NAS backup recommendations

I am looking for recommendations for NAS, simple or not, hard drives for use as a network backup device for a small office before I plunk down more money on one.
I currently have a Tritton Technologies simple NAS drive, but this was barely functional with the macintosh from the beginning and has recently ceased communicating with them at all. I still can access it quite easily on my intel based mac machines as long as I am running Windows, but cannot access at all from OS X. It was supposed to show up on the network, but didn't and the best their tech support could suggest was to physically call the drive using command K and then smb to the address. This worked, but no longer is functional with the most recent system updates.
I have checked the apple store and the only NAS drive they have has one review indicating that the drive has essentially the same problems that I am currently experiencing. I note that some people have suggested Buffalo. Is that the general consensus? Any reports from people currently using a setup that works for them? More importantly has anyone seen an NAS drive that comes with backup software from the drive manufacturer that will actually function in OS X?
Thanks.
Sean

I hate NAS drives, but I hear Buffalo is good, but slow, and I hear that you really don't want a LaCie NAS.
I do have a Ximeta NDAS that has "worked" since 10.2.x through 10.4.8, but it needs drivers and who knows when they'll be broken by an OS update, or if they'll have drivers for 10.5 and beyond!?
My Ximeta can only have one CPU with R/W permissions at a time, the others can only Read... sorta defeats the purpose.
I'm using it with the USB connection rather than the Ethernet, as it's about twice as fast, though not as fast as FW.
If you have GigaBit Ethernet all around, then a NAS may pay, but I use FW drives on most of my Networks and use Tri-Backup...
http://www.tri-edre.com/english/index.html
With Sharepoints...
http://www.hornware.com/sharepoints/
Which can backup any CPU to any Drive in the Network, to/from any other CPU/Drive.
Can't say enough good about Tri-Backup.

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NAS Backup with Workgroup and Domain

I have used these in the past and would recommend for your purpose Seagate NAS 2 bay

I am looking for a small NAS backup box for small company to backup "off-site" 1TB would hold all the data, but looking at 1-4 TB / raid is not a must, single drive should do. The off-site location will be with about 4 pc that are just workgroup. I want those pc to backup to the drive in a folder they have access to. Then the main office that will backup to this as "off-site" is AD and I would like for the NAS to support users from the AD, so the local users cannot access the data.
Price - $100-$400 .
Any suggestions?
Thanks
This topic first appeared in the Spiceworks Community

HT1229 How to move iPhoto Library to a NAS backup?

How do I move iPhoto Library, which is now stored on a separate backup hard drive, to a new LaCie 2Big NAS backup? My iPhoto library is large, 73GB, and I have kept it on a separate 250GB backup up hard drive connected directly to my iMac; the iPhoto Library is not in my Pictures folders, as is usual. The 250GB is full, and I now want to store the iPhoto Library on a new LaCie 2Big NAS backup hard drive.
I assume I could move the Library back to Pictures folder on the iMac, so that the Library is stored on my iMac, and then it would be backed up on LaCie, but I would rather not take up all that space on the iMac. How do I store it on the LaCie? Usually to move iPhoto Library, you locate it, and then drag to new location. The LaCie does appear in my Finder. Should I drag and drop it?
I asked LaCie support, and they said the following:
If you do intend to place data on the share that needs to be accessed directly by an application on your computer (such as iTunes or iPhoto), however, then you might want to check with support for the software application itself for advice on the best way to accomplish this. It is important that such an application is able to locate the files once you relocate them to the NAS drive, or else the program will not function properly.
I want to access the Library through iPhoto. The LaCie is not connected directly to iMac, but instead connected via ethernet to my Airport Extreme.
Suggestions?
Thanks,
Armando

I experienced the same frustration when i bought my Iomega NAS (which I do not recommed by the way).
I wanted my iPhoto library to be stored on it, thats the main reason i bought it.
But as you have discovered the library connot be stored on a non Mac formatted disc.
So I began to store my photos in a logical folder structure (based on events) on the NAS and access that folder structure from some other software (Adobe bridge).
The PC users in my household could therefore also access this folder stucture and view all the photos. Bonus.
I wasn't satisfied though. I wanted to use iPhoto. Location, Faces, Events, simple editing, etc.
So I created a new iPhoto library on my Mac and then went to iPhoto preferences / Advanced and UNTICKED the 'Copy items to the iPhoto Library'. This creates what I think is called a reference library. This kind of library has some pros and cons but for me it is all pros.
Then simply drag your file structure from your nas into iPhoto and voila. All your photos and any home movies are added to iPhoto but accessed from the NAS.
I continue to add new photos into the event based file structure on the NAS and then drag the new folder across to iPhoto.
This also has the added benifit in that you don't need iPhoto to view the photos (PC users)
This method works perfectly for me. Enabling me to use iPhoto AND my NAS.
Hope this helps.

