Thread: Nas drive? Gigabit switch?

Hi!

I want to buy a large hard drive for my films, easy... But I want my mini mac to access it with plex and I want my pc to access it using torrent.

I need a solution fast enough to stream 1080 video to my mini mac and I realise I can't connect an external hd to two computers at the same time. My pc on windows 7 refuses to talk to my mac over the network so I think the only option is a gigabit switch and a nas drive?

My router is not gigabit speed but it does have 4 LAN ports which I use 3 of with my ps3, mini mac and pc plugged in.. So am I right in thinking I plug a gigabit switch into the spare port then plug nas drive into the switch and it will sort out my problem?



Is there a better/cheaper way of doing what I am trying to do?

I'm sure a NAS would be cool (some come with built in torrent clients as well, not sure if they'd be allowed on private trackers or not), but I'm also sure that it is possible to make your mac talk to a PC over the network. Have you tried sharing your Mac drive with SMB? What have you tried so far to make them see other others shared folders/driver?

Odd. I could easily connect to my PC from my Mac through the shared SMB.

I actually have a network set up the way you currently want it - using a NAS and streaming my videos from there as well as downloading my torrents directly to the NAS. I have a DNS-323 with 2 x 1 TB drives raided. The network is a fully utilized gigabit network. All components are gigabit capable with jumbo frames enabled. To tell you the truth, there's a noticeable difference to browse the NAS - much slower - as opposed to streaming from your PC. You'll definitely notice the buffer time before a larger file-sized movie starts streaming. As for torrenting, I had to hack my DNS-323 and install funplug, but I'm sure there are better suitable NAS drives to manage this for you. Some of which already comes with a torrent client plugin.

The cheapest solution would be to get your Mac properly networked to your PC.

Thanks for the reply's I used to have my Mac talking to the pc no problem when it was on xp no problem. I have tried for hour to get the pc visible on the mac but I just can't get it to work on Windows 7.

Its driving me insane. I have just tried again so I can tell you guys EXACTLY what I have done to get it working..

I've done all this: REQ: Windows 7 Guide to SMB Shares. - XBMC Community Forum
Then all this: File Sharing With Snow Leopard - Sharing OS X 10.6 Files With Windows 7

I have my Mac and my PC connected to my router with ethernet cables.

I've tried resetting both my mac and my pc to try and get the pc to show up on the mac but no luck :(

It actually driving me INSANE!!!

Interestingly I can view this on the PC:-



If I double click on MACINTOSH-2 I can actually see my shared folders on the mac:-



And even view the filenames on the Mac:-



But then when I try to open a file I get this even though I have 'Everyone's permission set to Read and Write of the shared folder I am looking at on the Mac:



However SOME stuff WILL open over over the network, for example there are some films which will play from here and here is a picture of my cat which opened over the network no problem..



The file which I can open will copy over to my pc no problem but for the files I can't open I get this message:



I can copy files from my pc to the root of the shared folder no problem but the speed is only around 1MB a second..

I've just realised that the files I can read from the shared folder on the mac from windows 7 are all the ones in the folders in the shared folder but not the ones in the root. Which seems odd...

In any case, this is the extent to what I can do... I have no access to my PC from my Mac AT ALL, but obviously it would be great if I could have a nice two-way sharing this going on.. I can only dream..

Any ideas what is going on with this crazy network?

---------- Post added at 07:18 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:13 PM ----------

I mean I would love to have my network working but I kind of gave up on it until you asked me about it which is why I thought a nas box might be a solution for me as my Mac laptop shows up on my mac no problem.. It obviously be SO much better and cheaper if I could find a way to get my network working instead!

---------- Post added at 07:24 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:18 PM ----------

Originally Posted by el2em

Odd. I could easily connect to my PC from my Mac through the shared SMB.

I actually have a network set up the way you currently want it - using a NAS and streaming my videos from there as well as downloading my torrents directly to the NAS. I have a DNS-323 with 2 x 1 TB drives raided. The network is a fully utilized gigabit network. All components are gigabit capable with jumbo packets enabled. To tell you the truth, there's a noticeable difference to browse the NAS - much slower - as opposed to streaming from your PC. You'll definitely notice the buffer time before a larger file-sized movie starts streaming. As for torrenting, I had to hack my DNS-323 and install funplug, but I'm sure there are better suitable NAS drives to manage this for you. Some of which already comes with a torrent client plugin.

The cheapest solution would be to get your Mac properly networked to your PC.

If Canadian can't see a potential problem with my network I thought I would make my own NAS box using an old PC and some bit hard drives using FreeNAS 8.0 | Storage For Open Source

How are you trying to connect to the PC from the Mac? What's the step-by-step procedure you're using to attempt this connection? Are you using the IP address or the PC name?

Originally Posted by el2em

How are you trying to connect to the PC from the Mac? What's the step-by-step procedure you're using to attempt this connection? Are you using the IP address or the PC name?

Wow! You just sorted out my network problems by just asking me that question! I wrongly assumed the Mac found my shared folders automatically. When I realised it didn't I just used Go>Connect to server used smb://QuietPc it asked me for my user name and password and then asked me which shared folder I wanted to mount! I wish I knew it was THAT simple months ago!

So thanks a million to both you and Canadian I would have never have sorted this without you asking me those questions... I had just given up hope and thought I was going to have to get a NAS drive!

I have to say that its amazing and cool that you are so willing to help other people on this great site and at no benefit to yourselfs too and its not like you do it for rep either as both your rep is disabled being that you are staff!! I'm now able to tell Plex to check out all my many many films on my pc and get busy getting all the info for them, might take it a few hours....