[Le Flaneur]

I'm wondering whether it would be possible to update the list of Mac-friendly network attached storage devices. The necessary features are (IMO):

1) true afp 3.1 support for file sizes > 2 GB and file names > 32 characters
2) bonjour/mdnsresponder support
3) good performance (10 MB/second read/write)
4) no Linux hacking required
5) affordable
6) quiet

Optional:
1) Raid 1 for reliability (2 drives)
2) iTunes server

Right now, I can only think of the LaCie 2big Network (2-disk RAID) that may fulfill all these criteria. But I'm not sure that its has good performance. The Infrant/Netgear NAS is too expensive. Buffalo's Linkstation Pro meets many of these criteria, but I don't believe that it has Bonjour support. Buffalo just released a Linkstation Pro Duo that offers Raid 1, but doesn't appear to have as good performance as the basic Linkstation Pro (the duo uses 5400rpm drives instead of 7200rpm in the Pro basic). There's also the diskless Synology DS207, but I'm not sure that it has Bonjour support. I also initially thought of the Apple Extreme Base Station plus external AirDisk, but I've read that the AirDisk support is unreliable.

Can anyone weigh in here? By the way, I'm NOT thinking of using another Mac as NAS -- too much complexity and maintenance.

[mduell]

I don't think you're going to find all that in one reasonably priced box. The closest I can think of is the stuff Netgear just announced at CES.

[Le Flaneur]

Originally Posted by mduell 

I don't think you're going to find all that in one reasonably priced box. The closest I can think of is the stuff Netgear just announced at CES.

What specifically did Netgear (not a Mac-friendly company) announce at CES?

FWIW, I think that cost is really the least limiting factor; most NAS units are VERY Mac-unfriendly. The Buffalo Linkstation Pro has everything except Bonjour networking, which could probably be adding by a little Linux hacking. I have an old Buffalo PPC Linkstation to which I added full afp 3.1 support and Bonjour networking, but boy was it a pain!

[mduell]

The Netgear (what makes them Mac unfriendly??) ReadyNAS Duo meets every one of your necessary and optional features:
Netgear is beefing up its NAS options with the new ReadyNAS Duo Gigabit lineup, featuring dual SATA drives and shipping in 500GB (RND2150), 750GB (RND2175) and 1TB (RND2110) capacities. In addition to traditional NAS duties and gigabit Ethernet connections, the drives can automatically pull images off of your camera when you plug it in via USB, and the drives include built-in support for BitTorrent as well. Netgear has adopted some of Apple's networking technology, Bonjour and AFP, to make it easier to monitor and access the drives, but the Duos still operate just as well with Windows machines. Netgear is also launching the ReadyNAS Duo 2-Bay Gigabit, which packs in more traditional server features like HTTP/S remote access, FTP, SSL and ACL security, an iTunes server, UPnP AV and Logitech Squeezecenter. The dual SATA drive bays are hot-swappable and can be managed with hardware accelerated X-RAID. No word on price, but most of these drives should be out in Q1 2008. (emphasis mine)

I'd expect pricing to be about $200 for an empty box.

[Le Flaneur]

Originally Posted by mduell 

The Netgear (what makes them Mac unfriendly??)

I guess you haven't tried updating the firmware on one of their Powerline network adapters, then. They don't support Macs. Their tech support is clueless about Macs. Of course, most manufacturers of networking gear are this way.

Originally Posted by mduell 

ReadyNAS Duo meets every one of your necessary and optional features
I'd expect pricing to be about $200 for an empty box.

Sounds great. Hopefully less expensive and better-performing than Drobos. There's now the DroboShare, just announced, which unfortunately doesn't support AFP. Do you have any experience with Drobos?

[mduell]

Originally Posted by Le Flaneur 

Sounds great. Hopefully less expensive and better-performing than Drobos. There's now the DroboShare, just announced, which unfortunately doesn't support AFP. Do you have any experience with Drobos?

