Q: MacBook Best Setup for Media Server and Backup
Hi,
I have a MacBook with an (almost full) 128GB SSD.
With the lowest costs possible i want to achieve the best solution for:
1. storing documents, music, photos on an external drive, if possible wireless
2. backing up everything (internal and external storages) with Time Machine
Please give me some recommendations for those two topics. It should be also very easy to handle. And: I dunno if thunderbolt-speed (very costy) is really needed!
Thanks
MacBook Pro with Retina display, Mac OS X (10.7.5)
Posted on Mar 25, 2016 1:45 AM
1. storing documents, music, photos on an external drive, if possible wireless
Local network storing of documents is fine.. over wireless even .. but if you mean iphoto or photos app for storing your photos you are asking for trouble. Holding the library open by wireless on a network drive will result in the corruption of the whole library. Apple has due warnings about this for iphoto .. I cannot find the same warnings for photos but I suspect it is the same. iTunes seems to work ok over the network.. but via wireless is still a very bad idea.
It is slow and frankly unreliable.
2. backing up everything (internal and external storages) with Time Machine
This is the real problem.. Time Machine is singularly inept backup software. It cannot backup network drives.. So that eliminates wireless or ethernet connections. TM can only backup drives plugged directly to the computer by thunderbolt, USB, FW etc.
I dunno if thunderbolt-speed (very costy) is really needed!
Very true.. even the cable has a ridiculous price. USB3 is great.. It is higher latency than Thunderbolt connection but the speed is very good.
I have a MacBook with an (almost full) 128GB SSD.
As long as this is 2012 or later it has USB3 ports. And you can plug in an SSD .. say 500GB and it will work very well.. for bulk storage you can add a USB3 hub and also run a large USB mechanical hard disk.. 4TB are probably the best price point.
My MacMini is 2011 so missed out on USB3.. I bought a Thunderbolt dock.. which is still cheaper than Thunderbolt drive and it has USB3 ports on it.
OWC sells a very nice model for just over $200.
https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/Thunderbolt/Dock/OWC/Thunderbolt2-Dock/
The advantage of this is one simple cable to plug in when you come home with the laptop and you can have everything else plugged permanently into the dock.
You can then still use TM by simply plugging another disk into the dock as the target.. hugely faster than TC over ethernet even.. even USB2 is faster than that.. but wireless is dead slow..
Do you carry the laptop around with you?? If so I think you are better buying something else as the media centre. (Apple don't have media servers.. strange but true).
If you think a bit more broadly .. a 2011 or 2012 Mac mini makes a far superior media center than a Macbook pro.
They can easily be upgraded with more RAM and 2 standard disk laptop drives or external disks.. you can use internally an SSD for boot and cache plus 1TB or maybe even 2TB SATA laptop drive. You will need to check the thickness allowed if you go for the larger drive.
Posted on Mar 25, 2016 2:51 PM