[markw10]

I currently use a Hard Drive plugged into my Airport Extreme Base Station. Unfortunately it's just so slow and has a lot of reliablility problems. I was hoping with time updates would improve this. Now I've decided to get another hard drive that would be a NAS Hard Drive that I can plug directly onto my Home Network via Ethernet. I would prefer one still that has Firewire and/or USB so I have other connection options if my needs change.
My questions:
1. I'm still new to the Mac and especially when it comes to networking. I like how with the AEBS Hard Drive when it works it automatically shows up on my Mac like a hard drive volume. There is no need to log onto it when I use my Mac or anything. Will it be as easy with a NAS?
2. I've heard something about SMB Server and how any hard drive that's a NAS will be like this. Does this mean I do have to log on to use it and it won't be as easy?
3. I hear a lot about how I have to have one formatted as HFS+. Do all NAS drives do this or do you have to have one with that option?
4. Also, I hear the big thing to look for is one that has AFP. I know it's some type of Apple protocol. If so, would that make it easier to use and operate more like a AEBS Airdisk?
5. Lastly, assuming it's best to go with one that is HFS+/AFP I know there are few on the market. What are some good brands/models to look for?

Thanks for any help with the above questions.

[Drakino]

Originally Posted by markw10 

1. I'm still new to the Mac and especially when it comes to networking. I like how with the AEBS Hard Drive when it works it automatically shows up on my Mac like a hard drive volume. There is no need to log onto it when I use my Mac or anything. Will it be as easy with a NAS?

For a NAS, no. The disk will need to be connected by some sort of process you initiate.

Originally Posted by markw10 

2. I've heard something about SMB Server and how any hard drive that's a NAS will be like this. Does this mean I do have to log on to use it and it won't be as easy?

SMB refers to the protocol Windows uses to talk to file servers, and OS X supports it as well. There are some limitations, such as valid characters in filenames being a bit different, but overall it will work.

Originally Posted by markw10 

3. I hear a lot about how I have to have one formatted as HFS+. Do all NAS drives do this or do you have to have one with that option?

NAS boxes are typically just a computer in a box attached to ethernet, and many run Linux. Since they format the drive, the type doesn't rally matter. HFS+ is only for talking to locally attached disks, because over the network the responsibility shifts to the server (NAS in this case) to actually write the files out to the drive. File system formats only matter to the device doing the actual writes to the disk. Odds are, most NASes won't even expose what the file system format is.

Originally Posted by markw10 

4. Also, I hear the big thing to look for is one that has AFP. I know it's some type of Apple protocol. If so, would that make it easier to use and operate more like a AEBS Airdisk?

AFP is the Mac native network protocol, just as SMB is the windows one. Having a NAS that supports it will ensure your Mac clients can write files with little pain, IE, no file character restrictions that are different and so on.

Originally Posted by markw10 

5. Lastly, assuming it's best to go with one that is HFS+/AFP I know there are few on the market. What are some good brands/models to look for?

I personally went pretty high end with the ReadyNAS NV+, but as for recommendations for you it all depends on what you want. How much disk space? Is expandability important? Do you want an iTunes Music server? Do you want redundancy to allow the NAS to survive a single disk failure?

As far as making it easy to connect to, my ReadyNAS using AFP shows up in Leopard in the side bar as something I can connect to. You can also connect to a disk manually the first time, then drag it to the Login Items (User System Preferences) to have it connect automatically when you restart.

[Andrew Stephens]

Be careful though. I've been through many brands of supposedly Mac friendly NAS drives and they have all had issues with mounting, IP addresses, file names and reliability.

I have found a Mac Mini server with a nice big RAID attached a much more flexible and robust solution.

[ginoledesma]

I've owned and used the D-Link DNS-323 for several months now. I picked this particular unit for 2 reasons: it used SATA drives (future-proofing), and it supported RAID-1 (redundant mirroring). I've plopped in 2 of 500GB SATA drives in my unit and it's worked like a charm. It works pretty well with Mac OS X, though the admin UI is nowhere as easy and elegant as AEBS disk sharing. However, it's simple enough to follow, given basic technical know-how.

A nice benefit of it is that it has a 10/100/1000Mbps network connector, so it flies on a Gigabit network. I've hooked it up to my AEBS and have been very, very happy with the results.

I strongly, strongly advise against Netgear's SC101 and the newer SC101T. They're similar to the D-Link DNS-323, but they are Windows-only devices (they use Windows-specific drivers). I haven't tried it out myself, but some people are quite happy with the Linksys NAS200.

Higher-end solutions like the ReadyNAS (now sold by Netgear) are definitely the best. Other worthwhile, well-priced solutions include the Iomega and Imation NAS solutions.

[Andrew Stephens]

oh and steer well clear of Buffalo NAS drives, despite being bought from Macwarehouse and having the Mac OS logo on them, after they failed to configure them on the networkand the tech support guy could only offer connecting them to a PC to set them up as they do not support Macs and you can't update the firmware from a Mac (eh?)

Apparently they put the Mac logo on th ebox because they "should, sort of work" on a Mac network but they can't help you if they don't.

[Laurence]

You can always put an alias to the mounted drive in your login items and then it will auto-mount. There are other ways to get a NAS to auto-mount as well and they are all relatively easy to set up. This is probably a bit more that you might want to spend, however Fry's seems to have the Promise SmartStor NS4300N for $299 lately. This is a four SATA drive NAS with RAID 0, 1, 0+1 & 5... It also has RAID Level Migration which is very handy if you can't afford all four drives at once. You can install one drive now and it will make it into a RAID0 Striped array of 1 drive. You can then add a 2nd drive later and it will join the array and still appear as a single (double sized) drive. Later if you add a third drive you can keep it RAID0, OR you can switch it over to RAID 5 for security. It is not like the Drobo in that you have to use all same-sized drives, but it is very nice for a NAS. The only issue I've run into is that the speeds are a bit slower than I was used to with FW drives, but for long-term storage it is a very good deal. If you have a router that supports Jumbo Frames, the NS4300N does too!

[Drakino]

Originally Posted by ginoledesma 

I strongly, strongly advise against Netgear's SC101 and the newer SC101T. They're similar to the D-Link DNS-323, but they are Windows-only devices (they use Windows-specific drivers).

The problem is that they try to use a proprietary variant of iSCSI called Z-SAN and act as a DAS (Direct Attached Storage) instead of a traditional NAS. Why NetGear thought this was a good idea is beyond me, especially considering if they had used iSCSI, supporting it on Windows, OS X or Linux would have been trivial.

Higher-end solutions like the ReadyNAS (now sold by Netgear) are definitely the best. Other worthwhile, well-priced solutions include the Iomega and Imation NAS solutions.

Thankfully the only thing the Netgear ReadyNASes do differently is say NetGear instead of Infrant, and come with a longer warranty. Netgear has kept their voodoo proprietary crap away so far, and the Infrant guys are still very active and helpful on their boards.

[IceEnclosure]

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