NAS Storage

Has anyone any experience with NAS Storage devices?

I’m currently looking at Synology, Adaptek and Buffalo devices, mainly for storing video, photographs and music files. Speed is important, as the last NAS I tried was a LaCie which took ages to boot and, ran dog slow.

Comments, suggestions etc welcome.


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Not personally, but there’s a LOT of discussion here:

http://www.macintouch.com/readerreports/harddrives/topic3300.html

Walter

On Feb 10, 2010, at 7:06 AM, Tacitus wrote:

Has anyone any experience with NAS Storage devices?

I’m currently looking at Synology, Adaptek and Buffalo devices,
mainly for storing video, photographs and music files. Speed is
important, as the last NAS I tried was a LaCie which took ages to
boot and, ran dog slow.

Comments, suggestions etc welcome.


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At 07:06 -0500 10/2/10, Tacitus wrote:

Has anyone any experience with NAS Storage devices?

I’m currently looking at Synology, Adaptek and Buffalo devices,
mainly for storing video, photographs and music files. Speed is
important, as the last NAS I tried was a LaCie which took ages to
boot and, ran dog slow.

Comments, suggestions etc welcome.

Same is true of the WD MyBook WorldEdition II. And mine’s on a
desktop 1GB lan along with my Macs.

David


David Ledger - Freelance Unix Sysadmin in the UK.
HP-UX specialist of hpUG technical user group (www.hpug.org.uk)
email@hidden
www.ivdcs.co.uk


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I think any time I’ve had dealings with NAS drives they’ve always been
slow (aside from the PITA it is to set them up from Mac to PC and vice-
versa)
Trev
On 10 Feb 2010, at 15:11, David Ledger wrote:

At 07:06 -0500 10/2/10, Tacitus wrote:

Has anyone any experience with NAS Storage devices?

I’m currently looking at Synology, Adaptek and Buffalo devices,
mainly for storing video, photographs and music files. Speed is
important, as the last NAS I tried was a LaCie which took ages to
boot and, ran dog slow.

Comments, suggestions etc welcome.

Same is true of the WD MyBook WorldEdition II. And mine’s on a
desktop 1GB lan along with my Macs.

David


David Ledger - Freelance Unix Sysadmin in the UK.
HP-UX specialist of hpUG technical user group (www.hpug.org.uk)
email@hidden
www.ivdcs.co.uk


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If your billable time is worth anything near what mine is, you owe it
to yourself to check out the Apple mini Server. Price/GB is
astronomical compared with some of these other solutions, but the fact
that you can chain FireWire 800 disks out the back of it until you run
out of things to store, and the fact that it’s a very capable and well-
rounded workgroup server with push-button setup and automatic updates
makes it a bargain for the time-starved. Plus it’s quiet and cute,
unlike my Xserve and Xserve RAID lurking in the basement.

Walter

On Feb 10, 2010, at 10:17 AM, Trevor Reaveley wrote:

I think any time I’ve had dealings with NAS drives they’ve always
been slow (aside from the PITA it is to set them up from Mac to PC
and vice-versa)
Trev
On 10 Feb 2010, at 15:11, David Ledger wrote:

At 07:06 -0500 10/2/10, Tacitus wrote:

Has anyone any experience with NAS Storage devices?

I’m currently looking at Synology, Adaptek and Buffalo devices,
mainly for storing video, photographs and music files. Speed is
important, as the last NAS I tried was a LaCie which took ages to
boot and, ran dog slow.

Comments, suggestions etc welcome.

Same is true of the WD MyBook WorldEdition II. And mine’s on a
desktop 1GB lan along with my Macs.

David


David Ledger - Freelance Unix Sysadmin in the UK.
HP-UX specialist of hpUG technical user group (www.hpug.org.uk)
email@hidden
www.ivdcs.co.uk


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TBH Walt I must admit I liked the idea of the mini server but wondered about the price/relative complexity compared to a NAS.

Billable time isn’t really the main point for me, it was simply an easy means of storage/retrieval. Nonetheless if the mini server really is that easy to set up, I’ll give it another look.

Given that I can get education discount I think it may well be worth it.

Thanks for the comments.

On 10 Feb 2010, 11:06 am, Tacitus wrote:

Has anyone any experience with NAS Storage devices?

