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Perhaps you could expand on what you mean by "connect by network cable" - if you mean a direct connect between Mac and NAS, it is unusual, but possible with the right kit, but if not...
There's no problem networking both a NAS and a Mac. For optimum performance you'd want both and the infrastructure devices to be Gigabit ethernet capable. A NAS almost certainly will be (but check) and your Mac probably is also (but again, check) unless it is ancient. If either are "only" 100mbps (AKA "fast") ethernet capable, it will still work, but transfers will be roughly 1/10th the speed.
Connect both NAS and Mac to your network with network cables (so check your router has enough free ethernet ports) give them IP addresses (which your router will almost certainly do automatically using a mechanism called DHCP) publish some "shares" on the NAS, "mount" them on the Mac and off you go. It would be worthwhile "fixing" the IP address the NAS uses so it never changes (unlikely as that is but it is possible using DHCP.)
It would be worth checking if your router is Gigabit ethernet capable, if not it will almost certainly be 100mbps capable - again with performance hit. If your router is "only" 100mbps and/or does not have enough free ethernet ports, then it would be worth buying a Gigabit capable "ethernet switch," connect that to your router, then connect NAS/Mac to said switch. Little 5-8 port "desktop" ethernet switches are only a few tens of pounds these days.
There's a FAQ about NAS's pinned in this forums, you might care to have a read through it and of course you can always post back any specific questions.
An additional advantage of NAS over direct connect is that you also make the NAS shares available to everything else on your network.
Incidentally, if you are running a business and might need "point in time" copies of the data, you might have a look and see if your NAS offers the ability to take "snapshots" (in the data husbandry rather than the photography sense.) Such snapshots are not quite the same as "proper" backups, but can be useful if you ever have need to roll back to the data to a point in time, access previous versions, etc. |
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