Which NAS you recommend for SMB backup storage

Synology and ReadyNAS would be my first choices in this category. I have and use both and love them. I've had quite good success with Buffalo as well with clients. Nearly all storage engineers that I know when choosing this type of storage, like Kooler, choice Synology and ReadyNAS.
For backups and archives specifically I have had good luck with Drobo too.

For me it's always between Netgear and Synology. Now I'm back to Netgears (being a green guy here I cannot tell reason in public).For anything bigger then 2 SATAs in RAID1 economically reasonable to "roll your own" backup appliance. Recycled Dell R7xx and again recycled Windows Server 2012 R2 (because of SMB3 and decent backup-ready dedupe) appliance is very hard to beat! In case you don't have old server xByte has a stack of reburbished ones they sell cheap.--Planning to buy a NAS storage for our backups.Very small environment with VMware host, 7 VMs, Veeam backup.Total backup size 200GB, daily increment is around 7-10GB (Compressed).Will use the NAS for backup storage only and nothing else.Which brand do you recommend or use at your SMB locations:SynologyQNAPSeagateNetgear ReadyNASBuffalo

Time Machine NAS Backup HELP!!!

Have been in and out of a local mac store to no avail.
Heres the story so far.....
A few weeks ago I made a time machine backup of my Macbook on a Buffalo linkstation NAS. I followed instructions from the internet in which I made a sparsebundle image on local HD, move it to NAS, then tell Time machine where the new file is (or something very similar to that)
This was done and after waiting 14 or so hours it completed.
The next day I went into timemachine and could travel back through the 3 backups it had made.
All working fine
2 days later my laptop was stolen. This laptop has all of my teaching resources, all of my student marks on it. I felt relieved remembering that I had made my backup.
When I got another laptop a few days later from school I could connect to the NAS and see the sparsebundle image ...but.... the size was changing from 7mb, to 900mb, etc. Acting very strangely.
I left it at that and decided I would take it into a local mac store to help.
When they plugged in and connected they could see the share point but there was no file in it. No sparsebundle image. Now I freaked at this moment thinking I had lost everything, but, when I looked at the info from the NAS it showed that 63gb were used in the timemachine sharepoint. But we couldn't see it. And have been unable to see it since connecting with a Mac to the NAS.
I brought the NAS home and tried connecting to it with my PC and could see the sparsebundle, but it was now a Folder.
I copied that folder to an external USB HD and took it into the mac shop again.
Now things get interesting.
It turns out the sparsebundle (now a folder) is 63gb large, when exploring it there is one folder within with almost all the data, in this folder there are 8000 odd files at 8mb each.
These files are "Unix Executable Files" and the technician at the mac store is stumped. The timemachine was working with laptop. That laptop stolen, new laptop can see sparsebundle but its behaving weird, next day no laptops can see sparsebundle but PC can, next day files in the sparsebundle are "Unix Executable Files"
Can someone please help. This backup is very important not only for my teaching resources but also a lot of student work.
I hope someone else has had a similar problem, I am at my wits end now.
Please Help
Daniel

All you could hope to do is copy the sparsebundle to a work drive then use Disk Utility to see if you can mount it and repair it. Otherwise you are out of luck as far as I can tell. If the sparsebundle is damaged and cannot be repaired by DU or if the sparsebundle cannot be mounted, then there's nothing one can do to recover the data.
I would strongly suggest you not entrust your backups to an unsupported backup system - the NAS - using an unsupported hack. TM does not support backups to a NAS device other than a Time Capsule. Even using a USB drive connected to an AEBS is not supported (although it will work.)
Personally I would recommend you start making multiple backups. Use TM for your daily incremental backups, but also use another hard drive and another backup tool to make a bootable clone of your hard drive. This way even if one backup goes awry you have a second one. Having taught for 30 years I understand the value of backing up the backups.

Restoring Prob from NAS: Backup cannot be reopened.

Premable
In the middle of the Mavericks install ~ 740 this mornging on an Mid 2011 iMac 27" i7 I get the error message, and to verify the hard disk.
Restart, Command R into recovery,
OSX Utilities> Disk Utility >Verify then Repair fail, which then suggests I erase HD. No problem, have Time Machine going to a Synology NAS.
Main Amble
Restart, into Command R into Recovery,
OSX utilities > Restore from Time Machine > Restore your system > Select Back Up Source
Selected the apropriate network source > Authenticated with the usual credentials
Selected the actual back up "The Big Mac" on disk "XXXXX"
It then let me select that date I wanted (luckily it was 0522 this morning)
Then I had the epihany to back out as I was wifi attached and wanted gigabit LAN attached. so backed all the way out.
Attached LAN cable.
When I went in again following steps 2. onwards it stopped at 4. with "The Back Up cannot be opened. If this is a password protected backup, you entered an incorrect password. Otherwise the back up maybe damaged".
Diagnostics to date
Tried this again in wifi, same message.
Looking at the file system some bands were created after the install error and attempt at restore.
Help please? How did this work then not work? And do I need worry about the other time machine back ups? I was going to assume this was a synology issue but since I got to the screen where it asked to pick the back up figured it was good. Any thoughts? I've been through the wonderful pondini resource.

