Which NAS do you use with your Hackintosh ?

[hardcorefs]

Anyone using Synology, should think about aging out their equipment.
7.x has totally destroyed all the useful packages, no longer exist or are supported.

Also noticed they are switching over to "locked" licenses, that require you to register the NAS & software before it will function correctly. (We had a very very interesting conversation with their internal staff about a demand to 2FA future equipment to a mobile phone.)

Over the last decade we had spent >$100,000 on Synology equipment for branch offices and cheap central storage with optical.
However, after our very interesting discussion with one of their internal staff, the result of which was a very clear letter from us to them that if they proceeded down the route they were planning (licensed & charged model for items we already bought outright), then we would start aging out their kit (which they thought we were joking because we never heard back from their "management").

So.. if they DGAF about the loss of a customer our size, we figured we should not be using them any more. Since then, all purchases for new kit has NOT been Synology.

Seems QNAP was garbage , then suddenly a couple of years ago they really made an effort, Synology is heading to where QNAP was.
But neither are "safe" for connection to the internet.
However, I have both for review at home & work. (I get to have TOYS as part of my perks.)

I've been looking at the TS-X73A for a year or so for some branch office work due to the double slots and SSD. But again there is a major problem in that the CPU just cannot handle the cards... kernel keep whining about cutback datarates a bus widths. (more over priced rubbish that looks good but internally it's well....... crap....)

 

[hardcorefs]

DS1618+ with E10M20-T1

It's nonsense..... just becasue I stick a v8 engine in a mini, does not mean the chassis can handle it under full tilt.

 

[starchyfind]

It's nonsense..... just becasue I stick a v8 engine in a mini, does not mean the chassis can handle it under full tilt.

Please explain. I believe I know where this is going, but I'd appreciate more than "nonsense" and an analogy.

If you're phasing out Synology, what are your recommendations for superior NAS implementations? It sounds like you and your company have different needs than a home enthusiast. Bear in mind the question posed in the first post was what NAS you use with your Hackintosh, not your enterprise.

 

[Middleman]

So I found out to my shock earlier today whilst trying to clone a Monterey system drive, that Monterey has very bad support now for copying and cloning drives. There is a whole massive thread on Apple about this problem titled ‘Monterey broke my external SSDs’. I found both Carbon Copy Cloner and Superduper, even with the latest versions updated, struggle to make decent copies of a drive compared to Big Sur. So it looks like if you want to have a decent system that works with cloning, I would suggest to stick with Big Sur.

In the meantime I managed to finally upgrade the PSU in the Jonsbo N1 NAS box. I got hold of a Silverstone SX700 which is a decent SFX PSU that provides up to 700W power (which is enough to provide power to all 7 drives in the system which I plan to eventually have).

Only thing I am missing now are upwards-angled L-shaped SATA cables which is required for my build because the other SATA ports on my Z170 board are sideways facing and there is a lack of space inside the case for normal connectors.

 

[pastrychef]

So I found out to my shock earlier today whilst trying to clone a Monterey system drive, that Monterey has very bad support now for copying and cloning drives. There is a whole massive thread on Apple about this problem titled ‘Monterey broke my external SSDs’. I found both Carbon Copy Cloner and Superduper, even with the latest versions updated, struggle to make decent copies of a drive compared to Big Sur. So it looks like if you want to have a decent system that works with cloning, I would suggest to stick with Big Sur.

I stopped trying to clone a while back... Time Machine works great and no need to buy extra software. Time Machine backups to my NAS are imperceptible.

 

[UtterDisbelief]

I stopped trying to clone a while back... Time Machine works great and no need to buy extra software. Time Machine backups to my NAS are imperceptible.

You have to check carefully when you buy those L-shaped SATA cables. I needed two for a bank of four sockets. Two ports were "7" and the other two "L" (180-degree turn). I discovered I had to order "Left-Angle" as opposed to "Right-Angle".

Your situation may be totally different but worth checking!

 

[hardcorefs]

Please explain. I believe I know where this is going, but I'd appreciate more than "nonsense" and an analogy.

If you're phasing out Synology, what are your recommendations for superior NAS implementations? It sounds like you and your company have different needs than a home enthusiast. Bear in mind the question posed in the first post was what NAS you use with your Hackintosh, not your enterprise.

Simple..
crack open you SSH terminal in the synology. to get root access
then go into your logs and check them out.

somewhere in there you will either see in the kernel OR the card driver kicking up a fuss about not having either bandwidth or bus width for the card and so it will be "nobbled"

what that means networking is a STANDARD as are the kernel Drivers,
but just becasue i can compile a kernel driver for ARM, does NOT mean i have the buss/CPU/hardware infrastructure to correctly & fully support it.

