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Network Attached Storage For Mac

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This article is about how to get your large files off your main computer hard drive and onto some external network storage that is more reliable, longer-term, and doesn’t take up precious space on your laptop or desktop computer. Apple don’t make an external storage solution but I found Synology have some great devices.

The name of WD's new Network Attached Storage (NAS) unit is an attempt to tap into the new-found consumer enthusiasm about cloud computing or, in other words, storing stuff online. But instead of. For Mac users, there’s no better way to expand storage capacity and share files across networks than NAS. But with so many NAS solutions available for home and business use, knowing what you’ll need can be tricky. Here’s how Mac users can make the most out of NAS, and a look at the top four. Network-attached storage options are more abundant than ever, but jumping into the copious bush of NAS can be quite a task, especially if you want a system that plays nice with both PC and Mac. The Best Storage Solution for Apple Users. Your Mac is with you when you are sharing files with friends and colleagues, when you are streaming photos, videos and music to other devices, and when you backup your files with time machine. A QNAP NAS is more than a central storage hub. Rather than connecting your hard drive to a USB or Thunderbolt port on a single Mac, a NAS drive (NAS standing for network-attached storage) can be connected to an Ethernet port on the network. Mar 15, 2016  If you don’t fancy selling your old Mac for a decent price, you’ll probably want to repurpose it so that it’s not sitting around doing nothing.If you haven’t yet sorted out some network-attached storage (NAS), you might want to think about using your old Mac as a jumped-up fileserver.

I upgrade my Mac computer about every 3 years. Each time I do it’s a bit like moving house – lots of stuff moves with me that I probably don’t need but I’m not ready to throw it out yet.

I just purchased a new Mac mini, but the particular SSD that Apple chose to use in the Mac mini is very expensive. A 1 TB hard disk on a new Mac Mini costs an extra $1280. That’s a lot to pay for an SSD just for storing files. To make matters worse you cannot upgrade the SSD drives in the new Mac Mini.


Enter the NAS?

Many businesses have a different approach to storage, they use what is called network attached storage (NAS). This is an external hard drive that sits outside of your computer and is accessed over the network. It’s a bit like an external thumb drive but it’s on the network so it’s always available from any computer. If you upgrade your computer you don’t have to transfer the data across, it will still be on your NAS.

NAS storage is that it is much slower than a hard drive. Think of it as being more like a filing cabinet or bookcase. other computer.

With the purchase of my new Mac Mini I’ve decided it’s a good time to transfer the bulk of my data over to a network attached storage device.

It has an optimum month-to-month responsibility cycle of 30,000 pages and also a suggested monthly responsibility cycle of as much as 1,500 sheets. Hp scan doctor for mac.

Here’s what I purchased:

1. A Synology DiskStation DS218j – NAS box AU$247

This is the external box that will hold my hard drives and attach them to the network. This particular box has two hard drives in it. Exactly the same data is on each hard disk so that f one of t

I could have also gone with Qnap or another brand, but I picked Synology after doing some research on what works well with a Mac computer.

2. Two Seagate 4TB Iron Wolf drives AU$157 each

It seems like the sweet spot for robust but affordable drives for NAS storage are the Seagate Ironwolf Pro or Western Digital RED NAS. You can spend a lot more, These are in the middle price range yet are more reliable than the standard consumer drive.

I went with Ironwolf because they supposedly work better with the Synology NAS. I chose 4TB drives because that seemed to be the sweet point at the moment in terms of TB per dollar. The two hard drives are in parallel so 2x 4TB drives still only give me 4TB in total.

3. A BR700ELCD CyberPower UPS AU$139

The icing on the cake was to buy an uninterruptible power supply (UPS). If our power fails this little device signals to the NAS to shutdown and supplies it with power for 30 seconds while it shuts down.

This shopping spree set me back AU$700 in total, but this is a lot less than the $1280 for 1TB on the Mac Mini. Plus I now have 4TB of storage not 1TB. It’s now external to my computer, so I can easily access it from other computers in the home, which means all my computers can have a smaller SSD in them. I can use it for Time isk. Plus I won’t need to transfer data across from it should I upgrade my computer in the future.

Setting it all up.