I think I solved this myself:
I copied the sparse bundle to another volume on the NAS. ~1TB takes a while!
I tested if I could see the both the copy original from another mac.
I mounted the copy from the other mac, then from holding down option & enterring time machine, was able to Browse Other Back Up Disks, and enter the sparse backup. The last full back up was indeed visible
I unmounted the copy and mounted the original, and sure enough, Browse Other Back Up Disks was able to see the last full back up
At this point I went to the orignial Mac and was going to re-install OSX but found I could Restore from Time Machine. No "backup is dammage" errors selecting, restore took ~5 hours, not bad for ~1TB Sparsebundle / ~ 400GB disk used.
So apart from some stomach ulcers, good job TimeMachine & Synology. Now onto that mavericks upgrade....

NAS drive recommendations for use with MPB, PS3, APX and time machine?

Hello,
I am looking to get a 1TB NAS drive and then partition about 400mb for time machine and the other 600mb will basically serve as a media/itunes server.
Wondering what recommendations you have and anything to look for in the product details? Is bittorrent an important feature? usually I just use the client on my computer and save to an external drive but maybe thats inefficient.
I don't need raid, try to keep the cost down
thanks

Hi Rhett, if you post this in the 'Time Machine' category, you might get faster response and plenty suggestions.

Can Time Machine do a Non-Direct NAS backup?

I want to be able to use a NAS on my home network.
The biggest thing for me about NAS is the potential to backup to Time Machine using other people's networks.
For example, I'll be in my college, which is a couple cities away from my home network... and I'll want to backup.
Or an even more extreme situation. I plan on travelling to Mexico and will want to backup my homework. Even though my NAS will be in Canada.
I've been told that too do this I'll need to use a FTP.
Yet nobody's seemed to talk about having experience actually doing this.
I know the obvious solution is to carry an external with me wherever I go... but I'd rather just use a NAS.
Please let me know if you find (or have) any cases where you have been able to backup onto a NAS with time machine while you're not on the same network as your NAS.

Be very careful here: just because a 3rd-party vendor claims to support Time Machine doesn't necessarily mean that Apple supports that configuration, or that it will work reliably in all circumstances (many won't).
Before buying one of these, carefully investigate the following:
•If you’re planning to use the NAS for other data, in addition to your Time Machine backups, be sure you can partition it (or set up separate "shares" or "accounts" via the NAS, since you can’t with Apple’s Disk Utility), or somehow limit the amount of space the backups can use. Otherwise the backups will, eventually, use all the available empty space, possibly leading to conflicts. See question #3 for details.
•Look at the setup instructions. If there’s any mention of a Terminal command involving "unsupported devices," or installation of drivers or kernel extensions to fool Time Machine into thinking it’s a locally-connected drive, use caution. These may prevent you from doing a full system restore to a new or replaced internal hard drive. This is because OSX doesn’t do a full system restore; it’s done by booting up from your Recovery HD (Lion and later) or OSX Install disc (Snow Leopard or Leopard) and using the the Installer utility on it. That utility won’t have those additions, and you can't add them to it; thus it may not be able to connect to your backups when you need them the most. (See question #14 for details on doing a full restore.)
•Consider whether the maker is reputable and likely to continue supporting the NAS for as long as you'll be using it. If Apple changes requirements, will the maker update the NAS so it will work with the new version of OSX? Many that worked on Snow Leopard didn't work on Lion without such updates. A few weren't updated for quite a while, and some never were.
For more on this go to http://pondini.org/TM/2.html

Cloud backup recommendation for imac

I would like to backup my iMac computer and external HD to a cloud backup service. Do you have a recommendation cloud vendor?

I would like to backup my iMac computer and external HD to a cloud backup service. Do you have a recommendation cloud vendor?

