External, portable and NAS Storage questions including Time Machine

[benkeenan2005]

I've just bought a WD my book NAS and wondered why someone says it's best not to use the WD software?

my set up will be:
2tb external drive formatted for windows with only 450gb used
2tb WD my book NAS
1tb portable

i wanted to use the WD software to allow the ipad, iphone, galaxy tab etc to backup and use/view itunes and view photos from the NAS. Could i do this without using the WD software??

should i partition the WD and store the windows formatted pictures and videos on it so i can still access them via my mac mini and other devices.

this way i will then be able to have a 2tb and a 1tb, so i'd have the 2tb connected to the mac mini to save all iphoto and this would then backup to the 2tb NAS, and the 1tb, well i've not really thought about what that can be used for!!

can someone let me know the best way to set all this up?

I've read that time machine will back up any external hard drives attached so I want to make the mac mini time machine point at the NAS but also have copies stored on the 2tb hard drive.

Any help much appreciated.

Does anyone know if WD my book will allow me to access this NAS remotely?

Mac mini, Mac OS X (10.8.2)

 

[benkeenan2005]

i now see some people say not to back up the mac with a NAS as some data an get lost.

i've partitioned the 1tb and left 400gb for time machine and it's backing up 310gb of data.

i actually want to store my 40gb itunes and my XXgb of iphoto (dont know how to find the gb used for iPhoto) onto the 2tb but keep this connected to the mac so the NAS will duplicate that too.

I will probably partition the 2tb windows formatted external drive but first back it up on the NAS then partition the windows formatted to the exact amount I have stored on it leaving me 1.5tb for more photos.

so this gives me a time machine back up, and a back up of a total of 2tb of actual storage space?

is this roughly the right way to do it?

 

[r0k]

i now see some people say not to back up the mac with a NAS as some data an get lost.

i've partitioned the 1tb and left 400gb for time machine and it's backing up 310gb of data.

i actually want to store my 40gb itunes and my XXgb of iphoto (dont know how to find the gb used for iPhoto) onto the 2tb but keep this connected to the mac so the NAS will duplicate that too.

I will probably partition the 2tb windows formatted external drive but first back it up on the NAS then partition the windows formatted to the exact amount I have stored on it leaving me 1.5tb for more photos.

so this gives me a time machine back up, and a back up of a total of 2tb of actual storage space?

is this roughly the right way to do it?

I own Synology NAS drives. I like them because my data stays on drives I install. They are really little Linux boxes and if one of them should go bad, my data stays here if I decide to return the NAS. I've tried a LOT of NAS drives. I had LaCie, Buffalo (2), Iomega, Seagate, WD and Apple before deciding I wanted a higher end device with better software.

My TM backups go to a USB drive plugged in to my TC, again so if it dies again, my data stays here if I send it to Apple for repair.

In your situation, I don't know if I'd bother with the partitioning. Apple says TM will expand to fill a drive but I've only seen it happen a couple of times on a drive that was almost full to begin with. I never rely on TM as my only backup and that's because I lost data when my TC died and when 2 TM backups on my TC became corrupted in two separate events. In the most recent incident, I had learned my lesson and I was able to restore all my wife's files from Crashplan.