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I just bought a Synology DS413j in order to replace a handful of external USB drives with a single box that I can access without plugging anything into my Mac. I was a little disappointed to realize that, when connecting to my NAS via the default AFP, I got a drive that didn’t support Trash and didn’t seem to support Unix permissions. (It was also dog slow, even with the NAS and my computer plugged into my router, although that may be a separate issue.)

Ideally, I’d like to be able to treat the Synology as a normal HFS+ volume that happens to consist of multiple physical drives and which happens to be accessible over the network. (I realize that HFS+ is terrible in a lot of ways, but at least it supports the Mac “niceties” like permission metadata.) Is anything like this possible? Will connecting via SMB or NFS fix these problems?

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  • that's really not what a NAS is for. it sounds like you want an external enclosure. Oct 21, 2013 at 16:44
  • @FrankThomas Yeah, you may be right. I asked here because I thought that I might be able to get something more like what I want just by enabling some option somewhere.
    – bdesham
    Oct 21, 2013 at 17:37
  • unfourtunately, probably not. a synology nas is like a tiny computer unto itself (runs linux, or at least mine does) so its a full stack solution, and as such, you can't really separate the components. Oct 21, 2013 at 18:20
  • Take a look into setting up the iSCSI Target (forum.synology.com/wiki/index.php/…), the main problem is the lack of a iSCSI initiator in OSX Oct 22, 2013 at 11:34

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Your NAS already connects via SMB according to the user manual. The underlying file system is ext4, though this shouldn't really matter to you. It may be possible to enable Trash, according to this question from another stackexchange site. It indicates connecting via SMB instead of AFP, using the control panel app.

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  • I accepted this answer, although what I actually did was just to take @FrankThomas’s advice and buy a Drobo instead.
    – bdesham
    Nov 1, 2013 at 13:39
  • Friends who have Drobos rave about them. It seems likely to be a good option for you. I hope you enjoy it. :) Nov 1, 2013 at 13:41

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