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Sharing files on home network

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Gregzilla75

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 30, 2020
4
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Hi, As I've been using the same files at home and at work recently, I've kept my working documents on an external drive, however, now that I am moving the project to solely work on at home I've been contemplating what setup to have.

I have a Mac Mini as my main 'base' and am thinking of getting a Macbook so I can continue working in front of the tv! So would keeping the working files on the external HD and connecting/disconnecting that between the Mac Mini and Macbook when required make sense, or would you discourage working from an external HD?

Alternatively, I was thinking, perhaps move all files to the Mac Mini desktop, use the external HD with Time Machine as a backup, and then somehow setup a home network between the Mini and Macbook so I can pick up the files remotely. I've not had experience setting up a home network before and wonder if it is easy enough, free, and do you need decent wifi?

Would appreciate any advice. Thanks.
 
How large are the files you are talking about? If we are only talking small documents (ie no large video/audio files), you can set set that your Documents folder is uploaded to iCloud, and so you'll automatically see the same Documents on both your machines. This may be more straightforward, and does not require your Mini to be on all the time. It also means you can access them on the go, without needing to be at home.

You could still store media on the Mac Mini, and share that folder. But for normal documents I'd recommend the iCloud setup.

Of course you could set up a home network, along with a VPN etc if you want to access things remotely, but to be honest that seems unnecessarily complicated for a normal 'home' setup.
 
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I have a similar setup. I use a Mac mini as my main computer but have it in my network closet with external drives connected as my media server, photo storage and Time Machine. I use a 16" MacBook Pro as my daily driver. When I need to transfer a file I just use screen sharing and drag a file from my MacBook desktop to the Mac mini desktop and it works great. Then I can move the file to my external drive for storage. This works either direction.
 
I have quite large files. Basically setting a magazine everything month, so have Indesign files with links to Photoshop and Illustrator assets. I'd need access to the whole volume really (10 years worth of magazines), so working from the transferrable HD is quite convenient for me, but I'm worried that if the drive breaks I'm knackered, and that this method is old fashioned whereas folk these days have a more streamlined solution.

At work our files are shared on a Server, which is accessible by multiple users. No need to copy over files, you open them straight from the Server. I guess something like that for my home projects would be preferrable to iCloud. Although the Macs at work are connected to the Server by wires, whereas my macbook would be wireless.
 
In that case, a home server setup seems sensible. But make sure the drive is backed up constantly (and have a redundant backup if you can as well). It is very easy to do - just set up a shared folder on the Mac Mini and you are good to go. If you want remote access to the Mini, you can set up a VPN (I haven't done this before but you can do it through Mac OS).

Is your router 802.11ac? If so, it will make file transfer much faster than earlier standards - if not, get a 802.11ac router and run your network through that (with the Mac Mini plugged in via Ethernet if you can).
 
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If you like the hard drive method, then just make sure you have a good backup, so if the hard drive dies, you order a new one, restore the backup, and be up and running.

You could even use a second hard drive and use something like Chronosync to automatically copy Drive 1 to Drive 2. Have Drive 2 (the backup) permanently connected to the Mini; connect Drive 1 to the Mini every night, and schedule the backup for after your work day is over. If Drive 1 dies, start using Drive 2 and when Drive 3 arrives from your favorite vendor reconfigure your daily automatic backup. I use Chronosync for my local backup. (I also use BackBlaze for offsite backup.)

You could also get a network drive and store the files there accessing them from both Macs. I have an old Apollo cloud device I use for this, sharing (mainly) photo files in my household. It is nice that I can access this from anywhere, and back when one could travel would back up our photos there every night. Nice peace of mind when traveling. It is possible your company already has what they need to do this, and you could use the company servers, they just need to be exposed to the web. I've been working from home since March and this is what my company does.

I little over a year ago I had to spend several months at my parent's place (dad, who is 90, fell and broke his hip). I used Screens to connect my MacBookAir to my then main machine, a 2010 MacPro. I had no problems transferring files from one machine to the other. Screens lets one Mac control another. So I could run programs on my MacPro that I did not have loaded on the MBA as well. I suspect the performance would be even better on my local network.

These are just some ideas, based on what I've found useful. Others in the thread have made good suggestions as well. You've got options. Good luck whatever you decide to do.
 
r6mile said:
How large are the files you are talking about? If we are only talking small documents (ie no large video/audio files), you can set set that your Documents folder is uploaded to iCloud, and so you'll automatically see the same Documents on both your machines. This may be more straightforward, and does not require your Mini to be on all the time. It also means you can access them on the go, without needing to be at home.

You could still store media on the Mac Mini, and share that folder. But for normal documents I'd recommend the iCloud setup.

Of course you could set up a home network, along with a VPN etc if you want to access things remotely, but to be honest that seems unnecessarily complicated for a normal 'home' setup.
Click to expand...

this.
i also think that unless we are talking >100GB size documents, iCloud is the best way to go, for almost any scenario.
i work frequently from home and modify documents most of which are more than 10GB. i have an adequate speed internet connection - not fast - only about (actual) 300Mbs. and its all quick enough.
since i (before covid) also travelled for work as well, even with slow hotel and visited office internet speeds there was never any problem. the more devices you have the more a person needs iCloud to sync them all.
apple has done iCloud Drive well. never a problem with it.
 
