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Network Attached Storage (NAS) for PC/Mac Home

I spent today setting up a NAS drive to house all of my photos and music in addition to serving as a backup for all of my computers (two desktops and a laptop).  Every situation is unique when setting up a home network, mine was no exception.  I have outlined my setup and some of the problems I encountered - I focus on the areas where I couldn't find adequate help elsewhere online.

The Goal

To have a home network that:

1. Has a single backup source for all computers
2. Has redundancy in case of disk failure
3. Stores all of my music and photos in a single place, accessible by all computers
4. Works with Mac and PC
5. Is accessible from anywhere in the world

The Solution

A NAS drive! Network Attached Storage was the perfect solution for me for a few reasons.

Why?
I have several computers, and I like to upgrade relatively frequently. I also share computers with my wife, who has her own files and needs. With all of this, it is important to me to have a reliable backup system AND a single place to store our collective music and photos. As an aside - I'm also looking into online backup options as an additional storage solution. While I haven't reviewed any yet, I found this zip cloud review that lists the benefits and features you can typically expect from online storage services.

I have tried taking the normal external hard drive route. I really have. I found this cumbersome, in part, because:

• You have to plug into a hard drive if you're using a laptop
• You have to turn the drive on and off with your computer if its attached to a desktop and you're concerned about power
• Its difficult to get PCs and Macs to play nice together if you share the drive
• Its difficult to use a standard external hard drive for media storage because a computer must remain ON in order to access the files

A NAS drive solves these problems (if you get the right drive, of course). I now have a fully redundant backup system that works with PCs and Macs, I can backup wirelessly (great for laptops), and it serves up all my photos and music to all of my computers (no more duplicates or lost files).

For reference - my network runs a PowerMac G5 (PowerPC, running Leopard), an HP Pavillion Slimline (Windows Vista), and a MacBook Pro (Intel, running Leopard).

The Setup

The NAS Drive

I am using a Netgear ReadyNAS Duo with two 500GB Seagate drives. I have this redundant using X-RAID so I only have 500GB of storage capacity, not 1TB - I prefer peace of mind over capacity and I don't come close to the 500GB limit as it is.

When you first setup your NAS drive the user manual does a fine job at taking you through the steps. If you are on a normal home network you will simply plug the ethernet cable from your router into the back of the drive - the network will automatically assign an IP to the drive and you will be able to find at 192.168.1.x ('x' depends on how many other computers are on your network and which address is assigned to the drive).

Start by typing 192.168.1.x/admin into the address bar of your favorite browser (Safari, anyone?). The default username/password is admin/netgear1 for my drive, consult the manual for yours.

The default settings will largely be appropriate for most home networks. You shouldn't need to mess with the IP assignment, DNS info, etc. I won't know your specific circumstances if you do, so its not worth my blabbering about it!

The critical steps when setting up your drive for a multi-purpose drive are:

1. Create a user, or users, with their own 'home' shares. In other words, create a new user for each computer that needs the ability to backup.
2. Create global shares for things you want all of your computers to access, such as:
   • A dropbox (place to transfer random files between computers. This can be open to anyone on the network if you like - make sure you set the permissions for all users and groups to read/write.)
   • A media share - this is where you can store your music, photos, videos, etc. Make sure users in the "users" group (or whatever group you assign to your computer shares) are able to read and write to this share.
3. Ensure the appropriate transfer protocols are enabled. If you're running PCs and Macs you'll probably want CIFS, AFP, and HTTP. If you want to access certain files from anywhere in the world (detailed below in Dynamic DNS) then also enable FTP.
4. Whatever other goodies you want - the ReadyNAS also comes with a BitTorrent service, and streaming media, so you can enable what you want. FYI - my drive comes with an iTunes streaming service (Firefly) but I do NOT use this when sharing my music with the network. I will post about this later.

With that, you should have all of the NAS settings in place to start backing up and sharing.

Now to make sure the computers are ready to go!

