And if you're really, really looking for the best - buy a Mac Mini or a cheap PC to run a Linux-based NAS server program on, or take it to the logical conclusion and purchase server-class machine, either a Windows / OS X Server box or a NAS-configured server box. To Access the device in a Windows and/or Android PC Environment for data files = In the same way I recommend Synology to the Mac community, I would recommend a QNAP NAS to any and all Windows.
- Best Nas For Mac And Itunes
- Best Nas For Mac Users
- Best Nas For Mac
- Mac Compatible Nas
- Best Nas Drive For Mac
Our editors independently research, test, and recommend the best products; you can learn more about our review process here. We may receive commissions on purchases made from our chosen links.
The Rundown
- Best Streaming: Western Digital My Cloud EX2 at Amazon, “Outstanding performance for both media streaming and file transfers.”
- Best Budget: Synology DS115J at Amazon, “Offers both sharp looks and good performance at a welcoming price tag.”
- Best Storage: Synology DiskStation DS918+ at Amazon, “Nine drives of storage..a smart option for NAS shoppers looking for a single solution to hold all their data.”
- Best Media: Qnap TS-251A at Newegg.com, “HDMI support on the rear of the box, which allows 1080p videos to play directly from the NAS to an HDTV.”
- Best for Small Businesses: Synology D216II+ at Amazon, “Allowing terabytes of data to fit neatly in your pocket over the cloud with Synology’s mobile app.”
- Best for Home: Western Digital My Cloud EX4100 at Amazon, “Its eight terabytes of storage space offers up a wide set of possibilities for home storage options.”
- Best Splurge:Netgear ReadyNAS 626XOO at Amazon, “The best NAS money can buy.”
Our Top Picks
Best Streaming: Western Digital My Cloud EX2
For personal use, the Western Digital My Cloud EX2 ultra network attached storage is the king of the hill. Available in a slew of storage options, the high-performance dual-core processor and 1GB of RAM combine to provide outstanding performance for both media streaming and file transfers. The two-bay unit creates a mirrored backup of all your personal computer files and folders utilizing RAID configuration. For a consumer box, the inclusion of RAID technology is both notable and welcomed and, when combined with Western Digital’s user-friendly operating system, it’s an overall enjoyable experience. Backups can be scheduled or synchronized across computers and My Cloud devices mean that even if you miss a manual backup, you’re still covered.
Additionally, the My Cloud makes it easy to share files publicly by creating a private link that can be user-limited or can allow full-access to anyone with the link. Streaming media fans will love the inclusion of Plex Media Server, which allows quick and easy support for sharing files directly to a PC, smartphone or gaming console in its original uploaded quality. Add in extras such as Mac and Windows compatibility and 256-AES encryption and you’ll find plenty of reasons to grab this backup device for all the peace of mind you need.
Best Budget: Synology DS115J
If you’re running on a lean budget, the Synology DS115j offers both sharp looks and good performance at a welcoming price tag. The DS115j provides both an easy way to automate simple tasks or backup your multimedia files for later playback all while accessing everything from Synology’s smartphone apps. Options such as Cloud Stations and Cloud Sync provide quick and easy access to files across multiple devices, including cloud services such as Dropbox, Google Drive and OneDrive. Fortunately, once these files are loaded onto the NAS, Synology provides a simple backup solution with file protection to back up everything to another NAS, a cloud service or a separate external device for redundancy across the board. With capacity up to eight terabytes of space (hard drives sold separately), there’s still plenty of room on this budget all-star for added services such as 24/7 home surveillance with Surveillance Station, which allows an owner to view and monitor live streams on both desktop and mobile devices.
Best Storage: Synology DiskStation DS918+
With up to nine drives of storage available for data, the Synology DiskStation DS918+ is a smart option for NAS shoppers looking for a single solution to hold all their data. Whether it’s 4K video or thousands of photos or documents, external hard drives can only hold so much — a NAS can go well beyond for homes or small offices. Two large 120mm fans on the rear keep everything cool, and there are dual RJ-45 ethernet points with support for link aggregation. A rear eSATA port adds to the storage potential in the event the drive bays are used up. Inside the DS918+, the hot-swappable and easily removed trays can be removed to make room for even more RAM. Capable of supporting up to 48 TB in total, each drive bay can hold up to a 12TB drive which, when paired with the eSATA port, enables the DS918+ to support up to 108TB max on a single volume. Write speeds are handled at 225 MB/s for reading system files and 221 MB/s for writing files.
Best Media: Qnap TS-251A
The Qnap TS-251A is a dual-bay (front-accessible) box that features an Intel Celeron dual-core processor, 2GB of RAM, twin Ethernet inputs, a slew of USB ports and an SD card slot for quickly copying files directly to the box. It also has HDMI support on the rear of the box, which allows 1080p videos to play directly from the NAS to an HDTV. There’s added support for HD video transcoding, plus DLNA and AirPlay (iTunes) streaming.
