NAS for rMBP

[surjavarman]

You can put the NAS box anywhere in your house if you have a proper network setup. The main advantages of a NAS are:
-redundancy with RAID
-expandability
-file sharing across all your LAN (and remote) devices.

If the SSD on your macbook becomes defective, you could lose everything on it (imagine losing gigabytes worth of family photos).

With a NAS with 4 HDDs running RAID 5, you can afford to lose 1 disk at a time without losing data.

Edit: To answer the OP question, I too recommend a Synology NAS. The DSM software is simply awesome and the transfer speed is one of the best (depends which model you get). If you do choose Synology with 4-bay or more, I recommend format the drives using Synology Hybrid RAID. This way you can mix different sized HDDs with minimal performance loss. With regular RAID, you'd have to replace ALL the drives if you ever want to upgrade the capacity.

I know that thats why I make backups with a cheap WD My studio external HDD once in a while. And I sync some other files such as pictures to dropbox on top of that.

Is there not anything cheaper than synology? Can you hook up an external HDD to an apple tv and access your files using your apple tv while on your MBP

 

[convergent]

Why do you need a NAS? Do you have other computers that need to share data? If not, then your best alternative would be to get a portable drive of sufficient size to handle what you need to store. It will be a lot cheaper, portable, and faster.

 

[surjavarman]

Why do you need a NAS? Do you have other computers that need to share data? If not, then your best alternative would be to get a portable drive of sufficient size to handle what you need to store. It will be a lot cheaper, portable, and faster.

Streaming movies to my yet to come RMBP and maybe some other files too. Its a hassle to mess around with portable drives all the time. Like if I just want to watch a scene of one specific movie. I'd have to waste like a minute to connect everything only to watch a 30sec scene.

 

[portishead]

Synology NAS, external access via WebDAV & optionally VPN.

Thanks, you just sent me on a mission to setup the vpn on my synology. Took me like 2 hours but I finally got it to work. Problem was the port wasn't forwarding on my Airport, and I didn't realize it.

 

[blueroom]

Thanks, you just sent me on a mission to setup the vpn on my synology. Took me like 2 hours but I finally got it to work. Problem was the port wasn't forwarding on my Airport, and I didn't realize it.

I think the current DS 4 can port forward your AirPort directly. See if it finds it in the router section.

 

[brentmore]

I'd like to add another vote for Synology. I love mine to death, the UI of DSM is sexy and looks very nice. I was close to buying the qnap until I found out about synology, which I'm glad I did. I use it as a centralized server for me media and as a file server for all my macs in the house. I also use it with xbmc, sick beard, headphones and couch potato, sabnzbd, is the most automated media setup you can have!!!!!! It may be pricey but it's worth every bit in the long run. I'm excited about next weeks event when they announce DSM 4.1. Its like waiting for the next keynote from apple I swear. You can't go wrong with Synology!

My 211j was one of the best purchases I've made in a long time. Their OS upgrades are always solid, even the beta versions. With my home NAS holding all of my media, I'm not so worried about internal storage on my MBP.

Can't wait for the next DSM update!

 

[CUsurfer]

Streaming movies to my yet to come RMBP and maybe some other files too. Its a hassle to mess around with portable drives all the time. Like if I just want to watch a scene of one specific movie. I'd have to waste like a minute to connect everything only to watch a 30sec scene.

Are wanting to have this capability from outside your local network? If not, then you just need an external drive connected to your router.

 

[albert1028]

Check out the newly announced 2.5" portable NAS unit Drobo Mini (http://www.drobo.com/products/professionals/drobo-mini/index.php) Just announced this morning.

Squeezing 4 2.5" HDD and space for a mSata card seems all weighing in at less 3 lbs is pretty good especially for traveling and portability.

 

[vladzaharia]

Check out the newly announced 2.5" portable NAS unit Drobo Mini (http://www.drobo.com/products/professionals/drobo-mini/index.php) Just announced this morning.

Squeezing 4 2.5" HDD and space for a mSata card seems all weighing in at less 3 lbs is pretty good especially for traveling and portability.

Not a NAS. It only has TB and USB3.

 

[albert1028]

Not a NAS. It only has TB and USB3.

Sorry, spoke too fast. It seems that I just assumed drobo would have an option of making it into a NAS. guess not for now.

 

[portishead]

I think the current DS 4 can port forward your AirPort directly. See if it finds it in the router section.

I'm still on DSM 3.2 since there is an issue with write caching with a lot of Western Digital drives including mine. Waiting for the 4.1 update that is supposed to fix it.

 

[jcpb]

Why do you need a NAS? Do you have other computers that need to share data? If not, then your best alternative would be to get a portable drive of sufficient size to handle what you need to store. It will be a lot cheaper, portable, and faster.

