NAS for mac and pc

[flyingnome]

I have two brand new WD drives that I need to set for my home network backup. I want to know what would be the best way to go about this. Put the drive into an nas enclosure or build a bare bones system and set it up that way.
By the way I am not sure if I am posting to correct spot for this if I am not let me know where to go. I have posted a couple of time before on this forum and have had limited responses, not impressed. So if I am asking the wrong question please let me know.
Thanks

 

[Aea]

Enclosure will work, but keep in mind that even a barebones system setup as a NAS will easily give you 2-3x the performance of a consumer NAS box you can buy.

 

[flyingnome]

I was wondering about the performance of an NAS box vs. a Barebones setup.
What causes the difference in performance?
Also will I be able to set this thing up to backup my Mac, soon to be Macs and XP laptop? Are the HDD to be formated a special way for the Mac os?

 

[pilotError]

Be aware that some of the WD drives do some funky things regarding sleep and event notification and aren't compatible with the NAS's. So if you decide to buy an enclosure, make sure its on the compatibility list.

Most of the NAS's will do backup of Mac and PC. If you want to use Time Machine as your backup mechanism, you might be hard pressed to find a good solution. They are usually set up as RAID devices and run their own Operating System (linux) so they don't have to be formatted to NTFS or HFS+.

If your looking at just an enclosure that contains two disks, well they aren't NAS devices. They are just enclosures.

Your best bet is to find some good backup software that you can use on each platform. ReadyNAS comes with Retrospect (EMC) backup software and 5 licenses for each/any? platform.

 

[flyingnome]

OK so after much of a delay I am back at it.
I have purchased my kids my kids an IMac. I was waiting to buy a new gen for months and when it came time to order the salesman on the phone said have you seen the refurb 24" 2.8 ghz IMac for 1199? I said. I had my mind set on a 20" new one and ended up with the refurb 24". Oh well.
So now it is time to make sure that I have a back up system for the new Imac and my mac book.

I have an NAS case in my sight and am about to buy it but I need to know if when installed in nas form can a drive be split in two to use as two HDD?
The reason I ask is cause I have two WD 750gb drive and want to split one for and use the other media.
DNS-321
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822155009
Well let me know if this possible.
Or any other Ideas you might have.