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RMBP 256 GB + NAS is a solution

golf1410

golf1410

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
May 7, 2012
748
3
San Francisco, CA
I am pretty new here. Ordered mine RMBP
2.3 GHz
Ram 16 GB
256 GB
I couldn't afford top baseline model or max out model. Looking for a NAS solution. This is where you guys can help me and others by throwing an idea in here.
 
golf1410 said:
I am pretty new here. Ordered mine RMBP
2.3 GHz
Ram 16 GB
256 GB
I couldn't afford top baseline model or max out model. Looking for a NAS solution. This is where you guys help me and others by throwing an idea in here.
Click to expand...

Synology seems to be the best from the reviews. DLink's DNS-XXX series would probably be some of the worst.
 
you could try looking at some of the reviews in anandtech, sincerely with the price of the built NAS today you have to have a very specific workload to build one, as I did.

Another simple measure is to connect a HD on the back of your router, the speed transfer is going to be low anyway.
 
golf1410 said:
I am pretty new here. Ordered mine RMBP
2.3 GHz
Ram 16 GB
256 GB
I couldn't afford top baseline model or max out model. Looking for a NAS solution. This is where you guys can help me and others by throwing an idea in here.
Click to expand...

This is exactly my plan ;) I don't need much internal storage and I have used my entire extneral drive with my iTunes libarary. Therefore I'm planning on purchasing a synology using it as an iTunes server as well as a backup location for time machine and storage for larger files such as iphoto. I also plan on enabling VPN for use across locations.
 
I'd go with Synology.
For work i use a DS1812+ with 2 expansion units (18 HDDs in total) and for home (you know music, family photos, movies, etc) i use a DS411 (4 HDDs).

Also, take a look at Techus and drobo.

Good luck!
:)
 
Can the apple tv be used as a media server for streaming files to your MBP?

All these NAS'es are huge, ugly, really expensive and they probably consume a lot of electricity
 
my old server went belly up, decided to just get a 3TB WD mybook, plug it into airport extreme and be done with it...
 
I use a Drobo w/Mac Mini shared out on my network. The read+write speed is not the best, maybe 20 MB/s? I have it hooked up via FW 800, too.
 
Use Drobo only if you like turn-on-and-forget. I'd wager it is slower than every other NAS of questionable quality out there.
 
jcpb said:
Use Drobo only if you like turn-on-and-forget. I'd wager it is slower than every other NAS of questionable quality out there.
Click to expand...

Yes I agree. And as a Mac user, turn on and forget is easiest anyways ;). Nothing to worry about, always on and easy to upgrade disks without worrying about size matching. Plus it allows an easy way to expand storage by replacing 1 drive at a time.
 
Also consider Time Capsule. Not exactly cheap, but gives you router and built in Time Machine setup, and you can use extra space as a NAS.
 
How do you implement Time machine solution, iTunes server and moving iTunes library to NAS in one complete solution? I wanna buy Synology NAS.
What configuration of HDD will suit my need?
 
golf1410 said:
I am pretty new here. Ordered mine RMBP
2.3 GHz
Ram 16 GB
256 GB
I couldn't afford top baseline model or max out model. Looking for a NAS solution. This is where you guys can help me and others by throwing an idea in here.
Click to expand...

I'd recommend to have at least one external 2.5" drive. You can get a nice compact 1.5TB in aluminum case with USB 3.0 for slightly above 120$ (like the one from Lacie) Once you're spoiled with such capacities, you gonna realize that even extra 256Gb won't solve the problem. And 256Gb for a system drive is more that sufficient. Actually, I was ok with 128Gb but it's nice to have some room for Virtual machine images and they easily grow up to 40Gb each.


NAS is relatively slow and not portable at all, but is more convenient at home. These things do not substitute each other well to pick-up only one. I'd also consider time capsule as a good alternative to NAS only box, or you can attach you own HDD enclosure to Airport extreme and it will be more flexible. I haven't seen any good priced NAS solutions that are worth spending money on. But YMMV.
 
maratus said:
I'd also consider time capsule as a good alternative to NAS only box, or you can attach you own HDD enclosure to Airport extreme and it will be more flexible. I haven't seen any good priced NAS solutions that are worth spending money on. But YMMV.
Click to expand...
Time Capsule has single non-user replaceable hard drive (can be replaced if you have the skills to do it but certainly not by an average user). It should have at least two user-replaceable hard drives that can be used in RAID to be a decent NAS alternative but somehow I doubt Apple will update it to do this.

As for a USB hard drive connected to an AEBS that's slower than a Time Capsule. Things may change a bit if the next AEBS gets USB3 though.

Personally I use NetGear ReadyNAS units. I'd suggest going with one of the vendors that supports development of AFP/Time Machine support for Linux: http://www.netafp.com/customers/
 
All these NAS solutions look grossly overpriced...I mean after initial backup all that speed is irrelevant...Incremental backups via usb3 should be fine...a 3tb usb 3 will run max 150$ vs 500-1000$ for a decent NAS.
 
skiffx said:
All these NAS solutions look grossly overpriced...I mean after initial backup all that speed is irrelevant...Incremental backups via usb3 should be fine...a 3tb usb 3 will run max 150$ vs 500-1000$ for a decent NAS.
Click to expand...
The Time Capsule has a single point of failure. If its sole HDD dies, you're screwed. Many NAS systems can be configured as mirroring. If one drive dies? So what, replace the dead drive with a new one.

A standalone USB3 external HDD doesn't give you the peace of mind that a properly-configured NAS system does.
 
jcpb said:
The Time Capsule has a single point of failure. If its sole HDD dies, you're screwed. Many NAS systems can be configured as mirroring. If one drive dies? So what, replace the dead drive with a new one.

A standalone USB3 external HDD doesn't give you the peace of mind that a properly-configured NAS system does.
Click to expand...

Yeh agreed on the redundancy, however, in my personal case, I use external enclosure just to backup my mac pro which holds everything, thus, I always have data on 2 or more systems.

A decent drobo or synology will cost more than if you just build yourself another computer and use it for storage and then some...
 
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