Ye Macce Threade

[morphsci]

Evernote is good stuff.

[jvlgato]

+1 for Evernote.

 

All my quick reference stuff is in there. 

[justin]

took the plunge and bought the scansnap ix500

[Pars]

Any recommendations on how and what to get to do remote admin / etc. on my Mom's Mac Mini? Neither my brother or I have been to my mom's since Christmas, and trying to talk her thru some steps over the phone the other day was painful. Plus she is still having a problem with mail and I can't tell what is going on.

 

Having something for my brother or I do take control of her Mac (using another Mac) would be quite helpful. All machines are running OSX Mavericks. Thanks!

[blessingx]

Maybe?

[HeadphoneAddict]

(1) Since I know my external IP address at home, and I was able to open a port on my Airport Extreme router, I was able to use Mocha VNC app on my iPad to connect to my iMac and control it for free. they also have a paid app with more features.  Since the ISP would change my IP addresses occasionally, I got an easy to remember domain name from www.no-ip.com which re-directs me to the home IP address when I go to the easy domain, and their app on the iMac always updates no-ip with the current IP address if it changes.

 

This can get complicated to get started.  I used it for a while to access the home computer while I was away, with no issues.  But I could not figure out how to access any other Macs on the same IP address when I was away (maybe it needed another port number or something?).  That's where www.logmein.com comes in below.

 

(2) First, another free option - I also think that if you turn on "back to my Mac" in your mom's iCloud account on her Mac, then you could also set up your mom's iCloud acct in a new account on your computer and use it to access her computer.  I'm pretty sure that  you need a Mac to access the other Mac with "back to my Mac" turned on (not an iPad).  While with Mocha VNC you can use an iPad or iPhone to access her Mac.

 

I have not tried to actually remote control a remote Mac with "back to my mac", but when I was  online at a hotel recently I could see my iMac under "Shared" in the sidebar of the finder window.  I was able to access my hard disk and the files on it remotely.  I think the "share desktop" button was active, like when we are both on a local network.  I'd have to double check this.

 

(3) Last fall I signed up for a paid www.logmein.com account to help my daughter in school when she had problems.  I had to because Mocha VNC couldn't get through the Duke firewall, since we couldn't open up a port on their router. The logmein app runs in the background on the remote Mac and actively watches for connection requests, so it's reaching out past the firewall from the other side and looking for us trying to talk to it.

 

When things were all sorted out with her Mac I switched to controlling the iMac and Macbook at home. You can control the other Mac via an iPad app or via their Safari browser plug-in. I like it because I can access more than one computer at home, although it does cost $99 a year, but it's a bit more full featured and might be worth it to you.

 

Set up is much easier since you don't need to find out the external IP addresses or open ports on the router. You just have her log into the logmein website, and then have her download and install the app that will let you get into her Mac.  She'd have to load the app and sign into it once it's downloaded, but then she won't have to deal with the website again.

 

I hope my proof reading was adequate, but this still looks confusing to even me...

[HeadphoneAddict]

I saw Brian's link above which says to turn off "remote management" to use "screen sharing", but I believe that you will actually want "remote management" turned on in the Sharing control panel on your Mom's Mac, IF you want to control it and not just look at the desktop.

 

I checked and I have remote management turned on for the iMac and my Macbook Pro, so I can use either one to control the other one.

[justin]

I've used Evernote for work for the past year and have been happy with it. Convenient having everything sync among my devices.

 

got the scanner, now to figure out what to do with it. can make fully searchable PDFs with the included software of course. Trying to decide if there's much point to Evernote for 10 years worth of invoices, bank statements, receipts, etc. The ones that aren't already on the computer in some searchable form. I can't think of many examples of needing to pull up a 2007 Digikey receipt on my phone or iPad, though the searchable PDFs will be useful when trying to figure out when something was last ordered or a part #...and to get rid of the paper. So maybe Evernote isn't going to add anything here?

[chiguy]

Not the best remote management option but one of the simplest I've used.  

 

http://www.teamviewer.com/en/index.aspx

[blessingx]

^ This and use regularly. Didn't realize they had a Mac version.

[Pars]

Thanks guys! I was going to try the free version of logmein, but think I will try this first. Cheap is good

[jvlgato]

got the scanner, now to figure out what to do with it. can make fully searchable PDFs with the included software of course. Trying to decide if there's much point to Evernote for 10 years worth of invoices, bank statements, receipts, etc. The ones that aren't already on the computer in some searchable form. I can't think of many examples of needing to pull up a 2007 Digikey receipt on my phone or iPad, though the searchable PDFs will be useful when trying to figure out when something was last ordered or a part #...and to get rid of the paper. So maybe Evernote isn't going to add anything here?

