Recommendations for reliable, set-and-forget NAS drive?

[Joey Cupcakes]

Looking for a 500GB Gigabit Ethernet NAS drive with a USB2 and/or Firewire option that's easy to set and reliable. I do desktop support for a living and have seen enough dead LaCie drives for this lifetime, and WD has had it's share of problems as well. Must be Mac friendly (not merely "compatible")- browser interface is just fine, I don't want to muck about with third party software.

Recommendations?

[tahoedrew]

I got one of these in the clearance bin at Office Depot a little over a month ago for $30: http://www.buy.com/prod/belkin-5-port-wi...52687.html

It works great, has software to install on Mac and Windows computers that allows you to connect and disconnect all devices (drives and printers) independently. In Mac OS X, it mounts the drive on your desktop just as if it was mounted directly to the USB port. I believe the software includes specific attach and detach times, though I'll have to check on that for sure. I can also test tonight whether you can mount a drive on two computers at once and access it from both computers simultaneously.

The best part is you don't have to pay the extra $$$ for a NAS-specific enclosure. Right now I've just got a bunch of regular USB drives attached to it that I offload certain projects to for storage, and since I can choose which drives to have attached and not, my desktop doesn't have to be littered with USB drives I'm not using.

~A

[volcs0]

I have the MyBook World. It is very slow.

Use this for speed comparisons:

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/component...temid,190/

[olnacl]

My setup is an Airport Extreme with a 750 Seagate FAP plugged into it. The seagate is partitioned half for time machine backup of my MacBook and the other half is network storage - iTunes music and documents I want to access from any machine. Pretty dependable and I like the fact that it sleeps when not being accessed. Total current draw for the AE, HDD, USB hub, and a second Buffalo router that serves wireless to the PCs is 32 watts. With the USB hub, I can also attach any other USB drive that I might want to get to from the network. I don't use it as a printer server.

[mattkime]

I recommend the ReadyNAS. Duo. Its one of the more expensive options but its very FAST and feature packed. Also, you can add another drive for more storage or redundancy.

http://www.amazon.com/Netgear-RND2150-Re..._1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1211937219&sr=8-1

[clay]

ditto on the ReadyNAS. We've got one in our office and it serves as a backup server for 4 different workstations right now. Tons of features and has been rock-solid over the several months that we've owned it.

[RAMd®d]

I was going to jump on a Buffalo 500G NAS that had additional ports (or port?) for piggybacking an additional drive-- $140 at Fry's online.

But I lagged.

I know nothing about it except that some (if not all) of the software was Windows only. It was listed as Mac/PC compatible, otherwise.

[Stavs]

[quote mattkime]I recommend the ReadyNAS. Duo. Its one of the more expensive options but its very FAST and feature packed. Also, you can add another drive for more storage or redundancy.

http://www.amazon.com/Netgear-RND2150-Re..._1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1211937219&sr=8-1
Is there a file size limit on this? Also does it have an itunes server on it?

[mattkime]

[quote Stavs]Is there a file size limit on this? Also does it have an itunes server on it?
File size limit is 1TB and yes, it does have an itunes server.