iMac Accessories.

[Aspekt]

Hi all, just want to see what iMac accessories everyone uses, or planning on getting. Or simply likes to share their experience/recommendation on a certain product.

More interested on non-Apple product. So accessories such as Thunderbolt/USB3 dock, a storage/stand.

For me, I like to purchase a dock so that I will have an easier access to the ports without having to turn the iMac around every time. I also currently own a WD My Book Pro 16TB external hard drive.


Looking forward to hear from everyone else.

 

[ChrisUnderChinkapins]

External monitors. Very nice! I had an iMac 21" for 9 years with one external monitor added. This fall I bought a 27" iMac and added two identical Dell monitors that were pretty cheap but still world better than my old external monitor. It is very nice to be able to slide extra windows off to the side but still read them or navigate to them without clicking on every closed window to find the one I want.

 

[Fishrrman]

Most important thing:

An external drive for backing up.
USB3 with a 2.5" form factor is fine.

I recommend either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper.
Both are free to download and try for 30 days.

I suggest either of the above (rather than Time Machine) because you need A SECOND BOOT SOURCE (that means "bootable to the finder") for those "I can't boot!" moments ahead...

 

[MCAsan]

Getting ready to move to Akitio Thunderbolt 3 Quad X. You can use the 4 spaces for 2.5 or 3.5 drives and set them up as JBOD, RAID 0 or 1,...etc. If you use something like SoftRaid software, you can do RAID 5, 6, or 10.

The transport is TB3, not just USB-C 3.1 Gen 2. So there is plenty of bandwidth to do a two disk RAID 0 for data plus a two disk RAID 1 for TM backups....or.....a 3 disk RAID 0 for fast data access and a single large disk (WD gold) for TM backup.

 

[SaSaSushi]

I just added a Kurotou Shikou 2-bay USB3.1 Gen.2 enclosure (sorry, Japanese only) to the backup arsenal. Unfortunately, I think it's only sold here in Japan.

For less than $80 it's a really solidly built aluminum enclosure with a fan that can be switched on and off.

Currently I've got two Seagate Barracuda 7200rpm 3TB HDDs running in RAID0 but the enclosure also supports single mode, RAID1 and JBOD. I see close to 400MB/s read and write in Blackmagic.

This is a similar StarTech enclosure that is more widely available.