Storage and access for mac family

[Cbdboz]

I have an old iMac (2009), 2011 MBP, and soon to buy a new 5k IMac and a refurbished or new Mac mini.

The older mac's are stuffed on their existing Hard drives...and also very slow with spinning wheels a common sight (May be too high% use of current hdd...or possibly also lack of RAM.)


In new mac, I may go for 256 SDD, and then use an external drive which I would also want to be networked so that the older mac's could read from it, and write to it.

1) Any suggestion on what setup I should look for

2) how do I then configure macs to read from and write to the new central drive...I.e. For ITunes, IPhoto, IMovie etc.... In the respective machines( any user guides out there I can follow?)

Cheers

 

[priitv8]

If you already go with a mini I would set it up as OS X Server, connect a DAS to it and make the Mini a hub of services for all other Macs in da house.

 

[ColdCase]

You don't need the server app for simple file sharing. There are a couple ways to do it

On the Mac with the central drive installed, open system preferences and the sharing panel and select the drive you want to share and share it.

On all the other macs, open a finder window. Click on the shared icon and the mac that has the central drive should be listed. Click on the Mac icon and the shared drive should be listed double click on the drive to mount it. The Mac should remember the drive until its restarted.

I think thats what you mean.

 

[eduardrw]

If you already go with a mini I would set it up as OS X Server, connect a DAS to it and make the Mini a hub of services for all other Macs in da house.

The Mac mini server is a good idea - even if it is just to use the centralized Time Machine backup capability os os x server.
It essentially allows the server to control what MAC on the Network gets backed up and to what disk attached to the MAC mini.

Otherwise Time capsule only supports direct attached disks to the MAC or the Time capsule disks.