Yeah, I use Evernote for active documents, rather than archival stuff.

[HeadphoneAddict]

I'm looking to upgrade my 3.5 year old LaCie 2TB NAS. I'd like to start at 6 TB, but have the ability to upgrade later. Suggestions?

I have a pair of Seagate 7200 RPM 3 TB drives, but LaCie does not think they will work in my older unit which never shipped with more than 4 TB (using two 2TB Seagate 5900 RPM drives). It's also not designed to be upgraded meaning that I could damage it trying to put new drives in.

I like the features and protection of the $500 Drobo 5n, but I like the $300 price and 4.5 star reviews of the Synology DS214 2-bay. A new disk-less 2-bay LaCie is almost half the cost of the Synology, and it's one third the cost of the Drobo. But the LaCie only has a 3-star rating on Amazon, although I've been happy with my old one.

Reviews on Amazon for the drobo are a mix of positive and negative (4-star), but I love the idea that you can add drives to it without reformatting and you get protection with 2, 3, 4 or 5 drives, and they can be different sizes. I like that you don't need a crossover cable or a switch to plug directly into a computer, and I like the battery backup for the memory so it can finish writing data before it shuts down in a case of a power outage.

What do the experts here say?

[TMoney]

The WD MyCloud EX 2 might do the trick for ya.

 

Amazon has the diskless version (you supply your own) for $200.

 

http://www.amazon.com/Cloud-Diskless-Personal-Storage-WDBVKW0000NCH-NESN/dp/B00I2P53NY/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1394841454&sr=8-3&keywords=mycloud+ex+2

[justin]

Yeah, I use Evernote for active documents, rather than archival stuff.

 

i did find a useful feature in evernote, the ability to easily add searchable text on top of a PDF. so if i had scanned a schematic or drawing that had no searchable or relevant text, i could just add a title/keywords to it and those would be searchable. I'm sure there is software that does this on the computer but not sure if it's integrated with the scanner software to make it easy to do as the scanning happens

[Dusty Chalk]

I'm looking to upgrade my 3.5 year old LaCie 2TB NAS. I'd like to start at 6 TB, but have the ability to upgrade later. Suggestions?

I have a pair of Seagate 7200 RPM 3 TB drives, but LaCie does not think they will work in my older unit which never shipped with more than 4 TB (using two 2TB Seagate 5900 RPM drives). It's also not designed to be upgraded meaning that I could damage it trying to put new drives in.

I like the features and protection of the $500 Drobo 5n, but I like the $300 price and 4.5 star reviews of the Synology DS214 2-bay. A new disk-less 2-bay LaCie is almost half the cost of the Synology, and it's one third the cost of the Drobo. But the LaCie only has a 3-star rating on Amazon, although I've been happy with my old one.

Reviews on Amazon for the drobo are a mix of positive and negative (4-star), but I love the idea that you can add drives to it without reformatting and you get protection with 2, 3, 4 or 5 drives, and they can be different sizes. I like that you don't need a crossover cable or a switch to plug directly into a computer, and I like the battery backup for the memory so it can finish writing data before it shuts down in a case of a power outage.

What do the experts here say?

Do you have a MicroCenter near you?  Just get a WD Sentinel or MyCloud or whatever they're calling it and be done with it.  No muss, no fuss, done.

[HeadphoneAddict]

We have a Best Buy in town, and then just Office Depot, Office Max and RadioShack, now that CompUSA and Circuit City shut down.  I have found no RAID NAS in stock anywhere. I did find a WD single disk 3TB mycloud NAS at Best Buy for $170, which would still be an upgrade over my 2TB LaCie RAID (1TB as RAID1).

 

I've had bad luck with WD drives in the past - I've had a 1TB WD 3.5" drive die within 2 years, and similar results with a 640GB laptop drive and 640GB portable external drive. I've not had another brand HD fail yet while I was still using it. So, I was avoiding WD up to this point.  

 

But I will still research the disk-less WD and pit it's features against the Synology and the LaCie diskless versions.  I only paid $105 each for the 3TB Seagate 7200 rpm drives, so I might still be able to afford the Drobo which is expandable later. The WD is certainly a better price than the Synology, and only a few dollars more than the LaCie diskless.

