External Storage - Decisions

feileacan

I currently have three (500, 250, 250) external mybooks that i use for music, video and photos - although the mac seems to be having problems seeing them all at once (attached through FW800 & 400) and one of them seems to stall the system. ive tried to daisychain them but with no success.

I use these drives as a dual back up but i am now running out of space and hate having to do this manually (although i do use chronosync)

i have looked at getting some sort of multibay hard drive such as the iomega 2tb pro hard drive on apples site

http://store.apple.com/Apple/WebObjects/irlstore.woa/9764043/wa/PSLID?sf=w4KK97TTT9DU4XPU2&nplm=TM956ZM/A&wosid=eJ7v5wwwFtHj3UFJCj11q5lIf1g

or i also looked at the drobo device - which i quite liked due to being able to swap hardrives etc but reviews are mixed and say its slow.

my questions is can i purchase a NAS for use with my MBPro?

what are peoples recommendations?

raid and if so which manufacturer?

i dont want to purchase anymore external hard drives - each one requires power and im running out of plugs.

PDD

I am in the same position and from a bit of research the cheapest (and most flexible) option would be to build your own, re-task and old mobo/chip/ram with some silent hardware (fan, PSU, northbridge heatsinks) and a few honkin hard drives setup in a RAID array. If its just for storage then you can run something like FreeNAS or you could throw Ubuntu onto it and let it do alot more.

Dave

WUSBDesign

Some discussions here a short while back:
http://boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055279061

feileacan

im not a major tech and im not sure i would feel comfortable building my own storage.

can i attach a nas to a mac book pro via its ethernet connection or does it have to go via something else?

any good faq's out there regarding NAS?


cheers

ZENER

feileacan wrote: »

. . . can i attach a nas to a mac book pro via its ethernet connection or does it have to go via something else?

any good faq's out there regarding NAS?


cheers

You could of course but the most logical connection would be to your broadband router via CAT5 so you can access it wirelessly.

With regard to building a NAS box you don't really need to be tech savvy. Check out FreeNAS.org for full instructions. A nice advantage of this system is MediaTomb uPNP sharing for your media to serve it to a PS3 etc. There are people here (me included) who can help you with it.

ZEN

ethernet

feileacan wrote: »

im not a major tech and im not sure i would feel comfortable building my own storage.

can i attach a nas to a mac book pro via its ethernet connection or does it have to go via something else?

any good faq's out there regarding NAS?


cheers

If you connected your NAS box/device to your wireless router, you could access your data using a wired or wireless connection. You could even access your files from anyway in the world if you set it up for this.

FreeNAS is great for making use of old hardware. I already have a NAS device but am hoping to set up a FreeNAS install on an old machine as well. Might be able to help you on this front also

feileacan

thanks for the advice

i meant to say i wouldnt feel comfortable building my own - i dont have the patience for it (rather than the technical skill)

would the speed of a NAS device over wireless be compatible with storage directly attached (i presume it would be slightly slower)

WUSBDesign

A lot slower, in fact. If you're looking for really speedy access to a storage, then stick to FireWire or USB2.0 cable connections.

For a NAS, a HomePlug AV PowerLine network should provide close to 100Mbps net. Not sure about 802.11n though, have heard speeds are not impressive but that varies from person to person.

ethernet

Depending on what device you get, it can be pretty slow. Some devices allow you attach USB 2.0 hard drives. Sure, it's fine for relatively small transfers. I've a Linksys Slug and it gives me around 4.5 MB/s (wired connection). It's OK but no good for streaming HD.

It would be better to get a device that allows you attach/insert one or more SATA/IDE drives for higher speeds, especially if you configure them in a RAID setup.

Wireless is a real bottle-neck alright but things should be rosier if you have one of those draft-N standard routers for wifi (and a compatible laptop wifi chipset).

ethernet

Forgot to mention to read reviews first! Some devices aren't Mac friendly (the Netgear Toaster comes to mind). A true NAS device doesn't require you to have to install proprietary software just to use it (like the above-mentioned product does).

Proper NAS devices will let you use SMB. This works fine under a Mac using Samba/CIFS. Some fancy models even support Apple's own AFP.

PDD

Hi Folks,

Just to let you know I have a Mac miniStack v2 for sale over on Adverts.ie which can be seen here. You can also read a review from 123MacMini.com here which has all the details and lots of eyecandy.

Dave