speed wise, just dragging and dropping a file from my 2005 Mac Mini it writes at a sustained 62Mbytes/second .. not to bad.

AFP works great, Timemachine works great, NFS works great, CIFS works great and iSCSI works great, SDK is available and 3rd party apps are encouraged.

Software for it is a bit rough on the edges but so long as you stick to drives on the compatibility guide it should work well (mine actually aren't but hey

Price ... not the cheapest around, but a little bit cheaper than a Qnap or a Synology.

Price?

 

[amrogers3]

Those links show that a few people have trouble with network transfer speeds. Well knock me over with a pillow! Home users who don't understand networking not getting full network speeds! Never heard of such a thing. The guy in your second post is complaining he isn't getting full advertised speed, but is getting 88Mbps on a 100Mb connection. That IS full speed!

Ok what could be the reason I am getting low transfer speeds using AFP?