Can anyone suggest an inexpensive NAS solution for a Mac that could plug into my linksys wifi router?
October 16, 2007 1:57 PM Subscribe
Can anyone suggest an inexpensive NAS solution for a Mac that could plug into my linksys wifi router? I already own a USB 300gig hard drive that I would like to use. I won't get an airport express as I already have a wifi router. The solutions I've seen used the linux file system. I'd like something that I can use to backup my MacBook over the wifi at night using Time Machine, the new backup solution in Leopard. Thanks.
D-Link - DNS-323, I have two 500GB drives in this puppy and love it.
posted by jkaczor at 2:50 PM on October 16, 2007
posted by jkaczor at 2:50 PM on October 16, 2007
From what I've read, Time Machine expects the discs that it backs up to to be formatted with Apple's Special File System. The relevent wikipedia text is:
"Time Machine requires a non-booting hard-drive or partition to be connected to the computer.[1] It can backup to internal hard-drives or partitions, as well as to external volumes connected by USB or Firewire. It can also backup to networked drives, including those connected wirelessly via the Airport Extreme 802.11n router. Further, the volume needs to be formatted with the Mac OS extended file system."
I've always taken this to mean that a run of the mill share from a windows or linux machine won't cut it because the target disk will be Fat32/NTFS/ext3 or some other file system that isn't the Mac Extended Files System. This makes me really sad beacuse I have a large investment in Windows Home Server but I won't be able to use the shares as a Time Machine target.
If I was you, I'd get the Airport since it's sure to work. Failing that, buy something locally that you can return (10.5 comes out the 26th IIRC) if/when it doesn't work.
posted by mge at 3:16 PM on October 16, 2007
"Time Machine requires a non-booting hard-drive or partition to be connected to the computer.[1] It can backup to internal hard-drives or partitions, as well as to external volumes connected by USB or Firewire. It can also backup to networked drives, including those connected wirelessly via the Airport Extreme 802.11n router. Further, the volume needs to be formatted with the Mac OS extended file system."
I've always taken this to mean that a run of the mill share from a windows or linux machine won't cut it because the target disk will be Fat32/NTFS/ext3 or some other file system that isn't the Mac Extended Files System. This makes me really sad beacuse I have a large investment in Windows Home Server but I won't be able to use the shares as a Time Machine target.
If I was you, I'd get the Airport since it's sure to work. Failing that, buy something locally that you can return (10.5 comes out the 26th IIRC) if/when it doesn't work.
posted by mge at 3:16 PM on October 16, 2007
Airport extreme may be the way to go.
However, through a little birdy, I can confirm that you can get a sparse image up and running and time machine to recognize it. I haven't confirmed a successful backup with it. Originally it would save files as a sparse disk image to any network volume, I do not know if that has changed or the performance was so slow that apple decided to pull support for it.
You have to edit the preferences for time machine to get a sparse image to show up in the list, and it uses stupid alias data instead of a proper path.
posted by mrzarquon at 4:26 PM on October 16, 2007
However, through a little birdy, I can confirm that you can get a sparse image up and running and time machine to recognize it. I haven't confirmed a successful backup with it. Originally it would save files as a sparse disk image to any network volume, I do not know if that has changed or the performance was so slow that apple decided to pull support for it.
You have to edit the preferences for time machine to get a sparse image to show up in the list, and it uses stupid alias data instead of a proper path.
posted by mrzarquon at 4:26 PM on October 16, 2007
I spoke without knowledge of Time Machine, not guessing it required a particular format, and apologize for contributing noise. Thanks for schooling me, mge.
posted by Zed_Lopez at 4:51 PM on October 16, 2007
posted by Zed_Lopez at 4:51 PM on October 16, 2007
Seconding the D-link DNS-323 - works great with windows XP, i've only used ftp connectivity from my mac though and haven't attempted to mount it.
posted by dendrite at 4:55 PM on October 16, 2007
posted by dendrite at 4:55 PM on October 16, 2007
This thread is closed to new comments.
The obvious thing to make use of an existing USB drive is the NSLU2, which I'm guessing you saw and discounted thinking that the filesystem was a problem. Here's an article on using one with a Mac.
posted by Zed_Lopez at 2:02 PM on October 16, 2007