So like i said .. it's like boasting to your friends that you stuck a V8 engine in a mini and anyone who lacks back ground knowledge is impressed...

Then others do google searches , see such posts and drop a load of cash for a card that potentially looks impressive
but will barely even give them a VERY small % of what it is capable of.

 

[pastrychef]

Simple..
crack open you SSH terminal in the synology. to get root access
then go into your logs and check them out.

somewhere in there you will either see in the kernel OR the card driver kicking up a fuss about not having either bandwidth or bus width for the card and so it will be "nobbled"

what that means networking is a STANDARD as are the kernel Drivers,
but just becasue i can compile a kernel driver for ARM, does NOT mean i have the buss/CPU/hardware infrastructure to correctly & fully support it.

So like i said .. it's like boasting to your friends that you stuck a V8 engine in a mini and anyone who lacks back ground knowledge is impressed...

Then others do google searches , see such posts and drop a load of cash for a card that potentially looks impressive
but will barely even give them a VERY small % of what it is capable of.

The DS1618+ has an Intel C3538 CPU, not an Arm CPU.

My NAS has a C2550 CPU which is a generation older and I saw no errors in the Synology logs. 10GBase-T runs great.

 

[zipb]

I've been experimenting off and on with the QNAP 453BT3 NAS I was given. Before this, I have used 2 other QNAP NAS units for years until I abandoned them, the final straw being the notorious Qlocker ransomware.

Anyway, what I always had with any NAS, is that it only works properly with volumes in Linux native (normally EXTx) format.
But then, if you copy a zillion Mac files(I just tested once more with 1 TB of data, 200.000 files) to the NAS, the copy will invariably stop and/or warn about unacceptable characters in filenames, or ownership problems/errors.

Then you end up with stuff you can't repair or throw away, or even find from the Mac client, you have to go in with SSH or the NAS GUI to try to fix these errors or delete files using the watered down QNAP version of Linux.

If you manage to get your data on the NAS, subtle errors creep in after a while. Especially with TimeMachine backups and their way of storing incremental data, stuff will get messy and hard to recover because of the EXT formatted drives. You can't attach these easily to a Mac or PC if your NAS dies or acts funny.

Maybe I haven't been very lucky, but RAID-5, RAID-6 and JBOD haven't been very reliable either on my QNAP devices, even with new approved drives.You really have to pay attention to the drives' health and swap them before they die(in my experience in 3 years), and you need a backup of the contents of the NAS itself for safety.

I have been using a much more straightforward DAS(USB cradle with large HD's)/Backblaze backup strategy for over a year now with very little trouble. Quite a relief.

 

[pastrychef]

I've been experimenting off and on with the QNAP 453BT3 NAS I was given. Before this, I have used 2 other QNAP NAS units for years until I abandoned them, the final straw being the notorious Qlocker ransomware.

Anyway, what I always had with any NAS, is that it only works properly with volumes in Linux native (normally EXTx) format.
But then, if you copy a zillion Mac files(I just tested once more with 1 TB of data, 200.000 files) to the NAS, the copy will invariably stop and/or warn about unacceptable characters in filenames, or ownership problems/errors.

Then you end up with stuff you can't repair or throw away, or even find from the Mac client, you have to go in with SSH or the NAS GUI to try to fix these errors or delete files using the watered down QNAP version of Linux.

If you manage to get your data on the NAS, subtle errors creep in after a while. Especially with TimeMachine backups and their way of storing incremental data, stuff will get messy and hard to recover because of the EXT formatted drives. You can't attach these easily to a Mac or PC if your NAS dies or acts funny.

Maybe I haven't been very lucky, but RAID-5, RAID-6 and JBOD haven't been very reliable either on my QNAP devices, even with new approved drives.You really have to pay attention to the drives' health and swap them before they die(in my experience in 3 years), and you need a backup of the contents of the NAS itself for safety.

I have been using a much more straightforward DAS(USB cradle with large HD's)/Backblaze backup strategy for over a year now with very little trouble. Quite a relief.

Try Synology DSM. I've never needed to SSH in there to do any repairs. It "just works".

I never had a problem with filenames either... But I still connect to the NAS via AFS. Not sure if filenames are a problem with NFS or CIFS...

I haven't had any issues with Time Machine since I started using my NAS for it in May.

I had all sorts of disconnect problems with DAS over USB and later with Thunderbolt to SATA.