I really don't know where to to start. I haven't owned a Mac in over ten years. My PC that I built ten years ago is on its last leg. Went out and bought a MacBook pro and am hoping it can fulfill the duties my PC used to. I'm a little lost and was wondering if somebody could help me with a good NAS storage solution. Something that I could access remotely for files, pictures, calendars, backups, etc.... But also be a Plex server at home. It's been so long since I've used a Mac it's just a little overwhelming. I really appreciate any help. Thank you
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Nas storage
- Thread starter Mlaz81
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I recommend the 918+ from Synology with 8 GB, or 16 GB of ram if you are planning on running virtual machines on it upto 32GB though not officially supported.
It does everything from raided btrfs storage with bit rot protection to transcoding movies on the fly including hosting, virtualization, remote and local backups, time machine, plug-ins, plex etc.
My best Nas investment to date.
It does everything from raided btrfs storage with bit rot protection to transcoding movies on the fly including hosting, virtualization, remote and local backups, time machine, plug-ins, plex etc.
My best Nas investment to date.
NAS is a double-edged sword for home use. It provides you with lots of available storage, but the disks in NAS units are formatted with a Linux file system. If the NAS system starts having issues, about your only recourse to recover and use the data on those drives is to have the unit fixed, or buy another NAS from the same vendor (=downtime for your data). You cannot simply take out the drive and attach it to a Mac to read the data. I tried NAS, but much prefer directly attached storage, using a Mac file system. You can share those drives over your local network for other machines to access, same as NAS. With very large disks now available you can have a DAS drive in multi-terabyte size. I back up to DAS, and use multiple disks swapped out monthly. The most recent one swapped out goes to my safe deposit box. I make the disks with a bootable partition, so I can use them for a full restore if necessary.
+1 with what @HenryAZ offered, this coming from an owner of an engineering firm with Thecus and Synology NAS units in my offices and a Synology NAS in my home office. Adding to that, I'm starting a new business next year and have settled on the 2012 i7 Mini Server I now own or a 2018 Mini with multiple DAS, with duplicates going in my safe and the safe that's installed in the trunk of my car - using Arq Backup to sync it all. I really love Synology NAS units but I'm so over Linux and Btrfs some days I could just, well, head for a couple of fingers of Irish then call it a day...
Mac Mini+Arq Backup+multiple DAS=my solution
FWIW, the urban legend that I've taken advantage of is Best Buy's easystore external storage. The 8/10TB versions have WD Red or HGST White NAS drives installed - I own several and have shucked a few to verify it. They're far cheaper than buying the bare NAS drives and often on sale...
Mac Mini+Arq Backup+multiple DAS=my solution
FWIW, the urban legend that I've taken advantage of is Best Buy's easystore external storage. The 8/10TB versions have WD Red or HGST White NAS drives installed - I own several and have shucked a few to verify it. They're far cheaper than buying the bare NAS drives and often on sale...
Depends on what you want to do, really. Plex works great using my Synology NAS and Apple TV. The NAS also does Time Machine, stores security camera footage though Surveillance Station, gives you remote access to your files and photos, has a VPN server built-in and supports a large number of software packages that do all sorts of stuff! I wouldn't be without mine. Take a look at Synology's website.
I love my Synology 1515+. It’s been solid till a few weeks ago when it died. No power. Synology replaced it for free. I use Plex on it as well and my file shares.
Now with Plex, it can’t handle Blu-ray movies straight from the rips. You have to use handbrake with high profile to convert them so the cpu can handle it on the nas for Plex. I heard the newer ones maybe able to do better. It the atom processor didn’t do so well.
Now with Plex, it can’t handle Blu-ray movies straight from the rips. You have to use handbrake with high profile to convert them so the cpu can handle it on the nas for Plex. I heard the newer ones maybe able to do better. It the atom processor didn’t do so well.
Not sure off hand. No need too. Both my macs and PCs all access the storage fine.
Yes but if you want to retrieve the data later when you don’t have the NAS? Someone is saying it’s Linux so not possible?
Not sure what you are asking. Any computer can access the nas by connecting to the network share of it. Pc or Mac.
[doublepost=1543366735][/doublepost]If you get rid of the nas you need to move your files off it to another drive. If your nas fails, you get a replacement and all your data is still intact as long as the drives are put in the same way and slots as the other one was.
I back my nas up to iDrive so I have a cloud backup of it as wel.
Let me clarify: in message #3, it is said that "You cannot simply take out the drive and attach it to a Mac to read the data." That is due to file system. So in the event the NAS has a failure and I can format the HDD to exFAT, would I be able to retrieve the data on the drive, in case of failure?
You can’t do that with any raid expect a raid 1 that is mirrored. Any external storage that has multiple drives will not allow that to work.