nas with osx?

[brocko]

I am an absolute mac idiot so I am hoping someone here can help me.

Has anyone configured a NAS with their Mac? Can I use any standard Windows compatible NAS or do I need a special Mac variety?

I am hoping I can use a standard Windows flavour because the OSX compatible products seem very expensive, as usual :p.

Presuming I can use a normal NAS and I have attached one to the router how does one go about 'seeing' it in the OS X. environment?

I am doing this to help out a friend who is concerned about losing all their photographs and what not should the unfortunate event of a theft occur. They already have an external hard drive attached by USB but it is fair to assume anybody pinching the Mac would also take the external hard drive as well. A NAS solves this problem as their modem and router is located in their garage.

The external hard drive is employed using something called Time machine with which I'm not familiar at all and seems to have stopped working. It keeps reporting that it cannot finish the update because disk is full.... any advice on this issue would also be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

[PN]

Hello Brocko:

I am using Apple's Time Capsule (http://www.apple.com/timecapsule/) with my Intel iMac. Time Machine backs up way too often for most users. There is a program called TimeMachineEditor (http://timesoftware.free.fr/timemachineeditor/) which will let you decide when to back up. SuperDuper (http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html) is another backup program for the Mac, which some people prefer instead of Time Machine. When it comes to NAS, I suggest you take a look at Drobo (http://www.drobo.com/) which I recently heard can handle up to 16 Terabytes.

[brocko]

Hello Brocko:

I am using Apple's Time Capsule (http://www.apple.com/timecapsule/) with my Intel iMac. Time Machine backs up way too often for most users. There is a program called TimeMachineEditor (http://timesoftware.free.fr/timemachineeditor/) which will let you decide when to back up. SuperDuper (http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html) is another backup program for the Mac, which some people prefer instead of Time Machine. When it comes to NAS, I suggest you take a look at Drobo (http://www.drobo.com/) which I recently heard can handle up to 16 Terabytes.

Thanks for the tips PN, always helpful.

[Wise Young]

I am an absolute mac idiot so I am hoping someone here can help me.

Has anyone configured a NAS with their Mac? Can I use any standard Windows compatible NAS or do I need a special Mac variety?

I am hoping I can use a standard Windows flavour because the OSX compatible products seem very expensive, as usual :p.

Presuming I can use a normal NAS and I have attached one to the router how does one go about 'seeing' it in the OS X. environment?

I am doing this to help out a friend who is concerned about losing all their photographs and what not should the unfortunate event of a theft occur. They already have an external hard drive attached by USB but it is fair to assume anybody pinching the Mac would also take the external hard drive as well. A NAS solves this problem as their modem and router is located in their garage.

The external hard drive is employed using something called Time machine with which I'm not familiar at all and seems to have stopped working. It keeps reporting that it cannot finish the update because disk is full.... any advice on this issue would also be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Brocko,

I assume that you are referring to Network-Attached Storage when you refer to NAS. I think this depends not on our Mac but rather on the settings of your NAS system. Most windows based networked devices have options that allow Mac access. A Mac will "see" all things on the network that it can see, without your having to set anything.

What confuses people is how they should look for networked devices. On a Mac, you look for networked devices through the Finder. This is the "desktop" of the Mac. To make sure that you are in the Finder, click on the icon that has the two faces on it, i.e.
http://indrode.com/finder.png

In the menu, select <Connect to Server> under <Go> on the top menu. This will show you a list of servers that you have connected to in the past and allows you to browse for ones that may be available to you. If you know the name of the server, you can go over internet to the server. Many people in the Windows are shocked how easy this is on a Mac.

Regarding the Time Machine, this is unique backup program. Once you assign the Time Machine to backup on a given device (such as an external hard drive) or NAS (a server on an accessible network), the Time Machine will create a backup file that has all the files of your disk. This takes a while.

Thereafter, what the Time Machine will do is to look at the files on your system disk (the disk that you are booted on) and compare it with the files in the backup file. It will copy whatever files are changed from your previous backup and give it a date. It will do this hourly, daily, etc. until your disk is full. I have never pushed Time Machine to the point where it has filled a whle disk. I understand that it will delete the oldest files to make room for the newest files. The amazing thing is that you can select any backup point and the Time Machine will restore your computer to the exact state that it was in at the time of that backup. It does all of this automatically and unobtrusively. If it hasn't backed up in a while, it will remind you that you need to back up.

Wise.

[brocko]

Thanks Wise.

That is very helpful information. Years of Windows based computing may well have resulted in a tendency to over complicate :). Thanks for simplifying the basics.