Thanks for all the advice, very helpful. Leaning towards r6mile's suggestion as that's pretty much what I originally envisaged and it sounds easy enough. Will copy everything to my desktop at the weekend and setup the backup drive. Will try the 'shared' folder theory when I manage to obtain a Macbook. Thanks again.
 
niji said:
this.
i also think that unless we are talking >100GB size documents, iCloud is the best way to go, for almost any scenario.
i work frequently from home and modify documents most of which are more than 10GB. i have an adequate speed internet connection - not fast - only about (actual) 300Mbs. and its all quick enough.
since i (before covid) also travelled for work as well, even with slow hotel and visited office internet speeds there was never any problem. the more devices you have the more a person needs iCloud to sync them all.
apple has done iCloud Drive well. never a problem with it.
Click to expand...
I just had to laugh! “i have an adequate speed internet connection - not fast - only about (actual) 300Mbs.” you said.

I just measured our speed here in the UK. I must admit I thought ours was quite fast. I certainly pay enough and have never had a faster connection. And it is (drum roll........) 62Mbs.
 
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We switched a couple of months ago from cable (150/5) to fiber (1000/1000). Happy!
But I would point out two things on the OP's environment. First, if you have slow up speeds, this may affect your workflow. Second, if you decide to work from a local/external drive, get an SSD. All the moving around can wreak havoc on an HDD while working. SSDs are resistant to normal bumps and movement. Not to mention the speed.
 
It should be noted that for working within the home your internet speed has no bearing on performance. Only once you're outside the home, on a different network and connected back through a VPN or some other process will your internet speed have any impact on this. You could have DSL, but as long as you have good speeds to/within your router it'll perform well.
 
Think about a NAS device (setting aside that you might not have the infrastructive to support it yet). The major NAS manufactors will sell you setups with drives that are paired so that if one fails, the other still has the data. And there can be an external connected to the NAS for backup.

In my case, I have a Synology DS412+ (which is an older model) with 2 paired sets of 4 TB disks, that are backed up to externals every day.

It's a gigabit setup, wired.

The unit appears in Finder as a shared device. I can put links on my desktop if I want to.

It's very convenient, but I don't think a similar setup would work very well over wifi (meaning that you'd connect the NAS to your router and then get into it via wifi to your router). If your setup is such that you do have some ethernet wiring, then you can probably get into it via ethernet, which would be faster and less subject to disruption.

Anyway, do consider a NAS setup before deciding. I've been doing NAS (different vendors, models, etc.) for I suppose a good 15 years and have been pleased. This is in a household with two users and sometimes has many as 4 or 5 Macs.

I too work in InDesign and the other CC apps, and for clients. I keep my "hot" work in Dropbox (but iCloud would work the same, I'm sure) and keep all the old work on the NAS.
 
As I finish setting up my 2018 Mini, I'm making changes to my home network. Have been using a 2014 Mini as a media server and also file server for minor things (like transferring files between computers). This worked fine but for some reason I was topping out around 80MB/sec on gigabit ethernet. Just setup my old 2012 quad Mini as a file and time machine server with 20tb of external hard drives. Was happy to see that I can saturate gigabit ethernet with transfers a little over 100MB/sec.

You don't absolutely need a dedicated machine for a file server, but it will be faster and more robust. All you need to do is turn on file sharing and you can then access it as a network disk from your laptop. Gigabit ethernet is certainly preferable and has a theoretical limit of 120MB/sec, so I would put the Mini on hard-wired ethernet. But 802.11ac wifi on a laptop isn't too bad, I get over 60MB/sec between my MacBook Air and my Time Capsule. If wifi is too slow on your laptop, you can get USB 3 ethernet adapters (but make sure they are capable of full gigabit speed, Apple's own adapter isn't, last time I checked).

This is all a lot slower than most directly-connected external disks however. My cheap bus-powered hard drives, such as the WD MyPassport are around 100MB/sec, but my Samsung T3 external SSD's clock around 400MB/sec. Larger desktop hard drives with their own power bricks give me around 180MB/sec with a USB 3 connection.

You can also setup your Mini as a time machine server to automatically backup your laptop, but it's not intuitive (I had to Google it myself). Here's a pretty good explanation.

www.macworld.com

How to set your Mac as a shared backup destination for Time Machine

Apple makes it easy if you know the right box to check.
www.macworld.com www.macworld.com
 
Are your numbers right for Gigabit Ethernet? Shouldn’t the top speed be 1,000 MB/sec instead of 120?
 
I'm sure somebody will correct me if I'm wrong... but I think gigabit means a billion bits, which would be 1000 megabits. And it takes 8 bits to make a byte, so 1000 / 8 = 125 MB (megabytes). I believe this is a simplification however, because we're dealing with binary numbers where "1000" is actually 1024. :)
 
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