I am due to get my new iMac delivered today and just wondered if anyone could answer a question for me. My old iMac is a 2006 iMac that had 160gb storage. Therefore I purchase an external hard drive for it a while ago and I just wondered if there is a possibility of networking my new and old iMac so I can put the external hard drive on one of the iMacs and access the data on there from my other iMac?
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New iMac today, possible shared usage of external hard drive?
- Thread starter eternalvictor
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You can enable File Sharing in System Preferences > Sharing, but you could simply connect the external HDD to your new iMac.
Migration Assistant / Setup Assistant information:
Migration Assistant / Setup Assistant information:
Setting-up a new Mac from an old one, its Backups, or a PC
which includes:
which includes:
- Using Setup Assistant on Snow Leopard or Leopard
- Using Setup Assistant on Lion
- Using Migration Assistant on Snow Leopard or Leopard
- Using Migration Assistant on Lion
- Transferring files from one User Account to another
- Transferring Home Folders not on a Startup volume
- Transferring Applications
- Problems after using Migration Assistant
I will most likely be attaching the external hard drive to the new imac but I just wondered if I would be likely to share the hard drive once its on the new iMac to my old iMac as I have all my iTunes music and videos on the external hard drive so if I could access all of these from the hard drive on the new iMac then I would be able to save some of the measly 160gb hard drive on the old iMac for something other than music, videos and photo's.
Yes, you can share any drive on your network so other computers can access it.
Mac 101: File Sharing
Thanks for the suggestions. Will see if I can attach my external hard drive to my wireless router and if not I'll follow the file sharing route. Only slight issue I have is that my internet in my area is pretty much non existent, I'm lucky if I get 256kb/s internet!, so I tend to use my iPhone for my internet usage as I have unlimited data and therefore the wifi is not normally turned on for the iMac so I have a feeling this may affect my networking choice, unless I go for the ethernet routing way.
An internet connection isn't required to establish a local wireless network, so you can share files, printers, drives, etc. between computers on your network.
Then I may have a stupid question, but is there anyway to have my wifi active for the connection between my two iMacs but, as I connect from my iPhone for the internet through the bluetooth connection, can I have wifi active and specify that my internet use if governed through the bluetooth connection?
I have an airport express setup in my kitchen and obviously the wifi has to be active on the iMac for me to access the music on it, but this then means that when I want to use the internet I have to disable the wifi on the iMac and connect to my iPhone through bluetooth so I can use reasonably fast internet. Is there a way to work around this or am I just going to have to keep switching and hope that one day I might be able to reach the dizzy heights of broadband that goes into the mB/s range?
I have an airport express setup in my kitchen and obviously the wifi has to be active on the iMac for me to access the music on it, but this then means that when I want to use the internet I have to disable the wifi on the iMac and connect to my iPhone through bluetooth so I can use reasonably fast internet. Is there a way to work around this or am I just going to have to keep switching and hope that one day I might be able to reach the dizzy heights of broadband that goes into the mB/s range?
You have to keep switching, as you can't join two networks simultaneously. Once you get accustomed to broadband, nothing else is tolerable!
I totally agree. Bought my house in April last year and went from being able to get about 10mb/s broadband to near dial up speeds. Suffice to say it did not even enter my thinking when buying the house to check what the internet was like. Guess I'll just have to keep switching between wifi and bluetooth then for my internet and networking needs.
Do you know for a fact that your ISP speed is less then 10Mb/s or are you going by the speed you see from your WiFi? If the later then you might have a signal degrade problem in your house. In my house I need to extend my network so that I can get a good WiFi signal up stairs.