Newbie to NAS: what do i need to find out?

p1tse

p1tse

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I'm a basic computer user, currently just running an old macbook for home personal use, but would like to backup my iphotos, itunes, music and videos to clear some space, yet would like still to access the contents.

first thought was a portable 1TB Hard drive, as it's just plug and play, but someone mentioned NAS to me. I don't really have a clue about these, apart from assume it's a hard drive over wifi and?

So a portable one which is plug and play, for me is generally easy to work and reliable. a 1TB one being sub £100
 
I use a 1tb Buffalo linkstation live, with a drivestation plugged in for back up

The Linkstation for me is an excellent storage solution and also has an Itunes server, there's also an inbuilt bit torrent client but I've never managed to suss this out

the actual set up and use of it is very straight forward and it all works well for me
 
Thanks

Also could I somehow stream videos from it to TV, iphone, Ipad etc.?


Are these pretty much plug and play?
What's a drivestation?
 
Also can you use it as a portable drive when needed ie take it from home and plug and play?
 
a nas is basically a storage device that can be plugged into your router via an ethernet cable and be shared to all users on that network at the same time.

im a big fan of synology, really solid kit and great support. not a fan of netgear, flimsey kit and rubbish support.

p1tse said:
Thanks

Also could I somehow stream videos from it to TV, iphone, Ipad etc.?


Are these pretty much plug and play?
What's a drivestation?
Click to expand...

you can play media straight from them (sufficient bandwidth on the network required for HD video), some have DNLA servers built in to stream to devices, some have itunes server built in.

depending on the nas, there may be some configuration to do however this is normally well documented.

p1tse said:
Also can you use it as a portable drive when needed ie take it from home and plug and play?
Click to expand...

possible but not really, you could take a crossover ethernet cable with you and set the network details manually.
 
neil_g said:
not a fan of netgear, flimsey kit and rubbish support.
Click to expand...

Wholeheartedly agree. If it doesn't appear in the knowledge base which you can read for yourself, the "support" team is entirely obstructive and unhelpful in my limited experience with them.
 
Most do have a DLNA server built in but you need something to play the video. Some tvs and blu-ray players have DLNA support and you can get separate devices such as the WD LIVE TV or just an app for the iPad.

The qnap nas boxes have apple time machine support so you can have your iMac set to back itself up automatically.
 
Just make sure you still backup elsewhere too. I've just had a nas die on me whilst my pc was away for repair, so lost a ton of stuff as I thought I had it ready to restore from my 'backup'
 
So it's only through a router. Might not be for me as would like to plug ad play to computer if going away say
 
I used to use NAS, but I'm moving away from it as it seemed quite slow of the wireless network in my flat, so I've gone for a FW800 external hard drive and things are much faster.

NAS is good if you want to be able to access your data from anywhere at home, but if you only use your mac in one place I'd suggest an external hard drive. For out on the road external hard drives (especially portable ones) will be smaller than a NAS as well as not needing reconfigured.

If you want the best of both worlds you could either get an Apple Airport Express (or any other router offering the capability) and attach a hard drive to that when you're at home, or my preferred choice would be to get both a NAS and a portable hard drive and keep them in sync, you get the best of both worlds and an extra copy of your data which can be kept off site.
 
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