 

I'm still leaning slightly toward the Drobo. I'd love to hear more feedback. Thanks!

 

PS - I tried the two 3TB drives in my old LaCie NetworkSpace Max, which is easier to open than I thought, but it doesn't seem to boot up with them installed. It's fine when I put the dual 1TB drives back in.  So, it's possible that the 4TB that they once shipped these drives with is the most it will support.  I bought it in 2010 about 1-2 month after 3TB drives were released, so I thought with the latest firmware that it would support them.

 

The rapid LED blinking red-blue-red-blue indicates "automatic backup" so it's not the red-red-red blinking that indicates a degraded raid, so maybe the two drives are synchronizing and I'll let it sit for a few hours with the power on and see what happens. However, I should be able to access the NAS while it synchronizes and it's not visible on the network.

[dsavitsk]

I've had bad luck with WD drives in the past - I've had a 1TB WD 3.5" drive die within 2 years, and similar results with a 640GB laptop drive and 640GB portable external drive. I've not had another brand HD fail yet while I was still using it. So, I was avoiding WD up to this point. 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clustering_illusion

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot-hand_fallacy

[HeadphoneAddict]

Thanks for the reminder there is no such thing as luck (good or bad). Sorry about the time you spent looking that stuff up.

 

Right now the decision is between the Drobo and the WD.  Like I said before, I'll research WD and consider it.

 

So far I like that the WD EX2 allows me to connect two more USB 3.0 drives to expand capacity. So, it's closer to a 4-bay than the Synology or LaCie, but I don't know if the external drives can be part of the RAID array, or if they show up as separate drives.

 

The current LaCie products can't add drives, and while my current LaCie does offer a single USB 2.0 for expansion it didn't work with a 120GB HFS+ or 120GB ExFAT portable drive.  

 

I like that the WD has both Twonky server (good) and iTunes support, and that I can access it from the cloud or iPad like I can with my LaCie.  I probably would try the WD Red drives with it instead of these Seagate drives, which I could return, since it's optimized to use those with with WD's "exclusive NASware technology".

 

I just can't get over the flexibility of the Drobo to add drives of different capacities and be able to have it offer protection for either losing one drive or two (of the 5) and still keep going.

[HeadphoneAddict]

I have set up a few Drobo 5Ns at work, and they rock.  Completely awesome product.

 

Thanks!  After more research and contemplating my needs, now and in the future, I went ahead and ordered the Drobo 5N with a crucial 120 GB mSATA accelerator.  I'll install my two 3TB barracuda drives + another two 2TB WD Red drives that I found for $95 each, giving me 6.35 TB of available protected storage.  That's 1GB more than if I'd added a third 3TB drive (see below). 

 

The WD MyCloud with dual 4TB in a RAID1 would have cost about $600 for 3.6 TB protected.  This rig cost about $920 for over 6.35 TB.  That's 15% cheaper per MB than the MyCloud, and for another $100 I can go up to 9.1 TB with data protection.

 

For the tl;dr peeps just stop here...  Really, just scroll past this.    I mean it.

 

Here's part of my decision making, which might help others making a similar choice:

 

(1) That's enough storage to keep my entire 3.5 TB iTunes Media folder with room to grow + a constantly running Time Machine backup that can hold a few months of history.  I didn't want 6 or 8 TB with RAID 0 in a 2-drive box that's being used for backups, but the max I could get with a 2-drive RAID 1 MyCloud is 4TB, and my expanding iTunes media would fill that up by the end of the year.

 

I want protection because all drives fail if you keep them long enough, and protection will save me the trouble of having to spend a few days reconstructing the NAS from a variety of sources.  I'm more concerned about saving time recovering from a failure than losing data, since I have a copy of each file elsewhere - but the extra copies are spread out all over the place on several Macs and external drives. The NAS is mostly to help me centralize my important data and backups for easy access.  I still have off-site bi-monthly backups plus dropbox in case of theft or fire, etc...

 

(2) Why add two 2TB to the pair of 3TB I have, instead of another 3TB (or 4TB)?  With the Drobo's data protection, I'll actually get an extra GB of usable protected storage by adding 2x2TB drives vs a single 4TB as the 3rd drive (for the same cost). The Drobo must assume that the largest drive could be the one that goes bad.  With 3+3+2+2 TB drives, when a 3TB goes bad I still have 3+2+2 left.  That's more storage than a 3+3+4 that loses the largest drive, where I'm left with only 3+3 TB.

