AFP vs SMB for NAS

K

krx

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I'm in the market for a NAS (network attached storage) drive mostly for backups and some shared files. With no "cross-platform" issues to contend with (my home network is comprised of 2 iBooks and an iMac) would I not be better off getting an AFP-based drive rather than one that uses SMB or other protocols? Isn't AFP superior to SMB (and other protocols) in this situation? Or is the difference not that great?

If the answer is yes, AFP is better, can anyone tell me where or how to find one? It doesn't appear that this information is available on most manufacturer's data sheets.
 
It appears that you are looking for a controversy where there is none. Certainly there is not one in this list. However, you really need to reassess your reasons for wanting NAS.
 
I want NAS for a small, home LAN. I don't need more than 250GB. The list you reference appears to be mostly for corporate use. In any case, these are way more product than I need or care to pay for.

There is a whole array of consumer products, like the BUFFALO LinkStation (250GB, $180) and the LaCie Ethernet Disk mini (250GB, $200), that are very popular. However, they have received mixed reviews. I have wondered if some of the "controversy" (I'm not looking for it, it's out there) is due to the fact that most users seem to be using their NAS in cross-platform situations, using SMB or other PC-friendly protocols.

I'm hoping that sticking to AFP might resolve the problems (one of which is a well-known 2GB file limit).

And why, praytell, do I need to reassess?
 
This comment to a review of the Linksys NLSU2 is typical of what I'm talking about:

"One of the nice things about the NLSU2 is that is has some basic backup facilities built into the device. I was easily able to setup the device to do a full backup of two Windwos XP machines. (Setting up the shares on the XP machines was much more of a pain than setting up the NLSU2.)

However, I had a problem backing up my iBook. I setup a samba share to the whole drive (/Volumes/drivename) in smb.conf. The NLSU2 had no problem finding it and starting the backup. But it went wrong when it hit automount/Servers, which contained a symbolic link back to /. The link wasn't recognized as a link but rather a folder, so I have this nice, many many levels deep folder on the drive.

I don't know if this is a fault of samba, or OSX, or the NLSU2... it worked fine on my Windows machine (backing up all of C:), so I'm not sure exactly where the problem lies."

This is the sort of thing I'm hoping to avoid.
 
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