Synology is one of these types of units and they have a very good reputation. This means it has its own computer, its own operating system (most are Linux based) etc. There are many units out there that can do this and its a matter of your needs and wants and of course, budget.Īs for NAS - you have to think of them as a computer that is dedicated to storage first then some bells and whistles.

This makes all the drives attached directly dependent on your Mac Mini (it really is no different than an external drive via USB as you have now).

In your situation, I would strongly suggest you also consider a DAS set up. You may want to look at smallnetbuilder site that has lots of reviews on various NAS units. The advantage of faster connection is getting items onto a given target drive faster. USB3 is more than adequate and even FW400 or FW800 would work. Playback of media doesn't require a super fast connection to your Mac Mini. If I connect the NAS to the Mac mini, can I still just do backups to one of the drives, just like if it were an external drive? I prefer to have the Mac mini 'native' time machine, not the NAS third party software. I also want time machine backups to work.Īlso, can I use the NAS without wired internet connection, and only have it wired via ethernet to the Mac mini? I guess I could have the NAS connected via USB but I heard that wasn't the way to go.Īnyone with experience regarding the Synology NASes with mac? I'm looking at the Synology DS414, is that a good choice? It was under 20 dB which is great.īUT! I read that it has Read Only support for external drives running HFS+, how will that work with my stuff? I want reading and writing to work just like the HSF+ attached USB drives are. My biggest concern is noice, since I want it beside my tv in my living room (I don't have any space to hide a NAS away). Now I want to have more space and have Raid 1, so I'm looking for a good NAS which works with mac.

I have a Mac mini as a media server, and right now I'm having two external hard drives (via USB 3) plugged in.

Enterprise nas for mac computers