I don’t want to describe in detail how to set it up, the instructions are pretty self-explanatory. But here’s a few a tips…

  • You have no control over what the Synology hard drives are called, so don’t try changing the name. They are called home, video, music, and photo. So the NAS will eventually look like a series of separate mounted drives like this:
  • It’s not like a normal hard drive where you plug it in and it mounts on your desktop. The NAS is set up like a computer and it will have an IP address that you log in to through your web browser. (eg 10.0.0.120).
  • Before you use the NAS you need to log in and create a user. You can then choose drives that will be available for that user. (eg photo etc). You can choose to make all the drives available (like in the screenshot above) or just 1 or more of the drives.
  • To mount the NAS and see it on your desktop you need to use the ‘Go’ menu in your OSX Menu Bar and select ‘Connect to Server.’ Type in afp:// followed by the IP address of the NAS. eg afp://10.0.0.120
  • When you log in as a user it will mount your own home folder, but not other people’s home folders. If you log in as a different user you will see a different home folder. The NAS looks different depending on who you have logged in as. But ‘shared’ folders appear the same to everyone.
  • You can backup to the NAS. If you want to back up using Time Machine you need to create a completely separate user (I called my user ‘Time Machine’). This is because you want your regular user to have access to the entire 4TB of the hard drive, but you need to limit the amount of space available to Time Machine (1g 1.5TB) otherwise Time Machine will just keep on backing up to the NAS until it is completely full!
  • When you tell Apple Time Machine to back up to the NAS it will automatically create a sparse-bundle in the NAS folder and put the Time Machine backup there. There are many articles on the web telling you that you need to use Apple’s disk utility to manually create a sparse image but these are wrong. Time Machine does this automatically for you. At least it did for me in OS X Mojave.
  • Once you can see all the NAS hard drive folders on your computer, you will probably want to make them mount automatically each time you reboot your computer. To do this simply go to system preferences, login items, and drag the hard drive across.


  • You’ll need to work out what you want to store on the NAS, and what you want on your computer. I’m still working this out, and the built-in Apple apps DO NOT play nicely with
  • It won’t really work to put your entire user folder onto the NAS because that will slow things down too much. Plus you want your computer to be able to boot properly when the NAS is not available so you don’t want any files that your computer to depends (eg the user folder) on stored on the NAS.
  • I decided to manually move my large files. This turned out to be my Photo library (hard), iTunes (easy), and movies (easy).
  • It’s complicated to put your Apple photo library onto a shared NAS. Apple
  • It’s easy to put your iTunes movies onto the NAS. Just move it across and point the iTunes folder there from iTunes preferences.
  • I’ve

Network Attached Storage Mac 10.14

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How to speed up your mac with a Solid State SSD DriveWhat is TRIM and do I need to turn it on in OS X?How to format a thumb drive, hard disk or SSD drive.What’s the best SSD drive for a Mac and how do I install it?Requiredsays:February 6, 2019 at 8:03 pm

What is an ‘an uninterrupte power supply’ ?

sigh…

Yet another site where the author gives not a flying furgle about proof-reading.

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A Netgear NAS

Network-attached storage (NAS) is a file-level (as opposed to block-level) computer data storage server connected to a computer network providing data access to a heterogeneous group of clients. NAS is specialized for serving files either by its hardware, software, or configuration. It is often manufactured as a computer appliance – a purpose-built specialized computer.[nb 1] NAS systems are networked appliances which contain one or more storage drives, often arranged into logical, redundant storage containers or RAID. Network-attached storage removes the responsibility of file serving from other servers on the network. They typically provide access to files using network file sharing protocols such as NFS, SMB, or AFP. From the mid-1990s, NAS devices began gaining popularity as a convenient method of sharing files among multiple computers. Potential benefits of dedicated network-attached storage, compared to general-purpose servers also serving files, include faster data access, easier administration, and simple configuration.[1]

The hard disk drives with 'NAS' in their name are functionally similar to other drives but may have different firmware, vibration tolerance, or power dissipation to make them more suitable for use in RAID arrays, which are often used in NAS implementations.[2] For example, some NAS versions of drives support a command extension to allow extended error recovery to be disabled. In a non-RAID application, it may be important for a disk drive to go to great lengths to successfully read a problematic storage block, even if it takes several seconds. In an appropriately configured RAID array, a single bad block on a single drive can be recovered completely via the redundancy encoded across the RAID set. If a drive spends several seconds executing extensive retries it might cause the RAID controller to flag the drive as 'down' whereas if it simply replied promptly that the block of data had a checksum error, the RAID controller would use the redundant data on the other drives to correct the error and continue without any problem. Such a 'NAS' SATA hard disk drive can be used as an internal PC hard drive, without any problems or adjustments needed, as it simply supports additional options and may possibly be built to a higher quality standard (particularly if accompanied by a higher quoted MTBF figure and higher price) than a regular consumer drive.

Best Network Attached Storage For Mac

  • 7Examples

Description[edit]

A NAS unit is a computer connected to a network that provides only file-based data storage services to other devices on the network. Although it may technically be possible to run other software on a NAS unit, it is usually not designed to be a general-purpose server. For example, NAS units usually do not have a keyboard or display, and are controlled and configured over the network, often using a browser.[3]

A full-featured operating system is not needed on a NAS device, so often a stripped-down operating system is used. For example, FreeNAS or NAS4Free, both open source NAS solutions designed for commodity PC hardware, are implemented as a stripped-down version of FreeBSD.

