I have two Macs, and probably will be adding a third, two iPhone 4, iPod touch, and iPad. I’d like a very reliable home NAS unit with redundancy. Probably a two drive system at LEAST one main backup drive and the other which creates a back up of the main drive in the NAS unit.
Needs:
-Run time Machine on each Mac(?) for backup of all critiCal data/info.
-Want to have my entire iTunes music library on the NAS if possible vs. having spread across our Macs.
-If Possible would like to use it as a movie media “server” if possible (also have HD Home Theater Projector)
-I have a wireless printer so doesn’t necessary have to be a print server/capable
-A “nice to have” would be to allow parents to access certain folders (such as photos) of it from their home in another state – if that’s possible. Maybe not if simply run Time Machine.
I’m still new to NAS. I’m an engineer, but not an IT guy (but pretty decent at figuring out most stuff). Have always just plugged in a drive locally, but with more computers in the home as the kids get older, need to do something more “automated” for time savings if that’s possible.
Thanks everyone for input.
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Ben
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Seeking Help for Very Good Home NAS Product
Comments: 3 Responses to “Seeking Help for Very Good Home NAS Product”
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I'm not a NAS user, so I can't make a recommendation. But it seems that it might be hard to find a NAS product that meets your requirements. For one thing, having a bunch of files on a networked drive doesn't mean that your iOS devices can use those files. They usually get media from a Mac/PC with iTunes running and sharing turned on. So the NAS would store the media files, but not "serve" them to your iOS devices. Unless there is a NAS that specifically does that -- I don't know.
Here's what I would do:
Get a Mac mini instead. Put all of your media on the drive and run iTunes on it. Use that Mac as your central media server, file server, and sit down at it when you want to arrange and organize things. But otherwise just leave it running on your network.
Hook a USB2 drive up to it and use Time Machine to back it up.
Get a Time Capsule for your network hub and back up all of your other Macs to it, separate from this Mac mini.
I basically do this, except I use a Mac Pro and it is also my primary machine. So I'm sitting at it most of the time.
Thanks Gary. I've seen products like Netgears ReadyNAS Duo that seems to do quite a bit of what I was looking to do but didn't know that it wouldn't serve some devices. Have you seen this product from Netgear?
No, sorry, I haven't.