Netgear NAS

So once again stuck with a strange problem, in my home I have a rather extensive network both wired and wireless, the system has (2) 24 port switches, backup battery, wireless, Vonage phone system, along with a Skype adapter that rings line 2 throughout the house, miles of CAT5 lots of Cable for TV and video, lets just say I may have went over the top when I did it… I have a couple Tivo Series 2’s that I have upgraded the hard drives in, and I also archive shows to a PC (not available on the Apple yet) I use an Apple to serve Music throughout the house (around 160 gig of songs ripped directly from CD’s) well at work we bought a neat little NAS device (some off brand) and it holds one drive, the thing is awesome for work being as its seen on the network and anyone can read and write, it has secure area; its very full featured. The problem is that it along with most other small NAS consumer units use FAT32 as a file system; you wonder what the problem that that is? well it only allows a single file to be 4 gig, at work, no problem but at home I have tons of video files that are larger than 4 gig so I cant use the NAS for storage or backup.

I did some hunting around and found that Netgear makes an NAS unit that holds two drives of any size and uses its own file system that is limited to 45 gig max per file, well 45 gig is more than enough for even HD video I think. I ran down to Best Buy and bought the unit, came home and threw a couple drives in it, all it has is power and a Ethernet jack on it so the hookup was a breeze. Our NAS at work is a web based setup and uses Samba for the file sharing so it works with Windows/Apple/Linux/Unix well this thing has an install CD that only works with Windows, so I thought well thats not too unusual in my travels, so I popped the CD in my Windows XP machine and said yes a couple times and there it was, the new “F” drive on my computer, I figured once it was running I would be able to turn on FTP or samba or something so any machine could access it, Wrong for any machine to see it the Netgear software had to be loaded, this would not be a problem besides I run 3 different OS’s in my network and would like the thing to work from anywhere.

So I find a unit that doesn’t have the file size limit that stopped me from using the others and it has another wall, it will work with 95% of the computers on the planet but not my Apple’s (yes Apple”s” I have more than one) The Netgear SC101 came with a pretty sweet backup utility and all but again only windows.. It had another drawback, but not a show stopper… its write speed seemed to be about 1/3 the speed of the lower priced unit we have in the Office.. Well it went back for a refund last night. I will say no questions asked when I brought it back Best Buy was awesome.