The Computers

This differs based on PC or Mac. I primarily use Mac but have a dual OS household, so I'll outline the steps for both.

The basic premise is the same for both operating systems:

To backup you need to mount the network drive signing in with the username and password of the individual user's home share (that is, if you have a desktop and a laptop you should have created two users on the NAS drive in addition to the 'dropbox' and 'media' shares. When connecting from the laptop, sign in with the username and password for the laptop, same for desktop). You then need to use a piece of software to backup certain parts of your hard drive on your home share of the NAS drive. ReadyNAS comes with "NTI Shadow", which works well for me on PC and Mac.

To share media you need to mount the "dropbox" or "media" share so you can access the files you want.

You will notice that the critical step in any case is to "mount" the appropriate share. Below is how to do that.

Mac - Leopard

1. Open a new Finder window
2. Look for the name of your NAS drive under the shared heading (make sure you can see this by going to Finder -> Preferences and ensure "Connected Servers" is checked)
3. Click the NAS drive and click "Connect As" on the top right of the Finder window. Type in your username and password.
4. Alternatively:From Finder click "Go" -> "Connect to Server..." (or, Apple+K). Type in the NAS IP address followed by /username (i.e. 192.168.1.x/user). Type in your username and password when the prompt comes up.
5. NOTE: If you are mounting the "dropbox" or "media" share, just type in 192.168.1.x/dropbox or 192.168.1.x/media .

If you are planning on backing up your hard drive, or you want to store your photos and always want access to them without having to mount the drive every time, simply:

• Go to System Preference -> Accounts
• Select your account and click the "Login Items" tab
• Drag the mount(s) from your desktop into the Login Items list

PC - Vista

I don't use PCs that often, so I don't know the steps for XP or Windows 7. I'm sure its relatively similar - the concept is the same, anyway.

1. Navigate to "Computer"
2. On the top bar menu click "Map network drive"
3. Select the drive letter you want associated with each mount (doesn't matter)
4. Under Folder type: \\192.168.1.x\username
5. Select "Reconnect at logon" if you want this to be permanently mapped (recommended)

That's it! Now you should be able to access your NAS shares on both Mac and Windows computers.

When the drives are mounted, you can use your backup software to backup your local files with the computer's home share on the NAS drive.

Advanced: The Router, Dynamic DNS, and FTP Access

If you want to get fancy (who wouldn't?) and access your files from anywhere in the world through FTP, you will need to go through a few extra steps. This is going to be a little different for every router so I will just lay out the theory behind it and you should be able to find the exact details for your router easily online.

To access files anywhere in the world through FTP you need to:

1. Have a NAS drive that supports the FTP protocol
2. Have your router forward incoming FTP requests to your NAS drive (which will then dictate which shares are accessible through FTP)
3. Have a public address that forwards requests to your router's IP (dynamic DNS)

1) In your NAS drive settings you need to ensure that you set the port (i.e. 21), the User Authentication Mode (i.e. User), the Passive Ports (i.e. 5000 - 5020), and a public domain name to masquerade as an FTP server - this is your Dynamic DNS, see (3) below (i.e. myname.dyndns.org)

2) The method will vary by router, however, the goal is to find "Port Forwarding" and add a port forwarding rule that routes any incoming FTP requests to your NAS drive.

3) The easiest way to get a public address is to use a service such as dyndns.com. Simply setup a free account, choose a domain name from their list, and enter your IP address (which will be found automatically if you are setting this up through your home router). Voila!

Now you can open your favorite FTP Client (I love Cyberduck), type in your server (user.dyndns.org) and username. When connecting it will prompt for your username and password. If you've set everything up properly then this will connect you to your NAS drive and only the Shares that you have accessible through FTP will show up in the client. Note: it takes a while for changes to propagate through the internet, so after you've set up your dyndns account and set up port forwarding, give it a few hours if it doesn't work the first time.

Conclusion

I hope this helps. Please leave comments or contact me if you spot a mistake or I haven't explained something thoroughly!