NAS storage devices that are compatible with Lion

[.Simon]

Hi All,

I currently have a 2TB Western Digital Mybook World edition that is used for my Time Machine and the storage for all of my photos.

There has been massive issues with the compatibility of this drive with Lion, originally it was never supported - someone released an unofficial "patch" to get the time machine working - this worked perfectly. WD then released an official patch on Monday which basically bricked most peoples hard drives, Lion does not even see the hard drive at the moment so I can't even drag and drop files off of the drive!

Because of this, I've basically lost all of my faith and trust in the drive so looking to change over to another manufacturer.

my budget is £150, and ideally I need 2TB worth of storage, and of course it needs to be compatible with Lion.

Any ideas?

Cheers
Simon

 

[olliewebbuk]

Apple TimeCapsule.

 

[.Simon]

I did look at the Time Capsule but they are very expensive for what they are!

 

[olliewebbuk]

You get what you pay for tbh.

 

[.Simon]

Very true, however I can't justify the cost at the moment - rumors are of new Time capsules being released so I may wait and see what they have to offer!

 

[kh85]

I have a Synology DS210j - you have to run a BETA firmware for time machine to work (i haven't checked if it is out of BETA yet!) but it works fine.

 

[Tom]

I did look at the Time Capsule but they are very expensive for what they are!

DONT get one, they are s**t.

 

[Cup_Phil]

Netgear Stora - cheap as chips
Cost me £160 with 2x2tb drives setup to raid

Works perfectly fine with Lion and supports native time machine

 

[.Simon]

Phil, that sounds perfect - Where did you get that from?

 

[.Simon]

I've just ordered the Netgear Stora with delivery for tomorrow ... I'm going to try and put the shagged HD in from my WD drive and see if I can get it working in this new gadget!

 

[Cup_Phil]

Should be able too mate. I put just a single hard drive in it to get it started then dropped a second in when I could afford the drive. It mirrored it all and set raid up straight away

It's awesome

Only downside is the interface is a bit clunky and installing updates took a while - but once it was up to date I love it

 

[Mwindow]

Apple TimeCapsule.

I did look at the Time Capsule but they are very expensive for what they are!

Easily the worst product Apple make. Fantastic idea and looks pretty, but the quality is crap and if the drive fails you're fooked. If you're interested in protecting the photos you mention you should be going for a minimum of a RAID 1 setup.

I like the Seagate BlackArmour range, but aren't 100% of the compatibilty with Lion?

 

[.Simon]

I've just ordered 2 x 2TB Samsung Hard drives - I'm going to go for a Raid 1 setup I think, just so I can have some comfort and know that I have a backup of the backup!

Thanks for your help guys.

Cheers
Simon

 

[.Simon]

Phil, it arrived last night - how did you make it compatible with Lion?

Cheers
Simon

 

[sn00p]

You get what you pay for tbh.

Not in this case. Terrible product. I wouldn't even trust it to look after a p**n collection.

 

[olliewebbuk]

Works well with other Apple devices though. Because it was designed as such and that's what the OP asked for.

Personally I run an old Windows box with a RAID set up as my NAS.

 

[Cup_Phil]

Phil, it arrived last night - how did you make it compatible with Lion?

Cheers
Simon

By default the file sharing is compatible with lion - it's just a samba fileshare
To get the time machine stuff working you need to upgrade it - in the admin panel for it there's an "Upgrade firmware" thing - just keep doing that till you've got the latest

 

[.Simon]

Ta, I'll give it a try later - lots of people complaining that the drive doesn't work! Fingers crossed ... Great drive though!

 

[sn00p]

Works well with other Apple devices though. Because it was designed as such and that's what the OP asked for.

Personally I run an old Windows box with a RAID set up as my NAS.

I've lost count of the number of times I've seen time machine backups get corrupted.

Mounting sparse bundles over a network just doesn't strike me as the best of ideas, even with the AFP extensions that are supposed to prevent these sort of corruptions from happening.

Rysnc over a network filing protocol (samba, NSF, afp or ssh) is a much better idea.

We do actually use time machine to backup over the network, but we rsync the sparse image to a new folder and hard link to the previous version and only store the changes since the previous backup. This somewhat mitigates the problem, we can always get back to a working image "somewhere down the backup tree".

Important folders are rsynced outside of the time machine backup so that we're not reliant on the time machine backups, they just serve as a convenient way of restoring (providing the sparse image hasnt been mangled)

Of course, a time capsule won't do this!

FreeNAS is the b****cks.

 

[.Simon]

Tried upgrading to the latest software but no joy. I will wait to see what firmware they release next week to try and get it working!

 

[.Simon]

Just found a workaround for now, currently backing up!

 

[Gavin.]

Does anyone have anymore recent recommendations? I am in the market for one. I am glad I stumbled across this thread though as I was about to buy a WD My Book or something similar.

 

[riz]

I just bought a Wd one and reformatted with macjournal extended

 

[Gavin.]

I ended up doing that anyway. I got a 1tb one from the Best Buy closing down sale for £68

 

[Cup_Phil]

Holy s**t hard drives have gone up in price

I paid £58 for a 2tb WD green drive when I bought my NAS - in fact I bought 2 of them
The same drive now is £160!!

 

[Revels]

There was a 3TB enclosed one on HotDeals yesterday for £119

 

[Gavin.]

Balls! Missed that one