What is the difference between AFP And SMB?

[Raymond Lin]

I just installed a Netgear ReadyNas 104, using X-Raid (Raid 5), link aggregation so 2 cat5 plugged in and under Finder I see 2 Netgear drives.

Is there a way to combine the 2 or remove 1 or which one do I use?

If I put a file in one, it shows up in the other.

 

[Andy_82]

There both filesharing protocols, SMB/CIFS is microsoft and afp is apple. If you don't use a windows client with your nas you could disable the smb share in its options.

 

[MagicBoy]

It's worth adding that AFP has been deprecated in favour of SMB2 by Apple with the launch of Mavericks.

SMB is generally a little faster (105 vs 90MB/sec) from my FreeNAS powered Microserver. The main reason to use AFP now is that it's required for Time Machine support. I've switched my NAS drives over over to SMB on the Mac Mini since installing Mavericks without discovering any ill effects so far.

 

[Raymond Lin]

Looking at the settings, i see this.

Each of the letters there by the green bar is clickable....so I am thinking clicking it will turn it on/off.

I guess I could turn off one i guess it's no harm leaving it on?

Not to mention another ReadyNas has turned up in Finder !

 

[Andy_82]

If your not using the nas for time machine backups then disabling afp shouldn't cause any issues, even if it does you can always re-enable it.

As for the third instance in finder, maybe the nas has another server type? maybe WebDAV? Sorry can't be of any more help, don't use os x nor a netgear nas.

 

[FreeStream]

Mavericks by default uses SMB rather than AFP apart from Time Capsule (I.e. Network Time Machine).

On my NAS I'm SMB. No really front end difference.

 

[MagicBoy]

Yeah, SMB supports seems OK now. This is a good thing as it was utterly atrocious on Lion after Apple dumped the SAMBA code over licensing issues and wrote their own.

We ended up banning Lion macs from the company network!