DrMacintosh

32 minutes ago, Spotty said:

Apple normally advertises privacy and security as a major feature so it's odd that they wouldn't sign up to the scheme.

That may be precisely why they aren't. HomeKit is already marketed as the secure smart home platform from a big tech company. HomeKit Routers can already be configured to block absolutely all outgoing or incoming traffic for HomeKit devices, so there really isn't anything to left to secure or protect users from at that point. 

A lot of smart home vendors aren't signing up with this. For one, I don't see Home Assistant anywhere. Lots of security oriented people actually use Home Assistant with a HomeKit backbone. 

Hello all, I'm setting up a DS923+ to store my jobs cold files. Mostly pictures, finished reports, excel docs, old invoices, etc. We can remotely access this data via Synology Drive/QuickConnect fairly well.

I also completely forgot that Active Backup for M365 exists which really takes this NAS to the next level for us. I'm waiting to start the first backup job until I've moved our cold storage files onto the NAS. We are trying to operate with less than 1TB in SharePoint to get our bill down since additional SharePoint Storage is like $0.20 per GB per month which is insane.

As a first time Synology and NAS user and the only extremely non-professional IT person at the company (we only have 8 people) I'm looking for any advice or common mistakes to avoid for this use case.

Also, I'm moving our data and configuring Active Backup for M365 at home since I have faster internet than our office and I currently don't have a car, so I'm wondering what kind of issues there may be from moving the NAS to a new network once I do get it in office, thanks!

Can I introduce you you to Apple Music? The Android app is great.

1 hour ago, NinJake said:

however they sent me a refurb drive in exchange.

Ok, but how many power on hours did the drive have?

What exactly would L1 and L2 techs be doing over the phone for Seagate? Is the drive plugged in? Is it making some clicking sound? Seems like a large expense for nothing beneficial for the user.

Hi all, so I was about to pull the trigger on a NAS for our small office. But I noticed that the drives included in this B&H Photo bundle w/ the DS923+ and 4x8TB Seagate IronWolf NAS Drives (SEST8000VN4) are not on the "approved/compatibility" list, and in fact there are almost 0 drives that are on this list. So what gives and what will happen by not using "approved" drives?

Thanks!

Try Lubuntu. I run Lubuntu in a VirtualBox VM on my 2018 Mac mini home server. All it does it torrent Linux ISOs all day. It only needs like 1GB of memory to run (I give it 4GB) and I only give it 2 cores but I believe it could run on 1. 

If it didn't outright die, that probably means the OPP/OCP protection did its job and actually not only saved the life of the system components, but of the PSU itself. 

4 minutes ago, UnbidLettuce said:

It may also be my motherboard as I run my audio though USB 3.0 to my Focusrite Scarlet 2i2

If you do just line out audio from your PC directly, do you get the same result? It very likely is an issue with USB. I used to run my game audio through a USB DAC, but after some game instability while using it I decided to stop. I rarely use that DAC now since Apple has still not released the Apple Music app for Windows 11 fully. 

18 minutes ago, ToboRobot said:

https://kb.synology.com/en-us/DSM/help/DSM/AdminCenter/system_hardware_ups?version=7

Thanks, after some digging I found this site: https://www.synology.com/en-global/compatibility?search_by=category&category=upses&filter_brand=APC

In that I found that the APC UPS that I have at home is compatible with the DS923+: https://www.synology.com/en-global/compatibility?search_by=category&category=upses&filter_brand=APC

Hello all, I'm going to be deploying a Synology DS923+ in our office to act as an archival server to accommodate our old/unused SharePoint files. One thing I'm curious about is getting a UPS for this NAS. I know it is possible for a Mac to connect to a UPS via USB and auto shutdown when the UPS kicks in and the Mac will gracefully shut down. I would like to know if the DS923+ has this capability as well? A UPS does not really do us much good if someone has to be there to quickly shut it off if we lose power. 

11 hours ago, HelloIN said:

Now export to excel from sharepoint works for me, but the management is asking a way to automate this task and maintain this excel file on sharepoint itself

Ah ok, this might be possible using power automate. But it's going to require a script of some sort and I don't have the skills to create scripts for M365 so I'd recommend going over to the Microsoft support forums to see if you can get more insight there.

A Sharepoint document library is essentially a glorified shared HDD. You would typically access it by synchronizing the document library to a computer via OneDrive or online via the SharePoint Site url....that being said

Excel is not a dynamic database and should not be used to store this type of data in this way. Also, it cannot be used in the manner you describe for various reasons. However, there are better data logging systems available built into in the M365 suite if you need this level of documentation for some reason. 

