Hello,
I own and manage a small 3 man shop that currently uses a 2010 Mac mini with twin 500 GB drives as the server. It works quite well and the response times are good enough for use to do the daily work without any problems.
We do a lot of photoshop work with files in the range of 500MB- 1GB, so sometimes the server lag slows us down slightly.
I have been eyeing the new OWC upgrades to the 2011 mac minis where you could drop in two 480 GB SSD drive with "out of this world" r/w performance.
I have a fundamental question: would the faster SSD drives be noticeable at all due to the overall limitations of ethernet? Or would I suddenly be writing 500 MB files to the server in half a second? Does the speed of the drive even matter when you are writing over a network?
Our network is real basic - essentially a Apple airport works as our hub and the server and 2 other machines are wired into it. All cables are Cat 5. I realize I probably need a new hub to add seats as the business grows.
I am pretty well versed in the world of Mac (been doing it for 20 years) and I consider myself smart enough to set up almost anything, but I have no idea on this point. Any advice is appreciated.
A few caveats - No I am not willing to set up a PC based server (yet) because I love macs and the business isn't big enough. And if I did I would probably bring in an outside IT firm. I am just looking to do a possible upgrade to give us even greater performance.
I own and manage a small 3 man shop that currently uses a 2010 Mac mini with twin 500 GB drives as the server. It works quite well and the response times are good enough for use to do the daily work without any problems.
We do a lot of photoshop work with files in the range of 500MB- 1GB, so sometimes the server lag slows us down slightly.
I have been eyeing the new OWC upgrades to the 2011 mac minis where you could drop in two 480 GB SSD drive with "out of this world" r/w performance.
I have a fundamental question: would the faster SSD drives be noticeable at all due to the overall limitations of ethernet? Or would I suddenly be writing 500 MB files to the server in half a second? Does the speed of the drive even matter when you are writing over a network?
Our network is real basic - essentially a Apple airport works as our hub and the server and 2 other machines are wired into it. All cables are Cat 5. I realize I probably need a new hub to add seats as the business grows.
I am pretty well versed in the world of Mac (been doing it for 20 years) and I consider myself smart enough to set up almost anything, but I have no idea on this point. Any advice is appreciated.
A few caveats - No I am not willing to set up a PC based server (yet) because I love macs and the business isn't big enough. And if I did I would probably bring in an outside IT firm. I am just looking to do a possible upgrade to give us even greater performance.