Plug the NAS into an existing network - BAM, every computer on the network can use it.

Plug the external HDD into one computer - wait, you're using this with more than one computer? So unplug from one and plug into another, then reverse what you just did when you're done on the other? Holy crap, that's a lot of unnecessary work doing nothing for a long time, in exchange for saving money over a dedicated NAS!

If you use Windows 7 Pro/Ultimate, you also get the option to backup directly to networked storage devices. With a NAS you're set.

The newly announced Drobo devices are USB3+TB multi-drive enclosures. They are not the same as the Drobo FS, which IS a NAS.

 

[MH01]

Jesus man. I know exactly what a NAS is and in fact I have been studying it since well over a year. You dont have to humiliate me. I have been anticipating the RMBP since last year and I have been trying to figure a way how I can deal with the low storage since I am going from 1TB now to 256gb in the RMBP.

Now I don't know exactly how it is going to work since I never had one. But I think its going to be like dropbox at best. Which means you are going to have significantly slower read/write speeds, more hassle, not as seamless. I have a 256gb SSD right now with a 750gb hdd in the optibay and if that is not as seamless as a single drive 768gb SSD. And then you have to spend $500 on a NAS which is going to consume electricity for the rest of its lifetime and its never going to be 100% seamless.

Wass it really necessary to humiliate me? At what point did you think I didn't know what a NAS is. Jesus man

Apologies if it came across as as humiliating. The reason you pay so much for a good quality NAS is cause they do integrate with you network, effectively a drop box for all devices weather they be mac, windows , etc. they also can hold your iTunes library for all you computers, a media sever, a torrent client , provide you access to you photos or drop photos on it while you are travelling etc. a nas truly changes the way you home network works in relation to file sharing. Trust me if you ever get one, you will wonder why u waited so long.

 

[convergent]

Streaming movies to my yet to come RMBP and maybe some other files too. Its a hassle to mess around with portable drives all the time. Like if I just want to watch a scene of one specific movie. I'd have to waste like a minute to connect everything only to watch a 30sec scene.

OK, if you are going to be streaming, you probably want to be hard wire connected, so that wouldn't be any more hassle to hook up than an external drive. Since you don't have an ethernet port, you'll be using the dongle + Cat6 cable; vs. a single USB3 or Firewire cable for an external drive. I believe there are also wireless external drives. Not trying to talk you out of getting a NAS, but it just adds a great deal more cost and complexity.

If you are set on getting a NAS and don't know much about them, I highly recommend Eagis.com ... they sell several brands and that's all they do, so they can help you determine which is best for your needs. I am not affiliated, but have bought a ReadyNAS from them years ago, and more recently a QNAP. They also sell Synology, Drobo, Thecus, etc.. I had a failure of the ReadyNAS occur over a year after I bought it from them and they spent about an hour on the phone with me to help figure out what the problem was.

I think that any of the top tier brands are going to do what you said you want to do - QNAP, Netgear ReadyNAS, Synology, etc.. I would stay away from Drobo for NAS because their performance is terrible. Understand that all these things are basically micro servers running some flavor of Linux. They have an admin front end to help you do routine functions through menus. Also understand that having a RAID NAS is NOT a backup solution. You should still have a backup of what's on the NAS. Some of them let you attach a USB drive directly to do the backup, but often the format of what is stored on the USB drive is not easily usable. I ended up with two NAS boxes, one backing up the other, after having a near loss experience with just one.

 

[henrikrox]

Why do you need a NAS? Do you have other computers that need to share data? If not, then your best alternative would be to get a portable drive of sufficient size to handle what you need to store. It will be a lot cheaper, portable, and faster.

Problem with external drives is you need to have with you all the time. And to download stuff the computer has to be on.

With a NAS (which is always on) it downloads tvshows from nzb the second new episodes comes out, automaticly while i sleep. I have 10 shows on a "watchlist" everytime a new episode comes out, it downloads, extract it, and puts in the right season folder. I can add download jobs from work, and get it done when i get home. It can download movies automaticly to a rating from imdb for example. So if i set it up to download new movies with 8.0 or better rating with minimum 5000 votes from imdb. It does it.

A NAS is x100 times better then a bunch of external drives. And the possibilites is endless.

 

[arbitrage]

Is this Synology fast enough to house my master RAW files on for LR and not slow LR down much even though it will be coming over WiFi?? I've got the RMBP on its way and want to use it as my home CPU attached to two monitors (one of which is my existing 27" imac that can be used in target display mode). I'm debating just having a bunch of regular USB3 externals for my RAWs to feed LR or trying out one of the NAS systems. I could hook it directly up when in my office but also would use the RMBP out in the living room to work in LR sometimes and then would be using the WIFI feature.