ITunes + NAS + Backup

Hi
I have a Iomega ix2-200 2TB NAS network storage where I backup all my data from all of my computers. I setup this device to be the most safe possible including electric protection and redundancy storage. I know that this NAS offer support to Time Machine, AFP and other protocols.
My problem is that I realize that all of my backup from my 2 iPhones 4 and my iPad 2 are storage in only one of my computers, the one that I use to sync my devices.
I have lots of apps, files, contacts and some media that I definitely would like to save in my NAS and not on the computers. How can I setup my iTunes to sync my mobile devices from my NAS and not from de computers?
Conclusion, I don't want my files (including the encrypted ones from iTunes such backups) on the computers, but I want them all centralized and storage in my NAS. Is it possible? How can I do that?
Thanks

regiscruzbr wrote:
I don't want my files (including the encrypted ones from iTunes such backups) on the computers, but I want them all centralized and storage in my NAS. Is it possible? How can I do that?
i'm not aware of any way to change the default location where iTunes stores the backups of your iDevices.
however, you might be able to use a 3rd party app such as ...
SyncToy
SyncToy 2.1 is a free application that synchronizes files and folders between locations. Typical uses include sharing files, such as photos, with other computers and creating backup copies of files and folders.
... to make regular backups of the folder to your NAS.

NAS Backup Drive connected to Router

I have been using a WRT54G router to connect my 2 desktops together in a network in addition to the internet. I have been reading that there is a backup drive that can be connected directly to the router, which can then be accessed by both computers without the other being on.
I was wondering if anyone can suggest a NAS drive to connect via ethernet to my WRT54G router that I can use for backups and sharing data with both computers along with backup software? I have found a number of them, however I wasn't sure if they worked with the Linksys router or not. I am looking for a 500gb to possibly 1tb if not too expensive.

I think there is no problem connecting a NAS to WRT54G router. It will work.
You can try NSLU2 or NAS200.

NAS to NAS Backups with versioning

I was looking at picking up a pair of NSS units. The goal would be to have an offsite nas mirror the in office for disaster recovery. I believe the rsync feature on the NSS will do this. However, I was wondering about versioning. Is there a way to make the offsite NAS keep previous versions of files which are overwriten or changed in case we need to restore to a previous version?

I am wondering the same thing. It appears the CDP add on has some kind of versioning.
I am going to try Logmein Backup with a couple NSS326 units this week. Will post back results. The logmein backup product has been a miracle product for us and they say it supports NAS now...
Was hoping for some kind of built in native versioning or "retention"as it is called in the backup world..

NAS Backup Software?

I'm looking for a good, reliable backup software that will automatically mount a NAS and will copy traditional Mac file attributes and special characters. I was using Intego Personal Backup, but every time I use it I get a slew of errors. The most frequent error is "Unable to copy attributes", but I'm also getting "This volume does not support permissions". I contacted Intego tech support via email, but they basically told me to read the manual, which I did.
Is there a simple backup program that works flawlessly?
Message was edited by: Kelly Crossley
Message was edited by: Kelly Crossley

even checking or unchecking resolve aliases along with the other suggestion still did not work for me
it seems to be a problem backing up to the iDisk
don't get any errors backing up from my hard drive to my hard drive as a test
even though the backup runs to completion this does make me lose faith in using PBX5 for my backup to iDisk!! i wonder if filesyncronizer would work better

DPM Off site backup recommendations for all workloads without using tapes

Hi All
I'm looking for recommendations for off site backups avoiding tapes if at all possible.
My scenario is as follows:
We are soon to be migrating our backups to DPM 2012 R2 and will be backing up all workloads to disk, this will be around 10TB initially but could ramp up to over 30TB as more workloads are brought in.
What we would like to do is remove the need for tapes and shove our backups offsite onto some sort of cloud storage. We've looked at the obvious Azure online option but unfortunately this doesn't support all workloads (just File, SQL and Hyper-V).
We would need a decent retention period (7 years).
We'd like to go as direct as possible to the cloud from DPM without the need to locally double up or stage.
I'm very interested to know what's out there and what are people using.
Cheers!

Yes but...
As it's going to be writing potentially GB/TB of data to the VTL file it might not be the most efficient to go directly across the cloud. There are lots of issues latency, speed, contention, etc. to take in to consideration. Most of the Cloud Storage appliances
like StorSimple, BridgeStor, etc. have the smarts of cope with variables such as above. Once the complete file is on disk moving it to the cloud is relatively easy.
I agree that you'll be duplicating data but it would be far safer to write locally then move to the cloud.
A secondary is a good option too but as you're looking for long term retention, 7 years, then it may be very tricky with file data due to the 64 VSS snapshot limit. For other workloads it would be fine but would require a significant capital investment to
create the infrastructure as DPM doesn't play well with new features like Storage Spaces.

HD for backup recommendations

Does anyone have specific recommendations for a backup drive to be used with time machine. I have the 640gb version and need a simple, easy to use device. Seagate, WD, etc. Any suggestions would be appreciated. There are so many choices!
Thanks,
Ozzie

The most popular ones I've seen on this forum are the OWC Mercury series and Lacie Quadra D2 series, both have lots of connections 2 FW 800 connections, Firwire 400, USB & even e-Sata. You can find the OWC's at:
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/1394/USB/EliteAL/eSATAFW800_FW400USB
Regards,
Roger

NAS backup recommendations

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