I wanted a Drobo, then I read the reviews and experiences, and ran far far away. Instead I'm going to pick up a pair of 5-drive eSATA enclosures and run them in RAID10 (kinda... I'll do RAID0 on each enclosure, but then sync them with rsync or similar).

[Le Flaneur]

Originally Posted by mduell 

I wanted a Drobo, then I read the reviews and experiences, and ran far far away.

Yeah, the Drobo looks really unreliable.

What about this NAS, the LaCie 2bigNetwork? It has all the protocols (AFP, Bonjour) and offers RAID 0 and 1. Costs about $350.

[GORDYmac]

Netgear is not very Mac friendly, ironically enough. Their Mac inspired Storage Central line of network storage boxes still don't support Macs. I know because I have been waiting for Mac support since they were announced...they look sweet.

SC101T - NETGEAR.com

[Le Flaneur]

Originally Posted by GORDYmac 

Netgear is not very Mac friendly, ironically enough. Their Mac inspired Storage Central line of network storage boxes still don't support Macs.

Right, but their ReadyNAS line was acquired with the purchase of Infrant Technologies, and appears to be quite Mac-friendly. As far as I can tell, currently the Netgear ReadyNAS Duo and the aforementioned LaCie Big2Network are the only NAS units that support AFP 3.1 and Bonjour out of the box, in addition to offering the added reliability of Raid 1.

[mduell]

GORDYmac didn't read the thread.

I think I'm going to buy a ReadyNAS Duo, because I don't think Apple TV can play from a Time Capsule.

[ghporter]

Is this all about whether or not AFP is supported? Isn't AFP depricated by Apple? Bonjour works better and more effectively with almost everything, so why sweat about AFP?

[Le Flaneur]

Originally Posted by ghporter 

Is this all about whether or not AFP is supported? Isn't AFP depricated by Apple? Bonjour works better and more effectively with almost everything, so why sweat about AFP?

I think you're confusing things. AFP (Apple File Protocol) is a file service, and I'm talking about AFP over TCP, not AppleTalk!

"In Mac OS X, AFP is one of several file services supported including Server Message Block (SMB), Network File System (NFS), File Transfer Protocol (FTP), and WebDAV" (Wikipedia).

Bonjour isn't a file service, but rather it's a general method of discovering services on a local area network. Thus, a device will broadcast AFP (or FTP, HTTP, etc.) via Bonjour.

I don't think AFP is deprecated; does anyone want to weigh in here?

[ghporter]

Bonjour facilitates the most appropriate connection method for a discovered network device or service. It does not by default use AFP with a given device, though it doesn't discount that AFP is available. But together, Bonjour and the selected connection protocol are not limited to Apple-centric choices. "Not supporting native AFP over TCP/IP" is not a damning statement. It simply recognizes that only a relatively few manufacturers other than Apple ever fully implemented AFP. In fact IIRC, AFP over TCP/IP is more widely supported by third party devices than AFP over AppleTalk (or AppleTalk itself) ever was.

AFP is deprecated by a number of vendors who used to support it, such as Oracle. I can't find any substantial information about whether or not Apple intends to maintain this protocol indefinitely, though they are well known for supporting broad standards and (eventually) deprecating in-house standards when something better or at least equivalent is available as a full-fledged standard.

[Le Flaneur]

Originally Posted by ghporter 

Bonjour facilitates the most appropriate connection method for a discovered network device or service. It does not by default use AFP with a given device

I never wrote that. As far as I know, Bonjour doesn't use any connection protocol by default, except for tcp/ip; a device broadcasts and/or selects via Bonjour the different connection protocols that are available. Again, Bonjour doesn't replace afp/ip, smb, ftp, webdav, or anything else.

In any case, the real question is: for file transfer over a Mac-centric LAN, is there anything better than AFP over TCP? That's why I "sweat" over AFP. SMB is terrible in terms of preserving Mac file attributes.

