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NAS device.

L

LEVENDIZ

macrumors member
Original poster
Apr 10, 2010
68
1
Australia
I'm sure this has been asked plenty of time but i haven't been able to find an thread that asked to questions i am about to.

I'm wanting to purchase a NAS device for home/personal use.

I'd like it to have 4 drive bays, one bay for my iTunes library and other misc. and another for my iPhoto library, Final Cut, video media dump. The other 2 drives i'd like to back up the first two, is this possible? And usable? or would it be too slow?
 
LEVENDIZ said:
I'm sure this has been asked plenty of time but i haven't been able to find an thread that asked to questions i am about to.

I'm wanting to purchase a NAS device for home/personal use.

I'd like it to have 4 drive bays, one bay for my iTunes library and other misc. and another for my iPhoto library, Final Cut, video media dump. The other 2 drives i'd like to back up the first two, is this possible? And usable? or would it be too slow?
Click to expand...

There are plenty of them, the one most popular and feature rich are the Synology. Go to Synoloy.com and you will find what your looking for.


As of right now, your nas will only work well if your hardwired to it, over WiFi is just too slow.
 
Crzyrio said:
There are plenty of them, the one most popular and feature rich are the Synology. Go to Synoloy.com and you will find what your looking for.


As of right now, your nas will only work well if your hardwired to it, over WiFi is just too slow.
Click to expand...

Thank you, is there a particular model that stands out? Thoughts on this one?
 
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Synology works great

I have setup multiple Synology NAS's for multiple companies and they work great for OS X, Windows (not tried 8 yet), and every Linux flavor I've come across.

Synology uses the same DiskStation software for all their boxes, so even if you start with a smaller NAS and buy bigger later, everything you have learned and setup can move over. The larger Synology's have greater speed.

I currently use the Synology DS213air and file transfers are much faster than backing up to 'the cloud'. I have a combination of wired and WiFi in use with it. We have four iPhones, three laptops (only one a MBP) and a Kindle Fire all access it wirelessly, a windows desktop running over cat5, and my Vizio HDTV connected to the NAS by cat5 but to my router via WiFi. All work well together.

Though I favor Seagate hard drives over Western Digital, I believe I have two of the 3TB WD Red's in it currently. So I have 3TB of storage, and the second drive is a mirror (copy / backup) of the first.

Before I moved and sold my third of a managed services company back to the other two people, we had over 4,000 windows computers and roughly 900 Mac's in businesses that paid us $30 per computer every month to monitor and maintain their networks and computers.

I have used, i.e. been obligated to maintain, at least 4 different brands of NAS's, and the Synology's are BY FAR the easiest to setup and keep running.

Just my 2 cents!

p.s.: we run an iTunes server on the NAS, use AirPlay and bluetooth (in my office) off the NAS.
 
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adding to TV comment

Just FYI: where I live currently, Internet access is spotty, and thus streaming movies from the Internet runs smoother for us over the cat5 cable, even though the TV can use WiFi.

We have a lot of devices all fighting for WiFi bandwidth, connecting the TV over cable was easier than trying to kick my kids off their devices when we were trying to stream a movie.

All the best to you.
 
LEVENDIZ said:
I'm sure this has been asked plenty of time but i haven't been able to find an thread that asked to questions i am about to.

I'm wanting to purchase a NAS device for home/personal use.

I'd like it to have 4 drive bays, one bay for my iTunes library and other misc. and another for my iPhoto library, Final Cut, video media dump. The other 2 drives i'd like to back up the first two, is this possible? And usable? or would it be too slow?
Click to expand...

I think it is a mistake to have your primary data & backup data in the same enclosure. A problem with the storage system can destroy both copies of your data.

/Jim
 
I have reviewed Synology NAS units in my Youtube channel - link in sig - take a look at the storage playlist. It'll give you an idea of what to expect.
 
Thanks guys, will have to invest in a Synology NAS soon. Right now i just have a couple 2tb drives in my Hackintosh :)
 
behomebased said:
Just FYI: where I live currently, Internet access is spotty, and thus streaming movies from the Internet runs smoother for us over the cat5 cable, even though the TV can use WiFi.
Click to expand...

That sentence makes no sense at all. If Internet access is the problem then using a wired connection would not make a difference because the problem is your Internet access.
 
LEVENDIZ said:
As the NAS will be sitting on my desk i'd much prefer a black version.

Thanks for the suggestions anyway :)
Click to expand...

Then the DS413 it is, unless you have a Mac Pro with dual Ethernet ports.
But keep in mind that it houses four hard drives and two fans, so you might be better off stashing it as far away as possible, to keep the noise on your desk down.
 
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Giuly said:
Then the DS413 it is, unless you have a Mac Pro with dual Ethernet ports.
But keep in mind that it houses four hard drives and two fans, so you might be better off stashing it as far away as possible, to keep the noise on your desk down.
Click to expand...

Add to that four HHDs spinning up / running. It's not as quiet as a two bay.

I use a two bay with an external USB drive for backing up the NAS.
 