Popular services such as XBMC and Plex’s media server provide third-party support to help move media directly from the NAS to a media-playing device, including a smartphone or tablet. Additionally, the TS-251A supports the Roon streaming service (priced separately), which upscales nearly any type of audio file to near studio-quality. You can even attach a USB TV tuner and record cable shows or decode and transcode 4K H.264 videos. Beyond multimedia, the Qnap performs exceptionally well as a traditional NAS with good RAID recovery, remote access and powerful virtualization capabilities.
Best for Small Businesses: Synology D216II+
While this is a standout two-bay device, there’s no included storage out of the box on the Synology D216II+, allowing you to choose your own drive capacity and speed. The swappable drive tray design offers easy installation and care while allowing terabytes of data to fit neatly in your pocket over the cloud with Synology’s mobile app. With built-in 4K Ultra HD video transcoding, the DS216II+ is as much a multimedia machine as it is a 24/7 security solution with intelligent monitoring and video management tools. Extras include advanced file management between the NAS and your computer, Cloud Sync for connecting to a slew of popular cloud providers, as well as a well-designed software interface for managing all the above. The lack of Ethernet and HDMI ports is notable, but is easily overshadowed by its integration into a business environment with admin support for monitoring and controlling access to files and folders.
Best for Home: Western Digital My Cloud EX4100
Western Digital’s My Cloud EX4100 and its eight terabytes of storage space offers up a wide set of possibilities for home storage options. With plenty of room for photos, videos, music and files, the EX4100 helps protect your content with multiple RAID options all the way from RAID 0 to RAID 10. Powered by a Marvell Armada dual-core processor and 1GB of RAM, transfer speeds are excellent at a maximum of 114 MB/s upload and 108 MB/s download. The speedy performance will come in extra handy with Plex’s Media Server, which allows EX4100 owners to stream videos, photos and music directly to a PC, smartphone, game console or other capable media player. Families can make use of collaborative sharing, where everyone can access all their most important files and folders in one place. In addition, the EX4100 is also ready to help protect the home with Milestone Arcus surveillance software that provides live feeds and records video with separately purchased cameras.
Best Splurge: Netgear ReadyNAS 626X00
Best Nas For Mac And Itunes
Featuring unrivaled data protection, state-of-the-art backup recovery and the ability to support up to 120 users, the Netgear ReadyNAS 626X00 is the best NAS money can buy. With a maximum of six available bays for storage, the ReadyNAS can handle up to 60TBs of storage that can process at up to 20 gigabits per second for both business and media applications. It's powered by an Intel Xeon 2.2GHz Quad-core processor (the latest in 64-bit technology) and 8GB of RAM so the 626X00 can handle 4K streaming with ease and create virtualization desktops for secure office environments.
Safeguarded by five levels of data protection, business owners should feel secure against the loss of company files, databases or virtual images. The backup and recovery system is rock solid, allowing users to quickly restore from the latest backup and get back to work. With 10GbE Ethernet ports on the back of the hardware, there's support for a multitude of users all at once without any impact to data speeds.
Tested by
How We Tested
Our reviewers spent 10 hours testing one of the most popular NAS devices on the market. To really get the full experience, they set it up in their home offices, connected various devices, and analyzed its performance. We asked them to consider the most important features when using this NAS server, from its design to special features like encryption and additional drive bays. We've outlined the key points here so that you, too, know what to look for when shopping.
What to Look for in Network Attached Storage
Additional drive bays - Basic NAS devices come with a single built-in hard drive. If you want your NAS to last a long time — and to be as flexible and redundant as possible — look for one that has multiple drive bays. This allows you to store more data, add an additional backup, and even hot-swap out defective drives in some models.
Media streaming capabilities - Most NAS devices can be used to stream media, but some are better at it than others. Some NAS devices even include an HDMI port and a remote, so you can plug right into a television without using a media center PC or streaming device as a middleman.
Encryption - NAS devices that include hardware-level encryption are much faster than devices that rely on software. Encryption is mostly important if you use your NAS to back up sensitive data that you don’t want anyone to access. Even if you only access your NAS through your home network, encryption will protect you if the device is stolen.
Test Results: Western Digital My Cloud EX2 (Best Streaming)
What We Like
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Simple setup
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Lots of configuration options
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Great performance
What We Don't Like
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Instructions could be more detailed for different use cases
One of our testers was quick to sum up the benefits of this NAS server: “It's nice to have a network device that's easily accessible, simple to set up, and works as backup/extra HD space,” he noted. “I have a couple external hard drives for backup, and it's very nice to have something that I don't have to plug in, works across all my devices, and has a substantial amount of storage — and backup for that storage!” Although our testers loved that this device had many configuration options, they wished it had more detailed instructions for different use cases: “Basically, I wish that it came with ‘NAS for Dummies,’” one reviewer said.
