NAS help

Badger1970 · 9 Jan 2021 at 12:45

Hi

I use a PC and the wife uses a Mac. My first question: is there an all in one NAS option where we can both access/share files?

Secondly, could i set up the following in a 4 x 6TB bay drive?

I get 2 HDDs (Raid1) and the wife gets 2 HDDs (Raid1) so we can both write to 6TB each (the other HDDs as back up)

Or would it have to be set up so that we both write to 12TB (2x6TB) and the backup to other 12TB.

Cheers

Donnie Fisher · 9 Jan 2021 at 13:15

Most NAS's will be able to be seen by pretty much any device on the network if you want it. You basically allocate space on the HDD's as a sharable space visible to the network, and then decide who is allowed to login/use that space.

How you allocate that space is up to you ( dependant slightly on the method of filesystem you choose, or the NAS chooses ). It would not need to be 1 space for the Mac, and another for the PC - both can use the same share space if you wanted. That could either be through:

- having a shared user/pwd login for that share space used by both the Mac / PC
- having unique user/pwd for each of the Mac and PC, but both usernames are allowed to access the same share space.

Or if you wanted you could have multiple share spaces:

- Mac only share space - accessible only by the Mac user account
- PC only share space - accessible only by the PC user account
- Shared space - accessible by both the Mac and PC user account

They can be very flexible.

Personally, I would have a common share space which is accessible by both accounts. That way, if one machine dies/goes kaput, then you would still be able to access all the files from the other PC if you really needed at them.

As I say, its really flexible once you start getting into it. How complex you make it is upto you and how much you want to seperate Mac from PC.

I cant really recommend an off the shelf NAS from experience. I had a WD MyBook Ex2, and got rid of it for various reasons, and now have an old enterprise Dell Server as my NAS / CCTV machine. So its very much a setup that suits me, but wouldn't suit others.

Badger1970 · 9 Jan 2021 at 15:00

Thank you, that's really well explained. Now to convince the wife we need a NAS lol

bloodiedathame · 9 Jan 2021 at 15:04

I have a Synology that does exactly this. I also have various packages installed for off site and cloud backups as you can link Dropbox, Google Drive, Backblaze and all sorts.