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Giuly said:
Then the DS413 it is, unless you have a Mac Pro with dual Ethernet ports.
But keep in mind that it houses four hard drives and two fans, so you might be better off stashing it as far away as possible, to keep the noise on your desk down.
Click to expand...

blueroom said:
Add to that four HHDs spinning up / running. It's not as quiet as a two bay.

I use a two bay with an external USB drive for backing up the NAS.
Click to expand...

Yeah the noise level didn't really cross my mind, what would the dual ethernet ports allow for? It will housing the drives that are now in my hacktintosh so only have 1 ethernet port on that, and none on my 11" Air haha.

Thanks guys!
 
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Dual network adapters can be used for failover or more commonly link aggregation (speed).

Link aggregation require a managed GigE switch and a dual GigE Ethernet adapter that supports link aggregation in the computer(s)
 
blueroom said:
Dual network adapters can be used for failover or more commonly link aggregation (speed).

Link aggregation require a managed GigE switch and a dual GigE Ethernet adapter that supports link aggregation in the computer(s)
Click to expand...

I see, nice piece of technology then, sadly not for me :)
 
LEVENDIZ said:
I see, nice piece of technology then, sadly not for me :)
Click to expand...

Then all you may need IMHO is a DS213 with a pair of 4TB drives and eSATA drive(s) for nightly NAS backup. I'd avoid RAID as it only really offers quick uptime or large volumes not backup. The GigE will be the bottleneck vs the SATA drives.
 
It makes perfect sense.

brand said:
That sentence makes no sense at all. If Internet access is the problem then using a wired connection would not make a difference because the problem is your Internet access.
Click to expand...

It makes perfect sense. With spotty internet access, then 4 phones (more if neighbors are over), one touch, one fire, and three computers all vying for that limited bandwidth, I can give priority to hardwired devices, so they can hog what throughput is available. Not to mention most people's cordless phones and microwaves all run in the same frequency range as most WiFi. Also why I use DECT6 cordless phones (though some say DECT6 fries your brains cells), I can assure you, at least on network performance, the brain cells aren't completely fried yet (my wife may argue that one).

If you do have a Linksys or other router on settings defaults, you may be competing with neighbors' networks. On our Kindle fire, we have a free network analyzer (probably avail on all smartphones), that lets us cook something in the microwave while making a cordless phone call, and it will tell us what is the best channel to use for greatest throughput while considering our particular set of circumstances / interference.

ALL of my neighbors had Linksys routers on defaults until they asked for my (expected free of course) help. Now we all unique network names, some on different channels, and we all have all our phones able to utilize WiFi from any of each others homes, so we don't just give more data plan money to our cellular companies.

Anyhow, I can't remember the last time a movie stuttered (if ever) now that I am hardwired. A few neighbors have commented similarly since I set them up the same way.
 
behomebased said:
It makes perfect sense. With spotty internet access, then 4 phones (more if neighbors are over), one touch, one fire, and three computers all vying for that limited bandwidth, I can give priority to hardwired devices, so they can hog what throughput is available. Not to mention most people's cordless phones and microwaves all run in the same frequency range as most WiFi. Also why I use DECT6 cordless phones (though some say DECT6 fries your brains cells), I can assure you, at least on network performance, the brain cells aren't completely fried yet (my wife may argue that one).

If you do have a Linksys or other router on settings defaults, you may be competing with neighbors' networks. On our Kindle fire, we have a free network analyzer (probably avail on all smartphones), that lets us cook something in the microwave while making a cordless phone call, and it will tell us what is the best channel to use for greatest throughput while considering our particular set of circumstances / interference.

ALL of my neighbors had Linksys routers on defaults until they asked for my (expected free of course) help. Now we all unique network names, some on different channels, and we all have all our phones able to utilize WiFi from any of each others homes, so we don't just give more data plan money to our cellular companies.

Anyhow, I can't remember the last time a movie stuttered (if ever) now that I am hardwired. A few neighbors have commented similarly since I set them up the same way.
Click to expand...

What you are describing is wireless network access and not Internet access.

Network access ≠ Internet Access
 
LEVENDIZ said:
I'm sure this has been asked plenty of time but i haven't been able to find an thread that asked to questions i am about to.

I'm wanting to purchase a NAS device for home/personal use.

I'd like it to have 4 drive bays, one bay for my iTunes library and other misc. and another for my iPhoto library, Final Cut, video media dump. The other 2 drives i'd like to back up the first two, is this possible? And usable? or would it be too slow?
Click to expand...

Keep in mind, if you put your primary and backup disks in the same device you will lose access to your data if the enclosure goes bad. What I did was purchase 2 dual disk enclosures. My primary data is contained in 2 disks in one enclosure and my backup data is on the 2 disks in the other enclosure. That way you can lose 1 or 2 individual disks or an entire enclosure and still have access to all your data.

For my set up I went with the Lacie 2big Thunderbolt series connected to my mac mini server. If your concerned over speed, these things are fast at 150Mbps+ as individual drives and 300-450+ in RAID configuration. But the 2big is also available as a NAS device.
 
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