Moving to a Mac....But Have Some Questions

Valo

Valo

Valo

Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
3,817
Location
Livingston
I’m hopefully going to be purchasing my first Mac shortly, the new 27” iMac :D

My Proposed 27" iMac Spec
3.4GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 3.9GHz
8GB 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x4GB
1TB Fusion Drive
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680MX 2GB GDDR5
Magic Trackpad
Apple Wireless Keyboard (British) & User's Guide (English)
AppleCare Protection Plan for iMac- Auto-enroll
Accessory Kit

Proposed upgrades are highlighted.

However before I pull the trigger on my order I have a few questions regarding my proposed new setup as I’m also going to be moving all my stuff (Files, Music, Movies and Photo’s) from a RAID5 Windows 2008 Server box to a Drobo FS.

Is the Drobo a good solution to look at, does Time Machine backup work ok with it? Is there a better NAS solution to look at which offers the easy expandability the Drobo has and is Mac friendly?

Is Applecare worth the additional cost when purchasing my Mac now or should I just purchase it before the end of my first year?
 
There's no real advantage to getting AppleCare straight away, and no harm in putting it off for a while.

Drobo is a doddle to set up and Time Machine should work just fine.
 
Doug said:
There's no real advantage to getting AppleCare straight away, and no harm in putting it off for a while.

Drobo is a doddle to set up and Time Machine should work just fine.
Click to expand...

Great! Thanks for confirming that :)

I use Office on my PC, am I right in thinking that Pages and Numbers don't support .docx and .xlsx file extensions? In which case I'd need to buy Office for Mac to use it natively within OSX.
 
Last edited:
pages and numbers does support word and excel formats. :)

certain features such as macros on excel sheets may not work correctly.
 
Pages and Numbers support them, but only for importing. When it comes to saving, you'll either be doing it as a .pages file (in the case of Pages), or exporting it as a .doc(x), only to import it again to edit it.

Honestly, if you need half-decent Office support, you're better off even with the likes of OpenOffice/LibreOffice than Pages, as those two at least deal with those file formats directly. Best bet is still Office. Of course, if you only need import support, Pages is brilliant, frankly. I use it exclusively, and just share as PDFs.
 
I only need Word and Excel, as I use iCloud so OSX Mail and Calendar will be fine so I have no need for Outlook.

I guess Office for Mac Home and Student 2011 will be all I need?
 
Amp34 said:
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/09/synology-ds-412-is-fast-fun-and-flexible/6/

Apparently the Drobo is fairly slow... Why not keep all your files on the 2008 box? You can also set up time machine to work as well AFAIK.
Click to expand...

I've been considering that but moving to a Drobo gives me some benefits:

It uses less power than my Windows Server 2008 box
Allows easy expansion to increase the storage capacity

I realise the network transfer speeds may not be the best but it offers a lot. It'll be running on a Gb network, I know from reading the review it still suffered with slow transfer speed but it's still capable of 1080p playback.

Can anyone recommend a better product out there that as the scalable storage of the Drobo but with better network speed, that I may’ve missed?

Are there any Drobo FS owners on the forum able to give me any feedback on ownership?
 
Have you tried Office Web Apps? If you only do light work then you could save yourself some money (the web apps are free)
 
I use Office 2011 on the Mac and other than the odd format issue it works very well. If you can get a student version it's silly cheap.

I use a Acer Windows Home Server as you retain the transfer speeds and also the expandability for the drives. Power usage is low and it's pretty quiet.
 
I think I'm sold on getting an iMac now :D but I really need some guidance about what to do about my external storage setup.

Current Setup
Windows Server 2008
4x 1.5TB Hard Disks in RAID5 (6TB Total - 4.5TB Useable)
Network Shares - Files, Music, and Photo’s

My original plan was to replace the current setup above with a Drobo FS. Using the 4x 1.5TB drives I own and purchasing a new 3TB drive to transfer my data (using an external caddy) whilst the 1.5TB drives are transferred and setup in the Drobo. I'd then transfer the data back then add the 3TB drive to the Drobo storage pool giving me plenty of storage for my existing files and space to expand along with room for Time Machine backups.

Looking into it people have had mixed experiences with them, with the major complaint being network transfer speed and fan noise :( I really like the idea of the Drobo as it’s scalable to my needs and is the only 5 Bay NAS I've found that isn't ridiculously expensive. Is there any other NAS devices I should be considering?

If I keep my current setup and mount the shares in OSX via SMB, can I still Read/Write to the shares? If so would I need to mount them each time I wanted to use them? I also use Remote Desktop to connect to my Server box over my network but a Mac Microsoft RDP Client is available so that shouldn't cause any problems.
 
Last edited:
You can mount the drives in OSX and they will stay mounted when you reboot. Your server will also appear in the nearby computers list so you can browse from there as well.
 
J1nxy said:
You can mount the drives in OSX and they will stay mounted when you reboot. Your server will also appear in the nearby computers list so you can browse from there as well.
Click to expand...

I think I may hold fire on moving to a NAS then. As long as I can read and write to my existing network shares, then I'm happy. I could maybe just look at getting an external drive just for time machine so I'm not eating into my server box storage.

Drobo have also stop listing the FS model on their website, perhaps an updated and improved model could be on the way next year.
 
That's how I do it, use my WHS for all my video and music type files and keep them backed up there, then use a 2TB USB drive for time machine which I picked up cheap.
 
J1nxy said:
That's how I do it, use my WHS for all my video and music type files and keep them backed up there, then use a 2TB USB drive for time machine which I picked up cheap.
Click to expand...

Cheers for the advice J1nxy :)

I think the next round of questions will be about software :D :cool:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom