NAS for Mac

Question

Level 2

164 points

NAS for Mac

Hi. I want to put put all my media content on a NAS and connect it to an ethernet port on my Apple Airport Extreme. For iPhoto and iMovie to work properly, my understanding is that the content (the photos and videos) need to be stored on a disk that is formatted "Mac OS Extended Journaled". Assuming this is true, which NAS devices allow their disks to be formatted in this manner? Lacie? Thank you

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.6)

Posted on Mar 5, 2011 3:29 AM

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Answer 1

thomas_r.

Level 7

31,989 points

Mar 5, 2011 4:47 AM in response to pomme4moi

If you've got an Airport Extreme base station, simply connecting any hard drive to the base station makes it into a NAS. No need to spend extra for a dedicated NAS. Plug in an external hard drive and use AirPort Utility to configure it as an NAS (see the Disks pane in AirPort Utility).

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Answer 2

pomme4moi Author

Level 2

164 points

Mar 5, 2011 9:49 AM in response to thomas_r.

Thank you for the response Thomas. I do have an external hard drive, but it only has Firewire 800 and USB ports. I tried connecting it to the Airport Extreme's USB port, but performance was very slow. I believe performance will be better with a drive that I can connect to Airport Extreme ethernet port. Sound right? That why I was asking for a recommendation on a NAS (or, as you point out, simply a hard drive) that I can format as Mac OS Extended Journaled and that I can connect via ethernet. Thank you

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Answer 3

thomas_r.

Level 7

31,989 points

Mar 5, 2011 12:02 PM in response to pomme4moi

If the drive is slow, it's because of the wireless connection. Are you planning to use an NAS with a wired connection to your MBP or over wireless? If the latter, that's your bottleneck, not how you connect the device to the base station.

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Answer 4

Mar 5, 2011 12:20 PM in response to pomme4moi

In the IT shops, I have worked in, generally Nas is placed on its own 100 Gb network to keep the speed up by isolating the data to a netwrok only for it. Even so, if truly high speed access is required to the data then NAS is not even considered as a possible solution. Directly connected storage can alway blow the socks off of NAS.

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Allan

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Answer 5

pomme4moi Author

Level 2

164 points

Mar 5, 2011 1:05 PM in response to pomme4moi

Thank you all!

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Answer 6

Sep 12, 2011 12:37 PM in response to pomme4moi

What did you end up doing? I'm in a similar boat and looking for an answer. Thank you!

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Answer 7

pomme4moi Author

Level 2

164 points

Sep 13, 2011 7:19 PM in response to Garrett Bryant

Hi. I ended up buying a 3TB G-Tech drive, connecting it to my Mac via Firewire, and moving my content to that drive. I decided not to spend the money on a NAS at this time ...

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