Please share your experiences and reviews about NAS (Network-Attached Storage) below. In particular, rate their compatibility with Macs, OS X, iTunes, Time Machine, AppleTV, and other Apple-specific tools. The goal is for future users to be able to easily find the best Mac-compatible NAS appliance.
• Bottom Line: Samsung's Portable SSD T5 drive has a speedy USB-C interface and plenty of reliable storage. It takes up about as much room in your pocket as a short stack of credit cards. What is the best hard drive for macbook air.
Rules:
- Use a single answer for each NAS (no duplicates, please).
- Vote (up or down) on any NAS you have experience with.
Also welcome: useful reference links, such as this one from xlr8yourmac.com.
14 Answers
Synology DiskStation
The Synology DSM software has built-in support for Macs including Apple Fileshare Protocol (afp) and Time Machine support. It has an iTunes server in addition to a regular DLNA Media server. As it is Linux based it is easy to configure the NAS to do rsync backups (ssh login).
It has a great web-based desktop-style interface that is very easy to understand and use. The DSM software is constantly being updated and improved.
They have solutions from 2-disk on up to 15-disk. You can find the 4-disk DS411j without drives for less than $400.
A Mac
My NAS of choice is an old Mac. In my case, I had an old MacBook that wouldn't hold a charge anymore so I rigged up an eSATA connection to my 2TB external drive.
The advantages to using an actual Mac over a true NAS system:
- Uses first-party AFP on HFS for optimal compatibility. In particular, it supports Spotlight and fast file searches (CatSearch), something that other NAS systems cannot do as well: They usually use a Linux system with netatalk and an ext3 file system which, compared to AFP with HFS, are not optimized for the ways a Mac can search. For more technical information on this, see the Find Any File FAQ, What kind of disks do support 'fast search'?
Further features to consider:
- Can serve as a Time Machine backup volume (some other NAS can do that as well).
- Works great as an iTunes master library, connected to my Apple TV and my other Macs via Home Sharing.
- Can run a BitTorrent client to download Linux ISOs and Stack Overflow data dumps (some other NAS can do that as well).
- Use built-in screen sharing to control.
Drobo FS
The Drobo FS is my new favourite NAS. I've run a Netgear ReadyNAS and a PC-based NAS in the past and neither touch the Drobo FS for simplicity, speed and reliability. The ReadyNAS suffered from poor RAID performance, especially on reboots when volumes needed to be scanned. And the power supply in it was really lame. And the PC-based NAS was just a pain to maintain and costly to keep up.
The Drobo FS is super simple to set up. Has very, very good volume build and scanning speeds on startup. Has what has to be the best hot-swapping of any multi-disk unit I've ever seen that was in the sub-$10k range. And performs like a champ while drawing very little power.
I now run an FS for home sharing and an old Drobo hangs off my iMac for audio project data. They are teh awesome.
The Time Capsule can be used as a shared drive.
It is also a Wi-Fi router, and is automatically recognized as a backup device for Time Machine.
Freenas using generic hardware
I love the ability to grab an old computer, fill it full of cheap hard drives, and install Freenas on a CF card or USB drive. Software RAID is reliable.
A key point, if any of the hardware dies, the RAID array can be rebuilt when the software is installed on new hardware, unlike some proprietary solutions (NAS or RAID cards) where you may be tied to a particular vendor and/or model, which, after time, may not be sold/available.
Works fine with Macs and PCs -- and for this reason i use SMB shares rather than AFP. Performance is fine.
I use the SMB shares to stream to all the computers in the house, and there is no problem.
Time Machine backups are a little more complex, involving creating a Sparse Bundle (which is not the official method). For this reason, i don't do this, i use Carbon Copy Cloner to run to a disk image (dmg) every night.
I use MediaRover to sync iTunes libraries, and this works fine. Other iTunes support is available (an iTunes/DAAP server called Firefly), but i haven't used it.
It has a BitTorrent server built in, but again, i haven't used it.
Administration is very easy (web based), setup is not difficult, but there are several steps to add disks, format them, create a RAID array, create a mount point, enable the services (AFP or SMB) to access. Documentation and community support are satisfactory.
Don't want start any flamewar, but today here is only NAS solution - the ZFS based NAS.
ZFS is a filesystem, what has 'copy on write' feature, so you will get a backup in every save - fully transparently. ZFS has million really cool features like raid management, snapshots etc. too much for one post. If you interested can duckduck for ZFS.