I’m currently looking at Synology, Adaptek and Buffalo devices, mainly for storing video, photographs and music files. Speed is important, as the last NAS I tried was a LaCie which took ages to boot and, ran dog slow.

Comments, suggestions etc welcome.

On 10 Feb 2010, 11:47 am, waltd wrote:

Not personally, but there’s a LOT of discussion here:

http://www.macintouch.com/readerreports/harddrives/topic3300.html

Walter

On Feb 10, 2010, at 7:06 AM, Tacitus wrote:

Has anyone any experience with NAS Storage devices?

I’m currently looking at Synology, Adaptek and Buffalo devices,
mainly for storing video, photographs and music files. Speed is
important, as the last NAS I tried was a LaCie which took ages to
boot and, ran dog slow.

Comments, suggestions etc welcome.

On 10 Feb 2010, 2:12 pm, David Ledger wrote:

At 07:06 -0500 10/2/10, Tacitus wrote:

Has anyone any experience with NAS Storage devices?

I’m currently looking at Synology, Adaptek and Buffalo devices,
mainly for storing video, photographs and music files. Speed is
important, as the last NAS I tried was a LaCie which took ages to
boot and, ran dog slow.

Comments, suggestions etc welcome.

Same is true of the WD MyBook WorldEdition II. And mine’s on a
desktop 1GB lan along with my Macs.

David

David Ledger - Freelance Unix Sysadmin in the UK.
HP-UX specialist of hpUG technical user group (www.hpug.org.uk)
email@hidden
www.ivdcs.co.uk

On 10 Feb 2010, 2:17 pm, Trevreav wrote:

I think any time I’ve had dealings with NAS drives they’ve always been
slow (aside from the PITA it is to set them up from Mac to PC and vice-
versa)
Trev
On 10 Feb 2010, at 15:11, David Ledger wrote:

At 07:06 -0500 10/2/10, Tacitus wrote:

Has anyone any experience with NAS Storage devices?

I’m currently looking at Synology, Adaptek and Buffalo devices,
mainly for storing video, photographs and music files. Speed is
important, as the last NAS I tried was a LaCie which took ages to
boot and, ran dog slow.

Comments, suggestions etc welcome.

Same is true of the WD MyBook WorldEdition II. And mine’s on a
desktop 1GB lan along with my Macs.

David


David Ledger - Freelance Unix Sysadmin in the UK.
HP-UX specialist of hpUG technical user group (www.hpug.org.uk)
email@hidden
www.ivdcs.co.uk

On 10 Feb 2010, 2:25 pm, waltd wrote:

If your billable time is worth anything near what mine is, you owe it
to yourself to check out the Apple mini Server. Price/GB is
astronomical compared with some of these other solutions, but the fact
that you can chain FireWire 800 disks out the back of it until you run
out of things to store, and the fact that it’s a very capable and well-
rounded workgroup server with push-button setup and automatic updates
makes it a bargain for the time-starved. Plus it’s quiet and cute,
unlike my Xserve and Xserve RAID lurking in the basement.

Walter

On Feb 10, 2010, at 10:17 AM, Trevor Reaveley wrote:

I think any time I’ve had dealings with NAS drives they’ve always
been slow (aside from the PITA it is to set them up from Mac to PC
and vice-versa)
Trev
On 10 Feb 2010, at 15:11, David Ledger wrote:

At 07:06 -0500 10/2/10, Tacitus wrote:

Has anyone any experience with NAS Storage devices?

I’m currently looking at Synology, Adaptek and Buffalo devices,
mainly for storing video, photographs and music files. Speed is
important, as the last NAS I tried was a LaCie which took ages to
boot and, ran dog slow.

Comments, suggestions etc welcome.

Same is true of the WD MyBook WorldEdition II. And mine’s on a
desktop 1GB lan along with my Macs.

David


David Ledger - Freelance Unix Sysadmin in the UK.
HP-UX specialist of hpUG technical user group (www.hpug.org.uk)
email@hidden
www.ivdcs.co.uk


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…but the fact
that you can chain FireWire 800 disks out the back of it until you run
out of things to store…

Just a word of caution on this. Running multiple chained FireWire 800 disks is fine…but not as a raid. Because of an inherant timing issue FireWire is not a reliable raid medium.


