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NAS for OS X and Lightroom that can act as a locally-mounted drive over LAN and WAN?

C

cjp87

Junior Member
Hi all, I'd like to get a good NAS solution for backup and extra storage purposes. I'm planning on getting a 15" Haswell retina Macbook Pro whenever they're released (currently using a 2009 C2D Macbook Pro, and that C2D and the GT 9600m are getting pretty long in the tooth), and I'm expecting ludicrous SSD prices to keep me down at around a 256GB drive. That's a pretty big downgrade from the 128GB SSD + 500GB HDD I've got right now.

One of my largest storage uses is RAW image files stored for Lightroom, and I'd like to be able to keep the Lightroom Catalog on my laptop, but store the RAW files on the NAS. Lightroom has a nice feature where it will store a small local JPEG if you do this, then apply those changes to the RAW file when it connects to them, which saves a ton of space. But, I'd also want pretty reliable access to those RAW files, both home and away (which means that Lightroom would need to be able to find them over WAN, if possible).

I feel like the easiest way to do this is if it could always be mounted to OS X similar to how local/USB storage is mounted, even if over IP. Is that something that can be done?

While that's the use I'd like to have the most, the most important one will be Time Machine backups for two Macbooks. I know it should work over LAN if the NAS is configured to the right file system and accepts AFP, but would it be possible to do the incremental backups (so they're much smaller) that Time Machine typically does over WAN? This is more just a "what if" question, I guess. I'd be satisfied with regular LAN backup.

For a quick list, here's a rundown of what I'd like to find in a NAS, with an * for must-haves:

  • At least two drive bays (for RAID)*
  • Compatible with Time Machine with no cumbersome sparsebundle hacks.*
  • Mountable as a local drive (basically, I want it to appear as a USB drive, but over my network)
  • Available from outside the local network (so I can back up to the drive or access files stored on the drive over WAN, but again as a mounted drive, not some web interface that has limited functionality)

I've tried to google this stuff, but I'm wondering if I'm just using the wrong search terms because I've not been able to find much on the WAN ideas. The most important thing to me is that I'll be able to easily manage my Lightroom photos.

Thanks for taking the time to read this, and I'm certainly open for any suggestions.
 
I'm just starting to look at all the features that modern soho NASes offer, and maybe I'm missing something, but why couldn't you just mount the NAS share via AFP/SMB/NFS? It will show up as a network volume, or even just as a file path. Probably the easiest way is to drag your mounted volume to your login items, and it would automatically mount when you restart.

Otherwise, even the low end Synology and QNAP NASes support iSCSI, so you could make a LUN look like a local drive when you use initiator software. Unfortunately I dont think there are any free versions anymore. I'm not sure you need to think too much about this, unless Lightroom blocks network volumes like FCP. You can test it out by enabling file sharing on one of your Macs, then mount your share on another Mac and just read and write to that path. I would think any file server would do in your scenario. Just doing a quick google search, getting Time Machine to write to network drives isn't that difficult.

http://code.stephenmorley.org/articles/time-machine-on-a-network-drive/

I don't use TM, so again I might be missing something. In either case, at least this thread is bumped.
 
Maybe I am thinking about this too hard. I know when I had a Windows Home Server set up, it was really difficult to get it to use TM, but that makes sense as it doesn't support AFP or Apple's file system. I was just under the impression that one needed something particular to get it to work automatically over LAN (could just be all the Apple die hards that recommend Time Capsule over eierything).

Would connecting it over IP be just as easy (I.e. directing it to an IP address so I could access the drive from outside the LAN)? In sure the router matters, I have an ASUS RT-N56u, which was pretty easy to set up to allow access to websites in that WHS I mentioned.
 
Great, thanks. Guess this is all a little easier than I had initially envisioned. Now to just pick out a good 2 bay NAS.
 
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