NAS systems contain one or more hard disk drives, often arranged into logical, redundant storage containers or RAID.

NAS uses file-based protocols such as NFS (popular on UNIX systems), SMB (Server Message Block) (used with MS Windows systems), AFP (used with Apple Macintosh computers), or NCP (used with OES and Novell NetWare). NAS units rarely limit clients to a single protocol.

Versus DAS[edit]

The key difference between direct-attached storage (DAS) and NAS is that DAS is simply an extension to an existing server and is not necessarily networked. NAS is designed as an easy and self-contained solution for sharing files over the network.

Both DAS and NAS can potentially increase availability of data by using RAID or clustering.

When both are served over the network, NAS could have better performance than DAS, because the NAS device can be tuned precisely for file serving which is less likely to happen on a server responsible for other processing. Both NAS and DAS can have various amount of cache memory, which greatly affects performance. When comparing use of NAS with use of local (non-networked) DAS, the performance of NAS depends mainly on the speed of and congestion on the network.

NAS is generally not as customizable in terms of hardware (CPU, memory, storage components) or software (extensions, plug-ins, additional protocols) as a general-purpose server supplied with DAS.

Versus SAN[edit]

Visual differentiation of NAS vs. SAN use in network architecture

NAS provides both storage and a file system. This is often contrasted with SAN (storage area network), which provides only block-based storage and leaves file system concerns on the 'client' side. SAN protocols include Fibre Channel, iSCSI, ATA over Ethernet (AoE) and HyperSCSI.

One way to loosely conceptualize the difference between a NAS and a SAN is that NAS appears to the client OS (operating system) as a file server (the client can map network drives to shares on that server) whereas a disk available through a SAN still appears to the client OS as a disk, visible in disk and volume management utilities (along with client's local disks), and available to be formatted with a file system and mounted.

Despite their differences, SAN and NAS are not mutually exclusive and may be combined as a SAN-NAS hybrid, offering both file-level protocols (NAS) and block-level protocols (SAN) from the same system. An example of this is Openfiler, a free software product running on Linux-based systems. A shared disk file system can also be run on top of a SAN to provide filesystem services.

History[edit]

In the early 1980s, the 'Newcastle Connection' by Brian Randell and his colleagues at Newcastle University demonstrated and developed remote file access across a set of UNIX machines.[4][5]Novell's NetWare server operating system and NCP protocol was released in 1983. Following the Newcastle Connection, Sun Microsystems' 1984 release of NFS allowed network servers to share their storage space with networked clients. 3Com and Microsoft would develop the LAN Manager software and protocol to further this new market. 3Com's 3Server and 3+Share software was the first purpose-built server (including proprietary hardware, software, and multiple disks) for open systems servers.

Inspired by the success of file servers from Novell, IBM, and Sun, several firms developed dedicated file servers. While 3Com was among the first firms to build a dedicated NAS for desktop operating systems, Auspex Systems was one of the first to develop a dedicated NFS server for use in the UNIX market. A group of Auspex engineers split away in the early 1990s to create the integrated NetApp filer, which supported both the Windows SMB and the UNIX NFS protocols, and had superior scalability and ease of deployment. This started the market for proprietary NAS devices now led by NetApp and EMC Celerra.

Starting in the early 2000s, a series of startups emerged offering alternative solutions to single filer solutions in the form of clustered NAS – Spinnaker Networks (acquired by NetApp in February 2004), Exanet (acquired by Dell in February 2010), Gluster (acquired by RedHat in 2011), ONStor (acquired by LSI in 2009), IBRIX (acquired by HP), Isilon (acquired by EMC – November 2010), PolyServe (acquired by HP in 2007), and Panasas, to name a few.

In 2009, NAS vendors (notably CTERA Networks[6][7] and Netgear) began to introduce online backup solutions integrated in their NAS appliances, for online disaster recovery.[8][9]

Implementation[edit]

The way manufacturers make NAS devices can be classified into three types:

  1. Computer based NAS – Using a computer (Server level or a personal computer), installs FTP/SMB/AFP.. software server. The power consumption of this NAS type is the largest, but its functions are the most powerful. Some large NAS manufacturers like Synology, QNAP, Thecus and Asustor make these types of devices. Max FTP throughput speed varies by computer CPU and amount of RAM.
  2. Embedded system based NAS – Using an ARM or MIPS based processor architecture and a real-time operating system (RTOS) or an embedded operating system to run a NAS server. The power consumption of this NAS type is fair, and functions in the NAS can fit most end-user requirements. Marvell, Oxford, and Storlink make chipsets for this type of NAS. Max FTP throughput varies from 20 MB/s to 120 MB/s.
  3. ASIC based NAS – Provisioning NAS through the use of a single ASIC chip, using hardware to implement TCP/IP and file system. There is no OS in the chip, as all the performance-related operations are done by hardware acceleration circuits. The power consumption of this type of NAS is low, as functions are limited to only support SMB and FTP. LayerWalker is the only chipset manufacturer for this type of NAS. Max FTP throughput is 40 MB/s.

