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Iphone4sinwhite

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Oct 24, 2011
307
3
First: Hopefully this is the correct location for this question. If not would really appreciate guidance on where to ask (this forum or elsewhere).

Second: We have 3 macs or iMacs at home (soon to be 4 or 5) and I'm looking to create a storage solution that can be mounted to any of the macs (possibly multiple at once) over my home network, is locally duplicated (maybe RAID 1?), and can be backed up to the cloud. Does a solution like this exist?
 
3M Double Side tape works great for me.
The outside rated kind.
I stick AppleTV's to the back of TV's as well with it.

I have seen several of the actual iMac stand shelf things and don't care for spending the cash on it when I don't like it.
Just google "iMac shelf" and you will find a boatload of options for storing things on the back of your mac.

Time Machine isn't very quick, so an inexpensive 5400rpm HDD works very well.
People always have the option of choosing a multi terabyte SSD to use just for storage, where the speed is potentially only utilized 2-3 times a year.

I work with hundreds of TB's of storage for many computers and I pick the tool that works for a specific job.
If I particularly need space, I buy space.
If I want speed, then I'll buy speed.

For myself, speed is almost always a 'want item' as I don't work with multiple TB files at a single time often. So sending a file to transfer that will take 3 minutes while I go do something else is fine for me when I look at the dollar trade off.
 
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Really depends on your data throughput needs for "better" or faster sustained options, then your storage capacity needs. Could be as simple as an NAS with multiple client access then using Backblaze style backup for cloud.
 
3M Double Side tape works great for me.
The outside rated kind.
I stick AppleTV's to the back of TV's as well with it.

I have seen several of the actual iMac stand shelf things and don't care for spending the cash on it when I don't like it.
Just google "iMac shelf" and you will find a boatload of options for storing things on the back of your mac.

Time Machine isn't very quick, so an inexpensive 5400rpm HDD works very well.
People always have the option of choosing a multi terabyte SSD to use just for storage, where the speed is potentially only utilized 2-3 times a year.

I work with hundreds of TB's of storage for many computers and I pick the tool that works for a specific job.
If I particularly need space, I buy space.
If I want speed, then I'll buy speed.

For myself, speed is almost always a 'want item' as I don't work with multiple TB files at a single time often. So sending a file to transfer that will take 3 minutes while I go do something else is fine for me when I look at the dollar trade off.

Thanks, is there a particular enclosure you would recommend for two 5400rpm drives? How about an online backup provider?
 
Are these drives just going to be used for backup or for active files?

If you want to share the drives between multiple macs do you want to have them attached to one mac and have them shared with the others?

With that many Macs a NAS would certainly seem to be a good solution, as they are designed specifically to support multiple users. Sharing drives from a Mac can be a bit messy. NAS units also (with 4 or more drives) allow you to add RAID protection. They can also backup to cloud services. However connection speed is a bottleneck - whether wired or via WiFi.

Backblaze and Crashplan business have unlimited storage for about the same price. But you should have at least a 3-2-3 backup strategy.
 
Are these drives just going to be used for backup or for active files?

If you want to share the drives between multiple macs do you want to have them attached to one mac and have them shared with the others?

With that many Macs a NAS would certainly seem to be a good solution, as they are designed specifically to support multiple users. Sharing drives from a Mac can be a bit messy. NAS units also (with 4 or more drives) allow you to add RAID protection. They can also backup to cloud services. However connection speed is a bottleneck - whether wired or via WiFi.

Backblaze and Crashplan business have unlimited storage for about the same price. But you should have at least a 3-2-3 backup strategy.


Thanks a lot HDFan
-This will be active files
-Sounds like a NAS is the way to go; is it better to be attached to a single Mac and shared with the others (through the Mac's network connection) or have the NAS be standalone? If it's connected to and shared through one Mac then I imagine that Mac can't ever go to sleep.
-Is there a particular NAS manufacturer that is recommended? I imagine some processing must be done on the NAS and therefore needs some amount of on board processing as opposed to just a usb connected drive.
-Can throughput time be reduced if the NAS is ethernet connected to the wifi router?
 
-This will be active files
-Sounds like a NAS is the way to go; is it better to be attached to a single Mac and shared with the others (through the Mac's network connection) or have the NAS be standalone? If it's connected to and shared through one Mac then I imagine that Mac can't ever go to sleep.
-Is there a particular NAS manufacturer that is recommended? I imagine some processing must be done on the NAS and therefore needs some amount of on board processing as opposed to just a usb connected drive.
-Can throughput time be reduced if the NAS is ethernet connected to the wifi router?

If active files then the transfer speed of a NAS becomes an issue. In the worst case, say you were doing 8K video editing, that can't be done over most networks. One system would have to be dedicated for this usage. It would connect to that NAS directly via thunderbolt. The fastest connections are thunderbolt 3 (up to 40 GBs) and 10 GbE. 1GbE runs in the 800-900 Mbs. Wifi speeds are often 1/2 that. Other users with their less demanding applications could attach via the network. But you have to consider whether the applications they use are workable over a network. As for connecting directly to a router, you usually have to connect a NAS to a router, switch or hub to make it available over the network.

If the drives are shared via the Mac then yes, it would have to be kept on. If the files are on a NAS then you can turn off the Mac and have the NAS serve the files over the network.

QNAP has several models that have thunderbolt, but they are not cheap. There are a lot of Synology fans on this website. Cheaper, no thunderbolt, but 10 GbE options are available. Yes, most NAS units have cpus.

In my case my QNAP NAS is connected to my Mac via thunderbolt. I do a lot of file transfers (4K video files up to 100 GB in size) to the NAS via thunderbolt. When the transfer is complete I turn off my mac and run a Plex server on the NAS. BlackMagic speed test results are ~350 MB/s write, ~1550 MB/s, but this is a high end NAS. A 4 bay QNAP Blackmagic benchmark for 10 GbE gives ~230 MB/s write, ~575 MBs read.
 
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