 

(3) I can limit the space that the Time Machine share uses (like 2x the size of the Mac's HD), so that TM will remove older data once I hit the limit.  That prevents TM from filling up the whole drive like with the LaCie, and if I understand correctly the TM share won't use up all of that reserved space until the backup grows to that size over time.  

 

(4) I really like the expandability without losing any data.  When I need more room for my iTunes Media or another Time Machine share, then I can simply pop in a 5th drive or swap out a smaller drive for a larger one, without reformatting or losing data, up to 14.5 TB with five x 4TB drives.  With my current drives installed I can add one more 3 or 4 TB drive to get 9.1 TB of protected storage, or I can add the drive and stay at 6.35 TB with dual disk redundancy.

 

(5) I like that I can connect the Drobo directly to my iMac without a network switch, in order to load it up with files faster. Reports are that it does copy faster than FW800 with a direct connection. 

 

(6) I like that I can use a small inexpensive mSATA as cache to speed everything up (I read that it's already much faster than the older Drobo FS with more RAM and upgraded CPU).  

[HeadphoneAddict]

I have the drobo 5N set up and running with four 3TB + one 2TB drives.  I used the two Seagate drives but only one of my two 2TB WD Red, and picked up two new 3TB WD red. So, if there is a failure I lose no data, but my spare drive is only 2TB and capacity will drop from 10TB protected to 9TB. I considered the original plan for a 3+3+3+2+2 setup for 9TB protected, making the 3TB red a spare, but it seemed a waste to not use the extra capacity now.

 

I thought about returning the spare 2 TB drive to Amazon for a 3 or 4TB drive during the return window, but I think I'm maxed out on the spending for now when my spare might sit around for years before I need it.  I also discovered that to make any new drive work in the old LaCie NAS that I'd have to partition them in linux to look like the old 1TB drives, and then clone the NAS OS software onto the new drives with rsync.  That's not worth it with the LaCie box being legacy and 3.5 years old (hence the new drobo) - it works fine as a spare 1TB RAID1 or 2TB RAID0.

 

This thing is pretty fast so far with it connected directly to my iMac's ethernet port to load it up. I'm backing up my 3.5TB iTunes Library, and it's copying really fast at just under 310 GB written to it each hour (1.7 TB in 5.5 hours so far).  The source drive is a 6 TB Thunderbolt LaCie 2Big, which was able to write about 450 GB per hour reading off of a USB 3.0 drive (the mechanical drives being the limiting factor I believe).

 

At this rate it the 3.5 TB will be done in a little over 11 hours total.  

 

And while it's been transferring files I was able to create all the shares and users that we need,which was pretty easy.  It's a shame that with the drobo on the iMac's ethernet port (and the iMac on wifi) that the iMac doesn't share the drobo with other Macs on the network.  I might be able to access it by the drive's IP address, but why not make it show up as a shared drive?

[TMoney]

3.5 TB iTunes library? Wow, thats a ton! (EDIT: Wait, forgot iTunes has music and movies. That might explain things.)

 

Congrats on getting your NAS problem taken care of.

Edited March 20, 2014 by TMoney

[HeadphoneAddict]

The 5N is really made to be plugged directly into a network, but I agree that it's would have been nice if they had done that.

 

I'm just happy that I can plug it directly into my Mac at all, without a switch, and get full-speed to load it up whenever I have a large data transfer that could take 3 days over the network.  My old LaCie NAS has never done better than writing 75-80 GB to it in an hour, despite Cat6 cables and gigabit router and switches. I'll find out tonight or tomorrow how fast the Drobo is on the network.

 

3.5 TB iTunes library? Wow, thats a ton! (EDIT: Wait, forgot iTunes has music and movies. That might explain things.)

 

Congrats on getting your NAS problem taken care of.

 

Thanks!  I keep a copy of everything (bought and ripped), firstly in case Apple stops letting us download a movie or TV show from the Cloud when they lose the rights to it, and secondly so I don't have to re-rip a DVD or CD if the digital copy is lost. I keep another copy of iTunes on a 4TB drive off-site, along with encrypted Time Machine backups of the boot drives of all the Macs. The iMac and Macbook Pro actually have three backups total, including the off-site backup, where one of them is a bootable weekly clone.

[luvdunhill]

Are you using jumbo frames?

[HeadphoneAddict]

Are you using jumbo frames?

 

I left everything at the default - the frame size (MTU) is set at 1500 (out of 1500-9000). I honestly don't know what that means.