SMB protocol question (MAC/PC)

Rameses · 30 Apr 2010 at 00:25

I have a Drobo connected direction (NAS) to my mac, should I buy the DroboShare attachment to connect to my network it works using SMB.

Now for a windows machine, does this mean I can read & write to that drive even though it is in the HFS+ format?

Perhaps this should be in two sub forums but I'll start here.

Thanks.

tntcoder · 30 Apr 2010 at 01:05

Yes, the host file system will make no difference as samba runs abstracted at a higher level. So windows can read or write to Hfs via samba.

Rameses · 30 Apr 2010 at 01:19

Cheers tnt,

Another question if you will, besides the obvious drobo/usb/droboshare/ethernet performance hit since the Drobo itself is not a NAS, does SMB pose a performance drop on top of the above.

Clearly I know not using FW800 direct as its main interface will reduce performance using USB/Network I'm curious about SMB, considering I store 2-7Gb HD files on the drobo.

mikeh501 · 30 Apr 2010 at 15:51

Using SMB wont make a difference you can perceive. Any likely performance issues will be around how fast your drobo/share can service connected clients via SMB.

SMN · 30 Apr 2010 at 15:57

Things that will hit your performance are:

1. Ethernet Controller
2. Storage Controller
3. File system used (Block size, stripe size, etc)
4. Network Protocol used (SMB, SMB2, NFS, etc)
5. Storage Used (Hard drive speed, cache, size, platters, etc)
6. Storage Bus (Connecting via SATA will be hella faster compared to over FW800/USB)
7. The list goes on