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I'm in the market for an NAS drive. We are a currently a 100% mac household with a macbook pro, ipad & two iphones. Purchase is currently prompted by the need to backup the macbook. We are currently a relatively low tech TV household but might start again and get a smart tv etc. I know you can play stuff stored on an NAS on a telly - are there any features I should be looking for to make the whole experience easier in the future?
ta.
Time capsule compatibility is of course essential if you are backing up macs
Personally I would look at something that can transode plex but that's just me.
Other than that just get something with capacity fit for purpose, taking into account your choice of RAID.
I would go synology for home use.
Synology are good at keeping their software up to date and would be my first choice here although they aren't the cheapest. Their boxes are also quite quiet which is nice
I would avoid buffalo and Western digital as I don't find their stuff so easy to work with but things may be better now as I have only bought synology in the last 5 years
HP are doing £80 cashback on their Gen 8 Microserver at the moment. Just waiting for my first two 4TB HDs to arrive and then I will get building with an 8GB ram upgrade (comes with 2, can take 2x8gb total) and FreeNAS on a 16GB pendrive.
Will eventually add another 8GB and 2 more 4TB drives.
andyl, just curious, what are you planning on doing with that HP that'll benefit from 16Gb RAM?
I have to admit I was following the guides on FreeNAS that suggested 8GB was the minimum you want: http://www.freenas.org/faq/
I am yet to get stuck in to the details and it's been years since I built a PC (used to be very into it so have to bring myself up to speed). I plan to be making use of FreeNAS add-ins like Plex etc, not in any rush to add the extra ram and drives just yet. I just need to get all my data off this damn laptop so I can tidy up the OS.
This is why I'm happy to pay a bit more for a box that works. Doing it yourself will possibly end up cheaper and more powerful but unless you are already interested in it it is just another job to do :(. Synology (and other) nas's will run stuff like Plex afaik without having to mess around
Drobo for me.
I was very tempted by a Synology and I do wonder if I should have just bought one instead but the transcoding versions are quite a jump in price. I did originally look at WD Readnas and the 4 bay ones can be had for about £150 at the moment but was put off them for some reason (can't remember why now).
There is an open source OS very similar to Synology, something to do with the code that Synology is based on which means they have to give back to the original source or something but I heard it wasn't updates as often.
The HP route also allows me to use Windows Server if I need to do so and I can add a PCIe graphics card if plans change. Or other server software.
I have to admit I was following the guides on FreeNAS that suggested 8GB was the minimum you want: http://www.freenas.org/faq/
Ah, I see thanks, I'll have a read of that. I was thinking most of the Microservers would be used for file storage and streaming with very few concurrent connections and I'm struggling to see how they'd be needing that much RAM even with HD content.
The HP Gen8 has ECC ram so can support ZFS. I have seen some comments that you want 1GB per TB of storage, hopefully the 2GB will work along side the 8GB (will find out if they have to be matched sizes soon enough!) to get my by for now but when I upgrade to a full 8TB storage I will have the extra 8GB RAM. Got now with 4TB (mirror raid for now and naything critical backed up elsewhere too).
FreeNAS or whatever I choose is going to be a lot of work to get right and secure, I am under no illusions of that.
As you're a Mac household I'd suggest a slightly different approach...
Get a Time Capsule to handle Time Machine, Mac-to-Mac file serving and wireless duties. It's a fit and forget solution.
Then look at your media use-case and get appropriate machines for the job. If you've got DLNA compatible TVs, then a very simple NAS drive to hold content will most likely suffice. If you have Plex (or similar clients) and require transcoding, then either it's going to be a much more expensive NAS with suitably powerful processor and memory, or a micro-server.
I missed the Mac thing. Just suggested the same as ben to my friend who has everything IOS and is about to embark on a PhD
Synology will allow a time capsule service.
At least I assume it will my cheap qnap does.
We've had problems with Time Machine backups (on all 3 MacBooks) on Synology- lots of corruption of incremental backups when done over wifi. Given up now, only backup over hardwired connections.
A common problem, but the only issue we've had with the Synology box.Given up now, only backup over hardwired connections.