Agreed, and most NAS also let you set them up/config from a web browser
so it could sit in a corner of the basement with no screen or keyboard
and just do its thing. That said, OSX does have a built in FTP, SSH and
web server so you should be able to reach a shared drive via sftp, scp,
http etc. I'm not familiar with dlan and don't use torrent so those
capabilities could be better served by the NAT. I'm also cheap so I got
more storage for the dollar/pound/euro with just an external drive. The
NAS will cost a bit more, but not a lot more. With a Firewire drive I
also had a bit more performance than going USB, but usually that's not
an issue. Since I just have the mini on my regular 802.11G wireless, the
network hits bandwidth limitations before the drive or drive interface.
CB
On 7/5/11 4:30 PM, Ben Mustill-Rose wrote:
Get a nas. Chris is correct in saying that you can just share a usb
drive, but most nas units come with other desirable features like an
http downloader, bit torrent support, ftp server, dlan server and
iTunes support.
You're basicly getting a very small (But probably not as small as the
mini to be fair) low power (but still capable) computer. I have a
buffalo Linkstation which I grabbed on eBay without any drives for
just over £20 but you can still by them new. If you buy one and are
feeling adventurus you can install debian on it and then, you can do
pretty much anything you could ever want on it - mines even acted as a
mail server for a couple of days.
One other thing to remember is that if you use a USB drive shared
using the mini on a gigabit lan, you could start to notice the usb
bottlenec but essentially, if you don't mind leaving a computer on all
of the time, get a usb drive, but once you buy a nas, you'll never
want to have it any other way.
On 05/07/2011, Chris Blouch<[email protected]> wrote:
I just have an external Firewire drive hooked to my Mac Mini. The Mac
can share out the drive as an SMB volumen (Windows file share) so you
should be able to get to everything on it from the PC just as easily.
Another thing to consider is how reliable the storage has to be. If the
drive fails, what is the impact. Will you have to re-rip all your CDs
and such? For me right now it's not that critical but I've been thinking
about going to a Drobo down the road if the 500GB drive I have now fills
up. The Drobo has slots for multiple hard drives and it mirrors the data
across them. If one of the drives fails it transparently continues on
with the remaining drives. When the failed drive is replaced the
mirroring is reconstructed. I think the smallest 4-slot version is about
$300 empty. That also means I can add capacity over time and eventually
retire older smaller drives, if they don't fail first. Of course this
doesn't help if the Drobo is knocked off the table or whatever. So it
might still make sense to have backups. My drive is mostly rips of media
so while I'd hate to waste the time doing all that again, it's not
irreplaceable. For that I use time machine to backup to a hard drive on
another mac on my home network.
CB
On 7/5/11 1:05 PM, David Hole wrote:
Hi folks.
I'm on my way to buy storage for all my stuff (especially my music
library).
What's the best way to go? I have lots of computers (4, 3 in use - 1
Windows and 2 Macs).
So far, I'll go for using iTunes as the primary music application -
wich also have its issues, but if needed, I'll change to something
else if there are.
I'll choose between a NAS wich I'll connect to my network, or a
USB-disc that I can connect to only one of my computers.
Anyone who have been out for this case and have good solutions?
I'm open for almost everything, as long as it's as compatible to
everything as possible.
Kind regards David.
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