Do people use it in this manner? I'd also use it as a central media hub for my macmini that is attached to the TV and even for my other laptops if they want to watch a show or movie.

 

[spesholized]

Is this Synology fast enough to house my master RAW files on for LR and not slow LR down much even though it will be coming over WiFi?? I've got the RMBP on its way and want to use it as my home CPU attached to two monitors (one of which is my existing 27" imac that can be used in target display mode). I'm debating just having a bunch of regular USB3 externals for my RAWs to feed LR or trying out one of the NAS systems. I could hook it directly up when in my office but also would use the RMBP out in the living room to work in LR sometimes and then would be using the WIFI feature.

Do people use it in this manner? I'd also use it as a central media hub for my macmini that is attached to the TV and even for my other laptops if they want to watch a show or movie.

Well, the speed bottleneck will be your WiFi connection. At best, you'll experience transfer speeds a little slower than an external USB 2.0 HDD. So I imagine the experience would be pretty bad. To get the best performance out of the NAS, you'll need to hook it up to a wired Gigabit network (which means you'll need to buy the TB Ethernet adaptor for RMBP). Also I believe LR and iPhoto don't play nice with NAS. You'll have to configure iSCSI protocol so that your Mac sees the NAS volume as a local drive.

Serving media to your mac mini would not be a problem though. A 802.11n network should provide plenty of bandwidth to stream HD content.

 

[spdntrxi]

LR raw files over a wireless NAS is slow... The gate is you wifi speed. It's no fun.. Better to have them local and then move them when you are done.

 

[arbitrage]

Thanks for the info! I think I'll stick to direct drives for now. I already have a bunch of USB3 drives in both desktop and portable flavours.

 

[double329]

if you have beat up old computer in the basement somewhere, you can convert that to a NAS box using FreeNAS.org. You will be up and running in less then 15min. I can run off the 1GB USB stick or internal HD, then use HD in your old system or add more as storage. Best of all, it is FREE. That is what I do

 

[convergent]

Is this Synology fast enough to house my master RAW files on for LR and not slow LR down much even though it will be coming over WiFi?? I've got the RMBP on its way and want to use it as my home CPU attached to two monitors (one of which is my existing 27" imac that can be used in target display mode). I'm debating just having a bunch of regular USB3 externals for my RAWs to feed LR or trying out one of the NAS systems. I could hook it directly up when in my office but also would use the RMBP out in the living room to work in LR sometimes and then would be using the WIFI feature.

I am a heavy using of Lightroom and I keep all my RAW files on my QNAP 6 bay NAS. I access them via a wired gigabit network and its fine. But, I also keep my Lightroom libraries and full sized previews locally on the SDD. I have tried putting the database and previews on NAS, and its painful, even with gigabit. You don't want to do any of that over WiFi in my opinion.

I've also tried a bunch of USB drives and that is kind of a pain too, depending on many images you have. The beauty of a disk array, be it network attached (NAS), or direct via Firewire, USB, or Thunderbolt, is that you can have very large capacity. I have two Lightroom libraries, and I think they each have around 50K images in them.

As you've been answering questions in the thread, your requirements seem to keep changing and you add more things you want to do. I think you need to really think about what you want to do overall, how many different devices you are using etc.. Then let that drive what you get.

The reason I have a NAS is:

- Want to access media files from multiple computers and devices
- Have my music library on there and can sync it to other computers, or access it from AppleTV
- Have my home movies library on there... and access from AppleTV, but publish from my computer.
- Have my ripped DVDs on there... rip from my computer and access from Apple TV.
- Backup storage for multiple computers.

I also have a Firewire attached drive that I use for Time Machine, Super Duper Clone, and scratch space for Photoshop or other temp image storage to keep my machine clear. I am considering upgrading this to a Thunderbolt drive at some point.

 

[moclippa]

I was holding off on a thunderbolt NAS for a while, but now that the new rMBP's have USB 3.0 ports you are spoiled for choice unless you are doing video or graphics rendering and editing professionally off the NAS. If you just need this for a top notch local backup solution then get the Synology 1512+, as most others here have noted. It is the best of breed for small office and home use as long as the majority of what you will use it for is backup and storage of movies, documents, images etc. and not professional rendering. Also the Synology Hybrid Raid system is good for people not wanting to get too deep into the nitty gritty of Raid setups; it helps a lot that the SHR system is not proprietary (unlike a Drobo I used to own, where the drives are useless if you don't own a Drobo).

However, If you were professionally rendering I'd recommend the Promise Pegasus NAS setup as a Raid 0. It has a significantly limited feature set, but its good at one thing, fast access to an external hard disk rack. Nothing more.