Does a home-made network attached storage device work with Mac OSX?

Home Network Storage is greater than a fad, it is the means our electronic lives are generally moving; and at a faster pace daily. Think of all of the 2 megapixel photos you might have, soon to be exchanged by 8 and 12 megapixel images! Not to mention the hi-d video. You used to store your house movie video tape inside the closet and that seemed to be that. Now you download it from a HD camera to your personal computer in raw format. Then you edit the item and create another copy from it. Followed by “producing” the item to DVD format along with saving a copy of this. What comes next? You buy a property network storage device by Netgear, Iomega or DLink – and you get losing your data in any case.

I have an old PC I want to turn into a network storage device.

The reason I want to do this is because I have lots of hds, both external and internal. On my OSX laptop my USB ports start to complain (overheat) if I plug too many devices in and this has let to lots of data loss.

Can I keep all my data together in a NAS, but still have Mac able to access everything like iTunes library . Time Machine Backups etc..?

Yes you can but it depends on a whether the NAS supports file system format that the MAC understands. NTFS can be read by the MAC but you can’t write to it, and the FAT32 can be used but I have seen problems with using it with MACs. Make sure the PC is formatted with FAT32 if you want the MAC to read and write to it.

yes it will work, your’e going the right way about it^^ beat me to it

I would suggest you use LINUX and something like FreeNAS
http://www.freenas.org/

That will allow ANY Mac or Windows or Linux machine to access the drive. Even can set your restrictions for users if needed. Great way to setup a very quick NAS with very small OS!

Why would you get rid of data, I thought that is usually what your network attached storage device was all about, protecting your irreplaceable images, videos, iTunes and all your other data? The problem is that many people don’t know how to buy network storage, then make the mistake of thinking it truly is infallible. Here are three approaches others lose data in any case – AND how To never lose your data! First, home network storage devices do not all come equipped along with RAID (Redundant Variety of Independent Disks) defense. RAID, properly configured, will protect your data from the single hard drive failure because there are redundant disks in the particular network attached storage (NAS) unit. So if your NAS device doesn’t have multiple disks configured in the proper RAID array, you will lose data if your hard drive fails, same as in a PC. The first solution so you do not lose data is to make sure your home network storage devices device has multiple hard disks.

You have to buy the right unit with the proper configuration. After that, make sure the multiple disks are certainly not configured as JBOD (Just a bunch of Disks) or RAID0 (RAID Absolutely nothing). With either of those people two configurations, your data is NOT protected by multiple computer drives. Some vendors advertise the capability of their product using RAID0 because this can be a larger number – don’t be fooled! RAID0 is almost never what you would like. Second, you need to know if among your redundant drives fail so as to get it replaced BEFORE another drive fails.

Some NAS devices can have indicator lights on top to indicate individual travel status and have a means to indicate a failed travel. An improvement over the LED’s around the front is to configure the particular storage device to mail you when it detects a difficulty. This is easy to create and I highly suggest it. Third, you can still lose data while none of your drives fail. One way for that to take place is if you by accident delete it yourself. It happens. The solution for which is to backup your information! Some home network storage devices allow you to backup to an attached USB drive with the touch of a button. That USB drive will then be stored at mom’s house, a safe deposit package, in your locker at your workplace or wherever. Another way is to be able to backup your TonyTeoNASGigs with an online backup service. Some vendors have that capability built in to their product. Just subscribe to their particular service, run through the quick configuration therefore you are set.

Every week I have people contact me for help getting back data they lost because of hard drive failures no backups. Do NOT be one! Find out which property network storage device is befitting you AND figure out how to configure it so so it actually PROTECTS your data just like you expect it to. The reviews, how-to videos and NAS tips at our website provides you with the information you need to make the right determination and the knowledge to assist you avoid losing data.