NAS v SAN for Mac

   Newer Technology is trying hard to be the great Mac accessory company they once were and have just introduced a MiniStack NAS. This diminuitive case is the same one as their MiniStack hard drive enclosures. I purchased two of the first generation hard drive enclosures after testing them for a magazine review. I really like how they were designed to keep drives cool through both passive cooling and a dual-speed fan.
   The idea of a small NAS (Network Attached Storage) is all well and good. There are plenty of other boxes out there, but Newer licensed Ximeta’s NDAS technology which touts the ability to connect to a network drive over ethernet like it was a local drive, say on USB. Interesting point in the Newer (and other NDAS drives) is that they do allow you to connect the NAS via USB as well. NDAS has promise and, if computer manufacturers start to implement the technology directly, this could be an incredible boon to computer users.
   This starts to approach the power of a SAN (Storage Area Network) where multiple users can connect to a shared drive (or drives) directly.
   But there are key differences between NAS, SAN and NDAS, as well as a few problems which I’ll illustrate here.
Read More…

August 15th, 2007 Posted by IEBA | Apple, Gear | no comments |