[ginoledesma]

The Netgear SC101T is horrible, even on Windows. They chose to do an iSCSI-like approach for implementing it, hence the Windows-only drivers. A better alternative is the D-Link DNS-323, which is similar: 2-bay SATA NAS with Gig-E port and USB for printer sharing. It supports RAID-1/JBOD. It's what I use at home for my NAS, though it's far from perfect.

I hacked it to enable AFP (it runs Linux), but after moving to an AEBS(n), I've been able to take advantage of much faster speeds with CIFS/SMB (802.11n for my MacBook Pro, Gigabit for the NAS). If Apple only officially supported using this as a Time Machine backup, I'd be golden.

The chassis is getting cheaper ($180 down from $220+). Slap in two 500GB or 750GB drives and you'll have a decent NAS setup.

I'm waiting for the ReadyNAS Duo to come out so I can compare, though I'm really looking for an enclosure with more bays.

[ghporter]

Originally Posted by Le Flaneur 

I never wrote that. As far as I know, Bonjour doesn't use any connection protocol by default, except for tcp/ip; a device broadcasts and/or selects via Bonjour the different connection protocols that are available. Again, Bonjour doesn't replace afp/ip, smb, ftp, webdav, or anything else.

In any case, the real question is: for file transfer over a Mac-centric LAN, is there anything better than AFP over TCP? That's why I "sweat" over AFP. SMB is terrible in terms of preserving Mac file attributes.

I didn't say you wrote anything specifically. I said that Bonjour doesn't default to an Apple-centric choice for connecting to any particular device.

I feel that a network should be agnostic, depending on IEEE standards and using the most efficient protocol to connect between devices. For most files, there's not really anything that needs Mac file attributes that I've run into, so losing the resource fork isn't a biggie in my book. If you're connecting between two Macs directly, that's different, and I'd assume you were doing that because you had a file on one that needed processing using software on the other. But for simply saving your music files or documents on a networked device, there's nothing wrong with NFS or SMB for doing that.

[Le Flaneur]

Originally Posted by ginoledesma 

I'm waiting for the ReadyNAS Duo to come out so I can compare, though I'm really looking for an enclosure with more bays.

The original ReadyNAS enclosures have 4 bays, so if you have the bucks, go for it!

[Le Flaneur]

Originally Posted by ghporter 

If you're connecting between two Macs directly, that's different, and I'd assume you were doing that because you had a file on one that needed processing using software on the other. But for simply saving your music files or documents on a networked device, there's nothing wrong with NFS or SMB for doing that.

You've established that for you, AFP isn't a necessity. But for other people on this forum, it is

To my knowledge, the Finder still handles AFP better than SMB. Copies of bundle-type files (i.e. folders that look like single files) using AFP are faster, but not only that, there are programs such as Retrospect that can't automount SMB volumes.

[Mastrap]

Originally Posted by mduell 

I wanted a Drobo, then I read the reviews and experiences, and ran far far away. Instead I'm going to pick up a pair of 5-drive eSATA enclosures and run them in RAID10 (kinda... I'll do RAID0 on each enclosure, but then sync them with rsync or similar).

Could you point me to some negative reviews? Not trying to be an ass, but everything I've read so far has been positive to super positive. I own a drobo with two 1TB drives and am very happy with the setup.

[mduell]

Originally Posted by Mastrap 

Could you point me to some negative reviews? Not trying to be an ass, but everything I've read so far has been positive to super positive. I own a drobo with two 1TB drives and am very happy with the setup.

drobospace.com is a good place to start. The days long relayouts, the crummy performance that doesn't even approach the capability of USB2, the noise, the price, the oops-your-data-is-toast burps, the enclosure failures, etc. After doing a bit more research I found that RAID10 offers better performance at a lower price for my needs.

A two drive setup avoids some of the problems since it's just a simple mirror, but now you've paid $500 for an enclosure for what could be accomplished with better performance with a $100 enclosure.