Without exception.Įxisting NAS users don’t always explore available apps either. Each of the six systems I compared in my group test would make excellent network storage, and I’m sorry to have sent the five NAS systems back to their manufacturer. While that’s not the fastest option, it has virtues which make it highly attractive. SMB isn’t slow, at least in macOS Monterey, and you shouldn’t have to fiddle with obscure options to achieve good performance.Īlthough I still believe in the benefits of local storage for backups, I appreciate that for many, being able to back up over a network is a great advantage.
Best nas for mac media software#
I gather that Synology has recently updated its software to improve transfer speeds over SMB, which may explain this. Best all-round performer here was the Synology, which recorded 94 MB/s writing to the NAS and 99 MB/s reading.
Results impressed me, as most of the NAS systems came quite close to their performance on the single large file. The third performance test was the unkindest of them all: I ran my disk performance benchmark tests in Stibium, which was developed to test internal SSDs in M1 Macs. What is also notable here is that these Finder copies of single files were achieved three times faster than those of Time Machine backups, and close to the maximum possible over a standard ethernet connection.
Best nas for mac media update#
The weakest performer here, the TerraMaster, is due a software update which I suspect will produce significant improvements. Highest transfer rates were just over 100 MB/s, and the lowest a mere 24 MB/s. Three systems performed best at those: Asustor, Synology, and the M1 Mac mini, and the TerraMaster was slower than the others. The second performance test was copying a single 10 GB file to and from the NAS in the Finder. The only performance which stood out there was backing up to the networked M1 Mac, at 43 MB/s, leaving the NAS systems more uniform at 31-37 MB/s. The incremental backup was slightly faster, with a range of 31-43 MB/s. There was thus little to choose between them in this respect.
Best nas for mac media full#
The range of backup rates for the first full backup was 29-35 MB/s, with the leading systems all between 32-35 MB/s. I used T2M2 to discover the quantity of data copied in each backup, and the time required, from which I derived an overall backup rate in MB/s. I therefore waited until that synchronisation was complete, and analysed the first full backup, and one standardised incremental backup after that. When you first configure a NAS into a RAID mirror, its disks are ‘synchronised’, which takes a day or so, depending on the capacity of the hard disks. The first was a full Time Machine backup of a reasonably basic Data volume. Given the previous discussions here, it may be useful to see some figures. The comparison table in my article has been greatly condensed from my original, and doesn’t include the results of the performance testing, which took many days.
If you’re thinking of buying a NAS from a vendor not included in the five in my review, then you might like to think again. You shouldn’t find it hard to work out who they are from the list of products I reviewed. However, for the moment they don’t seem interested in reviews which compare their NAS systems to those of their competitors. The surprise here was one manufacturer which I had thought valued its Mac market, and was keen to compete for it. The five whose NAS systems I tested were really keen, and although the Mac market may be relatively small compared to their total sales, all five want to be competitive in this market. I’ve been writing and reviewing products for Mac magazines for well over thirty years now, and this is the first time that I’ve had manufacturers refuse to provide their products for review. This article provides some additional information to that in the magazines. These are both print magazines, with electronic editions available through their apps in the iOS/iPadOS App Store, and my review won’t appear online. I’m delighted to report that my review has now been published, in two of Future’s magazines, MacFormat (issue 376) and Mac|Life (issue 191). Late last year I was commissioned to write a group test of NAS systems intended primarily for Time Machine network backups.
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