Diskless NAS Advice Please (partitioning??)

[Wild-Bill]

Hi,

I'm trying to help my sister and brother-in-law with a backup solution for each of their Macbooks.

What I'd like to do is set up a NAS (already have spare drives..) partitioned into three sections. 1 section for iTunes and photo storage (i.e. stuff they don't want to keep on their respective Macbooks), and two Time Machine partitions (one for each machine).

Does anyone know of any NAS solutions that support partitioning??? I am assuming (incorrectly perhaps) that if a NAS is connected to the network, that Time Machine would want to take up the whole disk? Or would Time Machine be able to be pointed to a specific "folder" set up on the NAS.

I don't run Time Machine myself (SuperDuper!) and I run a Mac Pro and a Macbook Air so I don't have a NAS at home to even test this kind of thing.

Basically, what I want to do is get them a NAS that each of their Macbooks could use as a Time Machine backup, also have a section for iTunes and photo streaming, and use the print-server function that comes with most NAS' out there.

Any suggestions? I'm not sure that some of these consumer NAS' out there support partitioning, so I'm asking here in the hopes that someone has done what I am attempting to do.

Thanks!

 

[Wild-Bill]

Anyone???

 

[balamw]

While it sounds like overkill for your needs, you could just stick the drives in an HP MediaSmart server while it is a Windows Home server, Macs are supported out of the box. You just need Windows to do the initial setup (A VM will do).

I back up my three Macs under OS X and Windows to mine plus a desktop PC.

http://www.hp.com/united-states/campaigns/mediasmart-server/index.html

EDIT: Check this thread for other options: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/962363/

B

 

[racketeer71]

You can make Time Machine backups from multiple computers onto the same network share. One computer will not take up all the space.

You can have other files on that network share as well, although it's then quite important that people not by accident deletes the Time Machine files.

So no need for two NAS.

 

[Wild-Bill]

You can make Time Machine backups from multiple computers onto the same network share. One computer will not take up all the space.

You can have other files on that network share as well, although it's then quite important that people not by accident deletes the Time Machine files.

So no need for two NAS.

SWEET!!! Just what I was hoping for. THANK YOU!

Now the brand of NAS I buy for them won't matter, and I can concentrate solely on read/write performance. This is great news!