Wife and I have daily driver laptops and I setup both a mini (in our entertainment center) and an iMac (now Studio) that’s my photo processing platform and tried to setup Time Machine on the laptops with them as the destination. I’ve been doing macOS and Apple II os before that since the early 80s…and was a Windows sysadmin for 20+ years…so I’m pretty computer savvy. Time Machine to a network server basically doesn’t work right. I would go with the mini for a couple of reasons…but it really boils down to just one…and that’s TM. The Western Digital My Cloud Home seemed easy to manage but has some shortfalls, do the Pro Series address these issues? I am comfortable with technology and happy to set up a NAS if it will deliver the services above and addresses the issues Ivan highlighted… Any thoughts/advice? robustness of Time Machine backups, speed of processor and external USB. My initial thoughts were to get a NAS but after reading Ivan Drucker’s article on TibBITS (14th January 2022) this is not as simple as I would have hoped e.g. A Mac mini attached to an external HDD seems expensive but will ensure everything works smoothly and easy to manage. My options seem to be either a Mac mini or a NAS. Not essential, but a web server would be nice. Storage for photos (I am about to buy a 45 megapixel camera and will be storing files as RAW and do not want to clog up my MBP (~5TB).I am looking to run the following key services: If you’re tech-savvy you can even install dual hard disks into some models to make them more capable computers, and therefore better servers.I posted a question about running a Plex server and thanks to everyone who responded, it has opened a can of worms for me and my head is spinning! If you have an older version of the Mac mini, though, it can still be customized with things like external hard drives. So it’s great that you can just buy a Mac mini that can handle a lot right off the bat. The more activity the server will be seeing from different users and devices the more computing power you’ll want. These Mac minis can have up to 2TB of storage and 16GB of RAM. The M1 chip available in them makes them really powerful computers-more powerful than their Intel chip predecessors. That might not be necessary with recent Mac mini models. It’s also a rare Apple product that can be physically opened and altered by users, should you want to add or alter hardware inside of the machine. With four Thunderbolt ports fast enough for external accessories that add things like storage, the Mac mini is pretty customizable. Thankfully the Mac mini is easily outfitted with such hardware. Then hit the plus button ( +) under the Shared Folders menu that appears to add folders you want accessible via the server. Note that this is different than the Family Sharing option.Ĭheck the box for File Sharing under the Service menu on the left. Once that’s done, you can set the Mac mini up for file sharing by opening System Preferences and clicking on Sharing. Related: How to Keep Your Mac From Sleeping: Methods That Work Namely, you have to make sure your Mac mini is set up to stay powered on and won’t go to sleep due to inactivity so you can continuously access it. If you’re looking to make a server mostly to access or back up your own files, and to share across devices rather than several users at once, this is the perfect setup method for you.įirst, there are a few hardware adjustments to make. Turning a Mac mini Into a Server the Simple Wayįortunately, macOS already has many sharing features available that make turning a Mac mini server incredibly easy, particularly when everything is on the same network.
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