LaCie NAS vs. DAS

[Chaszmyr]

LaCie makes both a 4tb NAS external RAID system and a 4tb DAS external RAID system for approximately the same price. Seeing as gigabit ethernet is faster than FW800, and the NAS array could be accessed from a second machine without having to have file sharing enabled on my primary machine, is there any reason that the DAS unit would be preferable?

 

[blodwyn]

LaCie makes both a 4tb NAS external RAID system and a 4tb DAS external RAID system for approximately the same price. Seeing as gigabit ethernet is faster than FW800, and the NAS array could be accessed from a second machine without having to have file sharing enabled on my primary machine, is there any reason that the DAS unit would be preferable?

I'd be a bit surprised if real world performance over Gigabit would be faster than FW800, but I'm prepared to be proved wrong.

My questions would be:
1) If it matters to you, can you format the NAS box with HFS+ disk format? Many NAS boxes format their disks with a Linux format.
2) Will the file metadata be preserved on the NAS box?
3) Do you need Spotlight to index the drive? I'm not sure how Spotlight in Leopard will work with a NAS drive
4) Will the SMB/CIFS impose any unacceptable file/folder naming issues? I believe SMB is a bit picky with some characters, not sure about CIFS

None of the above are an issue with the DAS box I assume

 

[Chaszmyr]

Thank you for the information. After reading your reply, I think I'm going to go with the DAS unit, unless there's some reason to believe that enabling personal file sharing on my main computer poses a legitimate security vulnerability.