NAS file system, will it work with MAC and Windows PC?

Last updated on 09 Jun 2022 📧 Subscribe

NAS file system, will it work with MAC and Windows PC?

NAS has its own file system. You will often find one of these being used EXT4. BTRFS. ZFS.

But this is nothing to do with your local file system on your MAC or Windows. If this is a USB or Thunderbolt direct-attached drive then the file system should match. But with a network drive, you can copy and paste files from many different systems. SMB or other protocol you use to connect will translate all data into something your computer understands.

You can connect from MAC, WIN, or LINUX via SMB, AFP, NFS or other ways.

NFS is a protocol used to communicate between two Linux systems.
AFP is for communications between Apple devices
SMB is a universal protocol that is easy to set up and use.

You can enable any of these protocols on your NAS. But performance will be affected since there are different platforms trying to communicate.
The fastest performance will be via SMB.

I hope this helps.

DOWN	WIN	LINUX	MAC
SMB	22% slower	22%	72%
AFP		42%	Fastest
NFS		35%	6%

UP	WIN	LINUX	MAC
SMB	4% slower	25%	3%
AFP		26%	8%
NFS		Fastest	35%

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