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quiklee · Jul 17, 2006, 06:13 PM

I've been doing research on some NAS drives for my home. So far, I've looked at Western Digital's Netcenter and the Freecom FSG-3 . . . but that's it . . my home is appled out and i want to be able to have frontrow access all my media files from any of my apple-connected tvs.

has anyone else been doing research on this?

thoughts?

suggestions?

mduell · Jul 17, 2006, 06:46 PM

I don't know if you'll find one; even the Mac-friendly companies like Macally note "*Certain limitations to apply in Mac network."

quiklee · Jul 17, 2006, 06:58 PM

i find that hard to believe in a day when accessories for apples rule . . . . no one has made a NAS device for us apple users . . . especially apple frontrow users!

ghporter · Jul 17, 2006, 08:55 PM

My CollMax CN-550 NAS enclosure (bring your own IDE drive) does fine with both Macs and PCs. It's all ethernet and SMB, so standards abound. Not that this is the fastest solution, but it's pretty fast and very affordable (about $70 for the enclosure and whatever you pay for the drive you put in it). There may be issues about automatically connecting to this device from a Mac-I've never tried it-but manually connecting works fine and is stable and persistent. I like it.

quiklee · Jul 18, 2006, 01:44 AM

thanks for the suggestion glenn, but i need something automatic . . . basically as pain free as possible . . . anything else you can think of?

ghporter · Jul 18, 2006, 08:49 AM

I think (having not tested it) that something like SharePoints automates all sorts of network connections. If I'm wrong, someone will ~~pounce~~ chime in and set me straight.

mduell · Jul 18, 2006, 09:10 PM

If SMB works as easily with OSX as the OP wants, there are a lot of other options for empty NAS boxes.

SWFan · Jul 29, 2006, 10:02 PM

I think the best NAS device out there, especially for Mac and Linux users are the devices Infrant makes. I'm particularly impressed with their ReadyNAS NV.

RJGill842 · Aug 7, 2006, 11:02 AM

The Buffalo TeraStation is an amazing piece of equipment - high quality and reliable. And oh yea, it's also got 1 terabyte of storage, lol. They also make smaller ones. I actually just use an old G4 455mhz tower as my file server, I put 800gb worth of HD space in there and it works flawlessly - RJGill

gkidwell · Aug 15, 2006, 11:51 PM

Could you list the exact steps you took to access the NAS? I have set it up on my network, and
can access from my Windows machine, but am unable to see it from my Powerbook when browsing the network, and
cannot access it by typing in the IP address after "command K" - ing from the server.

BTW:I'm running Tiger 10.4.7

thanks,
Gary

Originally Posted by ghporter

My CollMax CN-550 NAS enclosure (bring your own IDE drive) does fine with both Macs and PCs. It's all ethernet and SMB, so standards abound. Not that this is the fastest solution, but it's pretty fast and very affordable (about $70 for the enclosure and whatever you pay for the drive you put in it). There may be issues about automatically connecting to this device from a Mac-I've never tried it-but manually connecting works fine and is stable and persistent. I like it.

Biest · Aug 16, 2006, 12:26 AM

Originally Posted by RJGill842

The Buffalo TeraStation is an amazing piece of equipment - high quality and reliable. And oh yea, it's also got 1 terabyte of storage, lol. They also make smaller ones. I actually just use an old G4 455mhz tower as my file server, I put 800gb worth of HD space in there and it works flawlessly - RJGill

that is what i heard as well from a friend that is using it as a backup disk for his office

chefpastry · Aug 16, 2006, 12:40 AM

Originally Posted by RJGill842

The Buffalo TeraStation is an amazing piece of equipment - high quality and reliable. And oh yea, it's also got 1 terabyte of storage, lol. They also make smaller ones. I actually just use an old G4 455mhz tower as my file server, I put 800gb worth of HD space in there and it works flawlessly - RJGill

I agree, old Mac towers make great servers, especially the ones with gigabit ethernet.

ghporter · 07:16 AM

I don't have access to our Mac right now-it's my wife's you see.

But connecting to the CN-550 should be as simple as typing in the IP and the folder name you want in Finder's "Connect to" box.

Later... gkidwell, make sure you have Windows File Sharing enabled on your Mac.

Martyn · Aug 18, 2006, 05:56 AM

Originally Posted by RJGill842

The Buffalo TeraStation is an amazing piece of equipment - high quality and reliable. And oh yea, it's also got 1 terabyte of storage, lol. They also make smaller ones. I actually just use an old G4 455mhz tower as my file server, I put 800gb worth of HD space in there and it works flawlessly - RJGill

I agree the Buffalo Terastation is a great piece of kit but all the NAS in the Buffalo range do not support file names over 32 characters on their Mac shares.

I am looking for a NAS solution for our Macs and have tried the Buffalo route (my reseller is trying to organise a return!). I will definitly consider the old G4 route.

Does anybody have an old G4 lying around?

chefpastry · Aug 19, 2006, 07:25 AM

I'm sure you can find G4s in eBay or Craig's List easily. However, keep in mind that only the MDD models supported drives that are larger than 137GB. Therefore, if you pick up one of the older G4s and wanted to use larger drives, you'd have to connect them using SATA PCI cards, PATA PCI cards, or use Firewire or USB bridges.