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chris566

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 11, 2010
104
20
Carolina
I recently bought the most recent MM Server on eBay and am running ML. I don't know anything about servers, so I'm wondering if I'm utilizing my Macintosh to it's fullest potential for my computing needs at home.

This Mac is connected via gigabit to hard drives that are connected to my Base Station Extreme. I stream video/audio from my MM to Apple TV and other iOS devices. Each iOS app that streams from the MM require a server application to be installed. Other than that, I just use it for web browsing, pictures, and video.

Am I losing anything by just running a Mac Mini Server without using any of its serving abilities? Would it be faster to read/write on network drives? Maybe I'm just reading into this "Server" aspect way too much.

Anyone that can help and enlighten me would be appreciated. I'm not a big computer tech person, so forgive me if these are dumb questions. Google wasn't helpful.
 

Omnius

macrumors 6502a
Jul 23, 2012
562
30
You can do more but it really all comes down to whether its serving your needs.
 

michelg1970

macrumors 6502
Jul 26, 2011
287
110
The Hague - The Netherlands
I have the server and am very happy with it. But for what would you use it? (see many other posts).

For file sharing and media center the base model is fine and add a few extra $$$ for the server app and you are done.

Most of my data is on external drives (1x 2 TB on FW 800, 1 x 2 TB on USB 2, 2 x 2GB on LaCie Thunderbolt e-SATA) and then chipset simply becomes bottleneck.

In hindsight (most movie processing and conversion is done either on MBP or iMac) a normal base model Mac Mini would have done too.

For your own consideration....

BR,
Michel
 
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