Uses[edit]

NAS is useful for more than just general centralized storage provided to client computers in environments with large amounts of data. NAS can enable simpler and lower cost systems such as load-balancing and fault-tolerant email and web server systems by providing storage services. The potential emerging market for NAS is the consumer market where there is a large amount of multi-media data. Such consumer market appliances are now commonly available. Unlike their rackmounted counterparts, they are generally packaged in smaller form factors. The price of NAS appliances has fallen sharply in recent years, offering flexible network-based storage to the home consumer market for little more than the cost of a regular USB or FireWire external hard disk. Many of these home consumer devices are built around ARM, PowerPC or MIPS processors running an embedded Linuxoperating system.

Examples[edit]

Open-source server implementations[edit]

Open-source NAS-oriented distributions of Linux and FreeBSD are available, including FreeNAS, XigmaNAS, CryptoNAS, NASLite, Gluster, Openfiler, OpenMediaVault, EasyNAS, Rockstor and the Debian-based TurnKey File Server.[10] These are designed to be easy to set up on commodity PC hardware, and are typically configured using a web browser.

They can run from a virtual machine, Live CD, bootable USB flash drive (Live USB), or from one of the mounted hard drives. They run Samba (an SMB daemon), NFS daemon, and FTP daemons which are freely available for those operating systems.

NexentaStor, built on the Nexenta Core Platform, is similar in that it is built on open source foundations; however, NexentaStor requires more memory than consumer-oriented open source NAS solutions and also contains most of the features of enterprise class NAS solutions, such as snapshots, management utilities, tiering services, mirroring, and end-to-end checksumming due, in part, to the use of ZFS.

List of network protocols used to serve NAS[edit]

  • Andrew File System (AFS)
  • Apple Filing Protocol (AFP)
  • Server Message Block (SMB, one never-deployed version of which was called CIFS)
  • File Transfer Protocol (FTP)
  • Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)
  • Network File System (NFS)
  • SSH file transfer protocol (SFTP)
  • Universal Plug and Play (UPnP)
Network

Network Attached Storage For Mac

Clustered NAS[edit]

A clustered NAS is a NAS that is using a distributed file system running simultaneously on multiple servers. The key difference between a clustered and traditional NAS is the ability to distribute[citation needed] (e.g. stripe) data and metadata across the cluster nodes or storage devices. Clustered NAS, like a traditional one, still provides unified access to the files from any of the cluster nodes, unrelated to the actual location of the data.

Network attached storage time machine compatible

See also[edit]

Notes[edit]

Network Attached Storage Mac Os

  1. ^In this article 'file server' is generally used as the term contrasting to NAS, referring to general-purpose computer used for serving files.

Best Network Attached Storage For Mac And Pc

References[edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Network-attached storage.
  1. ^Levine, Ron (April 1, 1998). 'NAS Advantages: A VARs View'. www.infostor.com. Retrieved 2019-02-26.
  2. ^seagate.com
  3. ^'An Introduction to Network Attached Storage', HWM magazine, Jul 2003. ISSN 0219-5607. Published by SPH Magazines. p. 90-92
  4. ^Brownbridge, David R.; Marshall, Lindsay F.; Randell, Brian (1982). 'The Newcastle Connection'(PDF). Software – Practice and Experience. 12: 1147–1162. doi:10.1002/spe.4380121206. Archived from the original(PDF) on 2016-08-16. Retrieved 2016-08-16.
  5. ^Callaghan, Brent (2000). NFS Illustrated. Addison Wesley. ISBN0-201-32570-5.
  6. ^CDRLab TestArchived 2010-10-17 at the Wayback Machine (in Polish)
  7. ^The Age Of Computing Diversity. by Frank E. Gillett. Forrester Research, September 16, 2010. Page 12. 'CTERA’s C200 provides a better take on network-attached storage (NAS)[..] with local Mac and PC backup built in and automated hooks to an online backup service for offsite backup in case of site disaster.'
  8. ^'NETGEAR Launches First NAS-Linked Online Disaster Recovery for Consumers and SMBs' (Press release). Reuters. Retrieved 2009-10-21.
  9. ^'CTERA Networks Launches, Introduces Cloud Attached Storage' (Press release). Reuters. Retrieved 2009-10-21.
  10. ^'File Server'.
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