ZFS is implemented in Solaris and in the FreeBSD. So, you can:
- use some older (but 64bit+lots of RAM) PC with a plenty of HDDs and
- download and install FreeNAS. You will get web-managed NAS with Samba and etc.
- install plain FreeBSD and config it as NAS plus some your own tweaking - IMHO this is the best way.
- you can also buy an preconfigured FreeBSD/ZFS NAS too
You should definitely check theese:
Netgear ReadyNAS
We recently joined the crowd getting their first NAS, and after taking a close look at several, settled on the Netgear ReadyNAS NV+.
The Drobo, previously mentioned, was tempting—but just way too expensive for use on a home network.
We've only had it a month or two, but so far, so good. Like most Netgear products, it works well with Macs. There's also a solid community & support site.
Western Digital MyBook World Edition
Yesterday I installed a Western Digital MyBook World Edition, 1 TeraByte, single disk.
Pros: very simple to install and work with, includes a Media Server and a iTunes server that can be used to share music and videos across the network. It's pre configured with the common shares and if you copy the files in the proper folders it's very, very simple to use. Quite cheap compared to a similar solution from QNap or Sinology. I did not perform any single task 'mac related' on it and it worked from start with my Mac.
Cons: old firmware from 2009 and no update available, the single 1 TB disk inside obviously do not support any kind of Raid, no serviceable by changing disk if needed (unless you broke your warranty), the control panel do not give you a lot of control also if you use the so called advanced version.
Definitively a good choice for a 'first' NAS to work and experience with, if you need to go on a cheap model or if you do not have a lot of IT experience, suggested for simple home environment where no redundancy it's needed, I would avoid it if you need redundancy or if you like to fine tune and experiment with every possible option.
There is also a public wiki about hacking it but I've not tested any of the stuff described (yet!).
UPDATE: after some time I've found more problems, all related to the time machine interface:1) The quota option do not work with time machine2) The Lion update completely stopped the Time Machine usage
NOT RECOMMENDED ANYMORE!!!!
UPDATE: The Lion/Time Machine problem will hopefully be fixed soon. Apple changed some things and Western Digital is working on an update. This affects the MyBook Live and MyBook World Edition II. Read more: Error: 'The network backup disk does not support the required AFP features' is displayed using Time Machine on Mac OSX 10.7.x (Lion) to backup to a WD NAS drive
Best Nas For Mac Users
- Small footprint (same size as MyBook desktop drives)
- Size 1-3 Tb
- Pretty cheap
- TimeMachine compatible over network (firmware just got updated with support for Lion)
- Single disk, no RAID
The Qnap TS259Pro+ which uses a 1.8Ghz Dual Core Atom CPU,would be the perfect setup for Sickbeard, and streaming to more than one TV in the house. Take the firmware for a spin with this 'Live Demo'
Seagate Blackarmor NAS220
At the moment of buying, the features listed sounded great, and Mac compatible.
Once in the studio, and after 4 weeks, it is just a hard drive on the network.
These are some of the issues:
- NOT Time Machine compatible
- Very slow
- Access remotely is useless, hangs everytime. So you cannot access it outside the studio. This was a main reason for buying, and tech support say they know about the issue and are to update.. still waiting for it.
- Software for mac is just a discovery tool. The name says it all, it tries to find the NAS, which it initially did, now it no longer detects it. Finder does.
- Only a APC brand UPS is compatible. This was a total surprise, it is only stated in small letters in the manual inside the box, not outside or anywhere else visible before you buy, not even the product web page.
- Very slow, i know i already said that, but it is terribly slow.
Stay away, not only mac users, but everybody who wants a NAS, this is not an option.
D-Link DNS-323
The D-Link DNS-323 is quite customizable, but should do everything you need out of the box.
It has a very activecommunity behind it
QNAP is surprisingly perfect actually ;o)I use TS-419 for my home use and pretty happy with it.
Best Free Music Players for Mac. Decibel is an iTunes look-alike that attempts to cater to audiophiles by supporting all lossless and lossy audio formats, including FLAC, Wavpack, Ogg Vorbis. Best audio book player for elderly.
We're looking for long answers that provide some explanation and context. Don't just give a one-line answer; explain why your answer is right, ideally with citations. Answers that don't include explanations may be removed.
I put together a comparison here: http://forum.railsonmaui.com/t/best-way-to-backup-large-external-hard-drives/305.
Best Nas For Mac
Based on reading many of the numerous reviews, the WD gets the job done at a very competitive price point with few disadvantages.
I'm ordering one this week and will plan to update my answer. I'll be using it for other network backup and shared network files.
Mac Compatible Nas
Best Nas Drive For Mac
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