Experiences with Share Space and a Mac network?

Hello there I work for a small business looking to replace its NAS which is about five years old now. I have a network of 10 Macs plugged into a network switch and we prefer to connect via AFP. Our current server is protected by an APC UPS. I just wanted to ask any Mac-based users of the ShareSpace what their experiences of the unit are as I am considering it as a solution. I can see from a number of threads that there are concerns about speed.

I’ve had this device for about 5 months with a small Mac network: 1 iMac, 1 MacBook Pro, 1TB TimeCapsule, 1 Airport Express, an iPad, 2 iPhones, 2 iPod Touches and a black ATV. We also have an old HP Laptop that is rarely in use and a 1TB My Book Studio and a 4TB My Book Studio II. I have the 8TB grand daddy WDShareSpace NAS.

I purchased this device primarily to share a very large media library across the network. Network transfer speeds aren’t impressive and I had a lot of issues with using the public share to host all of the itunes content (~40k music files, 200 movies, 300 home movie files). I had random issues with file/folder permissions which WD’s support was of little to no help. You can’t “get info” on the files/folders on this NAS and reset the read/write permissions. As I later discovered, WD’s Support have no clue how to brute force the permissions through logging in as root through ssh (although there was a user on a forum post who fixed this issue this way.) I rebooted, reset the share permissions through the web gui, quadruple checked the firmware etc. I was asked to do random things like unplug it from the switch and plug it into the router, if that didn’t work plug it into another router… Nothing worked (nor did I attempt some of the more ridiculously absurd recommendations like the router swap - who has multiple routers laying around anyway???) Now I’m in the process of reformatting the device which will allegedly take 2-3 days (6 hours in its been stuck at 26% for about 5.5 of them… we’ll see if it bricks.) I suspect that the issue had something to do with different users writing to the shared media folder which then locked other users out of. Just a hunch since even the admin account was locked out of some folders… go figure.

I moved all of the data (about 2.5 TB’s) worth onto a WD My Book Studio II 4TB device and shared that out to the network from the iMac- effectively creating a media server. It has proven to be MUCH more reliable than the NAS. The iTunes library works flawlessly across all the devices now and moving files is considerably faster (gigabit switches with all CAT6 550 mhz cables.) With the NAS I also had a lot of issues streaming video to the ATV. Those are all a thing of the past now too.

I’m a big fan of the My Books but the Sharespace will be relegated to strictly a TimeMachine solution. If I could, I would get my money back for this NAS and buy a Synology or maybe a QNAP for about the same $$$. Highly recommend the My Books, but a big thumbs down on the ShareSpace.

Thanks for the reply. I have a MyBook 2TB NAS at home and I’m really pleased with it so I was excited to see that WD make a RAID-enabled NAS. Thanks for sharing your issues on Mac, it’s been a great help. I hate permissions problems, drive me around the bend! I know very little about ssh and reading these threads it seems that a lot of people have had to use it to access the drive, which is not ideal at all. Sorry to hear you’ve had these issues. As it’s a small company my IT role is only a small part of my job and I want to have something that will just run and that I don’t need to troubleshoot too much or anything. We have been using a Buffalo TeraStation which, on the whole, has been fine, but it’s not officially Mac-supported and is beginning to have issues with AFP. Thanks for the pointers with QNAP and Synology, I will add them to my list to do some research. :slight_smile: