NAS Drives and Windows Vista

One of the features NAS manufacturers mention is "Windows Vista Compatible" Why? It's just Windows, right?

Windows Vista uses an authentication scheme called NTLM2 where as most NAS devices using Samba support NTLM but not NTLM2.

There's 2 ways around this. One is to get a drive that specifically mentions Vista support. The other is to turn authentication off. Most drives can be run with no security so there's no need for password exchange which is where NTLM and NTLM2 are needed.

Turning off security can be a deal breaker. On a home network it can be no big deal to run an unsecured NAS. If you want or need even a little security then you would need a Vista capable device.

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