ReadyNAS solution for small Mac based design studio.

[therealpieman]

Hi,

We are a small print design studio currently running 5 macs using OSX 10.9, being served files by OSX server (on a mac mini). However we are having serious problems with the system where the external disk the will no longer mount, and although the files are still accessible, you can no longer back up them via time machine. This has happened 3 times now and although we thought we had it cracked after the last fix it wasn't and has happened again.

We are considering a Netgear ReadyNAS 314 4 Bay with 4 3Tb disks. Can I ask, how is the performance with macs, how do backups work if the total NAS disk size is over 4Tb? Is there an simple way to copy files from an external disk to the NAS once it has been set up.


thanks

[mdgm-ntgr]

Performance is great with Macs.
Your Macs see it as a big network drive. For backups it doesn't matter to your Mac whether the volume is 2.7TB or 11TB (other than of course you can't exceed the TM quota or free space). As for backing up the NAS itself well another NAS would probably be the best way to go when backing up this much data.
Either connect an external disk to your Mac and copy your data across your network or connect the USB disk directly to the NAS and use e.g. a backup job to copy the data from the USB disk onto the NAS. I would go with the former, but that's personal preference.

Welcome to the forum!

[therealpieman]

Thanks but why wouldn't you use the built in backup software with a disk connected to the NAS usb port? I understand about getting another NAS to do that, but to properly have an offsite backup we would need two more which is going to be expensive.

[mdgm-ntgr]

Well you could use USB disks if you prefer. It really is personal preference. The important thing is that you backup important data. Whether you use USB disks, another NAS or the cloud etc. is up to you.