Home network (NAS + PC + Mac)

[confusedxx]

Hello all,

I need some advice about Mac - I still do not have one yet, but will buy one for Xmas.

I have a QNAP-209 NAS (Network Attached Storage), 2 PCs, PS3, Windows laptop at home. My plan is to buy a 27" iMac and get rid of the 2 PCs.

My questions are about NAS and Home Media Servers. I use my NAS a lot for running bit torrents to download videos and music which I stream to my TV with my PS3. I also store my photos on the NAS and use that as the HDD when editing them in Photoshop and Lightroom. Therefore, I do not want to lose my NAS

If I buy an iMac, is it possible to connect a network drive on the iMAC to the NAS or or a Windows Media Server?

Secondly, is is possible to use the NAS as a time capsule? I know that apple computers can now do nearly everything that a PC can, but I want to be sure it can do all I need before spending so much money.

 

[jzuena]

Hello all,

I need some advice about Mac - I still do not have one yet, but will buy one for Xmas.

I have a QNAP-209 NAS (Network Attached Storage), 2 PCs, PS3, Windows laptop at home. My plan is to buy a 27" iMac and get rid of the 2 PCs.

My questions are about NAS and Home Media Servers. I use my NAS a lot for running bit torrents to download videos and music which I stream to my TV with my PS3. I also store my photos on the NAS and use that as the HDD when editing them in Photoshop and Lightroom. Therefore, I do not want to lose my NAS

If I buy an iMac, is it possible to connect a network drive on the iMAC to the NAS or or a Windows Media Server?

Secondly, is is possible to use the NAS as a time capsule? I know that apple computers can now do nearly everything that a PC can, but I want to be sure it can do all I need before spending so much money.

Why wouldn't you be able to connect a Mac to the NAS? Macs support AFP (apple file protocol) and SMB/CIFS (using SAMBA). If your NAS supports it, you can even NFS mount file systems from the NAS to the Mac. If you want to use a non-Apple NAS for Time Machine, you do have to jump through some hoops in making a sparse bundle file that the Time Machine writes to, but it can be done.

I have my Macs connected to a Smartstor NAS doing pretty much what you use yours for and it works just fine.