Can I use CIFS?

dschwartzerdschwartzer
Posted:
in macOS edited January 2014
I am thinking of adding a network hard drive to my home network. The documentation says the drive uses CIFS. A couple of questions.



1. Is CIFS a drive format? If so, does it have the same limiktations as FAT32 or will I be able to store large files (over 4GB) on the drive?



2. From what I have been able to find out, CIFS is a Microsoft developed protocol. Do Macs support this format?



3. Any issues or problems I need to be aware of?



Thanks for any advice.



David

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 5
    karl kuehnkarl kuehn Posts: 756member
    CIFS is a later version of SMB (more or less). Apple supports it, and uses either the cifs:// or smb:// protocol markers.
  • Reply 2 of 5
    dschwartzerdschwartzer Posts: 4member
    Karl:



    Thanks for the prompt reply. As you can see from my post count, I am fairly new to Macs and to home networking. Can you provide a little more detail.



    Does that mean that the CIFS protocol is different from the FAT32 drive format? Anhy issues or concerns in using CIFS?



    Thanks,





    David
  • Reply 3 of 5
    chuckerchucker Posts: 5,089member
    It doesn't matter what the drive uses, be it FAT32, NTFS or even something entirely different like ext3. You're connecting it through the network, which means that you're using an entirely different abstraction layer. You don't access the drive using a local file system, but a network file system, namely CIFS, which is SMB with a few extensions.



    You'll be fine on OS X (and pretty much any other modern OS).
  • Reply 4 of 5
    nguyenhm16nguyenhm16 Posts: 203member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by dschwartzer

    Karl:



    Thanks for the prompt reply. As you can see from my post count, I am fairly new to Macs and to home networking. Can you provide a little more detail.



    Does that mean that the CIFS protocol is different from the FAT32 drive format? Anhy issues or concerns in using CIFS?



    Thanks,





    David



    CIFs is not an on-disk filesystem like HFS/UFS/EXT2/NTFS/FAT32/etc. It is an over the wire networking protocol, like AFP, NFS, or its close relative SMB. You don't "format" a disk in CIFS format, that doesn't exist. You can have a disk formatted however you want, and serve it on the network using the CIFS protocol using software like Samba, however.
  • Reply 5 of 5
    kaiwaikaiwai Posts: 246member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by dschwartzer

    I am thinking of adding a network hard drive to my home network. The documentation says the drive uses CIFS. A couple of questions.



    1. Is CIFS a drive format? If so, does it have the same limiktations as FAT32 or will I be able to store large files (over 4GB) on the drive?



    2. From what I have been able to find out, CIFS is a Microsoft developed protocol. Do Macs support this format?



    3. Any issues or problems I need to be aware of?



    Thanks for any advice.



    David



    CIF = Common Internet Filesystem



    Its a destributed filesystem like SMB (Server Messaging Block) and NFS (Network File System).



    The technical, long winded version; a CIFS drive is a folder/drive that has been exported/made available on the network for someone else to mount or access either via making a direct link to the particular shared folder, or simply search for it via the Network Neighbourhood.



    As for any problems; nothing so far, but then again, personally, I prefer using NFS; MacOS X is a bit of a bitch in that department, however, on the Windows XP side of the equation, it is simply a matter of downloading from Microsoft Services for UNIX which includes an NFS server and client.
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