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With a mini server can’t you run the internal (2x500Gb) disks as striped and then a FW disk as mirror? (=RAID10?) This way would only be good for 500Gb of storage, any more would require a full blown RAID add-on unless I went for the multiple FW disks approach.

Done that in the past and it’s been OK. Maybe I was lucky…


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Using a single FW device (which could be a single enclosure with multiple drives) works perfectly fine. I use a 4tb raid in a FW 800 enclosure as a backup myself.

It’s when you try create a raid using multiple FW enclosures that problems can occur. In a single user environment you might not ever see a problem, but in a network with multiple users accessing the raid at the same time you are on a collision course with disaster.


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It was a single user, which is probably how I got away with it.

Not seen any FW800 multiple drive enclosures, most seem to be USB2 or sometimes e-sata.


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Here’s a few: OWC Mercury Elite Pro: USB 3.2 + FireWire 800 External Drive

Walter

On Feb 10, 2010, at 2:19 PM, Tacitus wrote:

Not seen any FW800 multiple drive enclosures, most seem to be USB2
or sometimes e-sata.


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On 10 February 2010 16:38, Tacitus email@hidden wrote:

TBH Walt I must admit I liked the idea of the mini server but wondered about the price/relative complexity compared to a NAS.

I haven’t worked out how the costs compare but if you don’t need 10.6
Server isn’t it cheaper to use an ordinary Mac Mini? iFixit has a
guide to adding the second HD yourself:

http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Repair/Installing-Mac-mini-Model-A1283-Terabyte-Drive/660/1

And iFixit sell an adaptor to allow you to replace the optical drive
in a PowerPC Mac Mini with a second HD:

http://www.ifixit.com/Apple-Parts/12-7-mm-Optical-Bay-ATA-Hard-Drive-Enclosure/IF107-077

Roger

Roger Houghton
Bath, Somerset
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I’m currently using my old headless Powerbook G4 as a server with
attached drives and it works very well. It’s a lot like this one
albeit older and slower;

I use it as a shared file server for the Macs and PCs in the house &
office, an iTunes server, and a secondary backup server for the
machines that don’t use Time Machine.
It’s also very quiet and doesn’t draw much power which helps me sleep
at night.

Although it’s a slow work machine it does everything I need from a
server and the battery ensures it will keep going for a while at least
if I manage to accidentally pull the plug on it!
Regards,
Tim.

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The Server OS costs $500 retail, so you get a Mini for $700 and a
second drive, and what are you saving? You can of course use Mac OS X
as a server OS, but the goodies bundled with the Server version make
it so much easier to manage on a day-to-day basis. I used to use the
regular Client version as a server OS, and it’s possible, but a lot of
work. What you pay for in the case of Apple anything is not having to
worry about it so much. If you really want to save money, you can get
a micro PC and a copy of Linux for about $200 all in. But then you get
to stay up nights patching the thing.

Walter

On Feb 10, 2010, at 5:07 PM, Roger Houghton wrote:

On 10 February 2010 16:38, Tacitus email@hidden wrote:

TBH Walt I must admit I liked the idea of the mini server but
wondered about the price/relative complexity compared to a NAS.

I haven’t worked out how the costs compare but if you don’t need 10.6
Server isn’t it cheaper to use an ordinary Mac Mini? iFixit has a
guide to adding the second HD yourself:

<http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Repair/Installing-Mac-mini-Model-A1283-Terabyte-Drive/660/1

And iFixit sell an adaptor to allow you to replace the optical drive
in a PowerPC Mac Mini with a second HD:

<http://www.ifixit.com/Apple-Parts/12-7-mm-Optical-Bay-ATA-Hard-Drive-Enclosure/IF107-077

Roger

Roger Houghton
Bath, Somerset
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There is an interesting article in US Macworld by Ben Long

<http://www.macworld.com/article/146120/2010/02/unraid_server.html?lsrc=rss_
main>

I’m considering building one, it certainly looks capacious and capable.

Best wishes Peter

================================
Peter Tucker, Oxford UK email@hidden


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@Roger: Thanks for the information.

For a new mini looking at the prices there’s about £70 or so difference once you’ve added the cost of the second drive.

Would be worth it if I picked up a used one off fleabay but I’m a bit wary of buying used computers off there to be honest.


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