A simple search of "get a log of all changes in a shairpoint document library" lead me to this: https://sharepoint.stackexchange.com/questions/186093/how-to-track-all-changes-inside-a-sharepoint-site and https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/dev/solution-guidance/query-sharepoint-change-log-with-changequery-and-changetoken

Somewhere along this path you should be able to get the functionality you want. If you have higher-ups to report to, please kindly tell them that excel is not a magic bit of software and cannot replace an actual database. 

As stated above, if you can download the songs locally, yes, the spotify app will run offline.

https://support.apple.com/guide/watch/track-your-sleep-apd830528336/watchos

11 minutes ago, Shanhara said:

so I figured I'd finally use the DIMM.2 on my motherboard for the additional storage.

Is that slot enabled on the motherboard BIOS? What storage mode is your motherboard in? Have you checked your owners manual for info on how to use the DIMM.2 slot?

4 hours ago, MrMitty said:

Do you think that the M3 MBPs will be released in the fall? 

No, Apple just released the Pro M2 chips. Even if they did release M3, it would only be for the Airs. The Pro chips would wait.

38 minutes ago, r00tb33r said:

What are your speed tests like?

I have the main node positioned on the second floor in a closet where the fiber connection comes in and my home server lives, it will get the full 500/500 speed of our connection to the whole floor.

The downstairs unit is positioned at the end of the living room. It's connected to the main node via wireless back-haul. It covers the guest bathroom, a small office, the backyard, and small portion of the front yard. That node tends to only get around 300/300 and falls from there as you leave its range.

Wifi 6 and 6E mesh systems, specifically tri-band routers, are very good. My, and other tri-band systems have either 2.4/5/5 GHz radios (wifi 6) or 2.4/5/6 GHz radios (wifi 6E). When using Wireless back haul, either a 5GHz or 6GHz band will be fully/nearly fully dedicated to the mesh system. 

9 minutes ago, r00tb33r said:

I've had crap experience with 802.11ac mesh systems.

I use the Linksys Velop MX4200. It's a wifi 6 system, works great. Range is nothing special but the coverage with two nodes is good and the nodes themselves are feature rich.

What model of router do you have? Also, 2.4GHz is going to be better at going through walls but the interference surrounding that channel makes it hard to use reliably. 

5GHz is worth a shot but in all likelihood, a new router and/or a mesh wifi system might be what you need.

Inkjets suck. I have a Brother B&W laser printer that I fire up once in a blue moon. It's great.

30 minutes ago, CalebTech212 said:

I do video editing. It has been a hobby, but I am trying to get set up for it to be my job.

I'd honestly sell that machine and look at a 13" M2 MacBook Pro. You could honestly get away with a 15" M2 MacBook Air, but you'll want the fan built into the Pro for sustain renders and large projects.

https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-pro/13-inch

If you get any upgrades and budget is a concern, get more memory first. You can always edit off of external storage.

The hardware accelerated video encoders/decoders are way faster than the ones in traditional dGPUs today.  Here's a demo of the 13" M2 MacBook Pro:

That's only mildly infuriating. Does it only happen with that clip or others? Can you use a different media player instead?

That 14" is really appealing

51 minutes ago, Morgul said:

I'm getting close to running out of space on my 10tb drive. I could get a second 10tb drive and another usb enclosure and I'm sure there's some linux wizardry to jbod two usb drives (never tried), but that just feels like I'm doubling down on the jank.

You could just get a simple 4 bay DAS, essentially a 4 bay USB drive enclosure. Spread your library out across all the drives to improve response times or put them in software raid for faster read times across the board.

I have one of these hooked up to my 2018 Mac mini that's running my Plex server:

https://www.amazon.com/OWC-Mercury-Elite-Storage-Enclosure/dp/B09SC124GS/ref=sr_1_3?crid=1ST9N3URB0RW7&keywords=owc+mercury+elite+pro+quad&qid=1687220493&sprefix=owc+mercury+elite+pro+quad%2Caps%2C152&sr=8-3&ufe=app_do%3Aamzn1.fos.f5122f16-c3e8-4386-bf32-63e904010ad0 though cheaper DAS units exist.

There is a model $100 more expensive with hardware RAID support. I personally don't use RAID though since I never have more than 3 people streaming plex at a time. All my media is on a single 12TB HDD.