[scottjturner]

Hi, new to the forum

Just a question, sure it has already been answered however can't find any information on it.

What I want to do is to buy/build an external nas box ~ 2Tb which I would connect to my iMac via the firewire port to benefit the higher speed over ethernet (as I do most of my work on my iMac) and also to my router via the ethernet. Thus my powerbook could access the NAS wirelessly via the router and I also plan in the near future to build a media center possibly mac mini or windows media centre box which could access my media files stored on the NAS via ethernet. This would also allow my to have remote access to the NAS box when not at home.

Is it possible to access the NAS via the ethernet and firewire simultaneously or is this not possible. If it is not possible than my question is it better to connect the NAS to the iMac via firewire and than for the other computers to access the NAS via the iMac or just go with a standard NAS and connect it directly to the router and suffer the slower speeds with the iMac.

Thanks for any advice.

Scott

[ghporter]

Searching didn't need to go far-check out this link on MacNN.

[mduell]

I don't think you're going to find anything that allows simultaneous Firewire and Ethernet connections at the consumer/prosumer level (and perhaps not even at the enterprise level). The fastest approach all around would be to get a Firewire enclosure for your iMac and share it over the network from there; this would of course require the iMac to be on in order to access it remotely. NAS devices tend to fall into two catagories: slow and expensive. By slow I mean a fraction of the speed of USB, and by expensive I mean much more than a Mac mini+FW enclosure (which you would/could leave always on). Remote access is easier with a disk connected to a Mac than a NAS disk.

ghporter's link doesn't appear to provide any Firewire connectivity, and after reading the description I'm not convinced it offers simultaneous NAS and SAN access to the same data.

[ghporter]

Yep, I leaped to a conclusion-and landed in the moat nearby. I apologize. Is this due to the marginalization of firewire as an interface, or just that firewire chips are still much more expensive than USB chips?

On the other hand, USB 2.0 is pretty darn fast; as much as 4 times as fast as 100BaseT Ethernet on Ethernet's best day. My Coolmax CN-550 has both 100BaseT and USB 2.0 connections, and when I want to move a lot of data, I pop out the RJ45 and pop in the USB B cable...

[mduell]

Originally Posted by ghporter 

Yep, I leaped to a conclusion-and landed in the moat nearby. I apologize. Is this due to the marginalization of firewire as an interface, or just that firewire chips are still much more expensive than USB chips?

On the other hand, USB 2.0 is pretty darn fast; as much as 4 times as fast as 100BaseT Ethernet on Ethernet's best day. My Coolmax CN-550 has both 100BaseT and USB 2.0 connections, and when I want to move a lot of data, I pop out the RJ45 and pop in the USB B cable...

Well it doesn't have USB either, so I invalidate your question. That enclosure just offers the usual suspects (CIFS/SMB, FTP, NFS, etc) on the NAS side and iSCSI on the SAN side. Really overkill on price/features for the OP, since the iMac doesn't support iSCSI without another $200 piece of software.

On the average day, USB2 is 2-2.5x faster than 100BT ethernet. But most consumer grade NAS boxes are slow and don't even approach the limits of 100BT ethernet, while all but the cheapest USB2 chipsets can hit mid 20s.

[ghporter]

My "is it due to" was more about not finding combination Ethernet/Firewire boxes than about the one I'd linked to. Again, I jumped to a conclusion because of the name of the manufacturer. When I compare file transfers on my own box, I do get in the order of 4 times the speed with USB than with Ethernet-whether I'm getting anywhere the theoretical max through either connection is another subject, and I haven't bothered looking at that too closely-the box wasn't that expensive and I might be very disappointed if I looked at real numbers. But it's WAY faster via USB than Ethernet, no matter what the actual numbers are.

[scottjturner]

Thanks for the advice

I didn't think there was anything out there that allows simultaneous firewire and ethernet connection/data transfer. I might end up getting something like a readynas nv+ and using a gigabyte router. I know its not as quick as usb2 or firewire, but having remote access and network file transfer/streaming at home is more important to me (don't want to leave the iMac on 24/7). I might get another external firewire drive ~ 1Tb to add directly to the iMac which can be synchronized daily with the readynas for the my larger data / media files so I get the speed benefit of firewire, not ideal...

[ghporter]

I should point out that my Ethernet/USB box specifically warns against using both interfaces at once. I don't know how badly things can get screwed up by using both, but I can imagine quite a bit.

I think the ideal would be a FW800 device that "also" had an Ethernet port, but I don't get to vote in product design meetings.

[danbrew]

I've got a few western digital Mybooks with a gigabit ethernet connection - they seem to do the job well.