RaddyKewl

Apple devices play nicely together. They have Bonjour networking, and just automatically find other Apple devices on the network. When I use non-Apple devices, my Macs don't automatically pick them up, and I have to go searching for them, and configure a lot of settings. That was the whole reason for wanting an Apple NAS. Does anyone know if my Synology router would support RAID? Does Synology support Bonjour?

I have the Synology RT2600ac router, and it has a USB 3.0 port. I know I can plug external storage into it. Would it be fast enough to use as my main storage for video editing, and streaming? Does the Synology router support RAID and work with Bonjour? Like I just want all of my Macs to have the NAS drive mounted full-time. I also want to be able to access media from the NAS with my AppleTVs. This is my current network:

I'm heavily invested in the Apple ecosystem. Macs, Apple TVs, iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. I'm needing to come up with an expandable NAS for my home network. I know I can build a NAS PC and make it a Hackintosh, but that would be running an Intel chip, and I'd like to be running on Apple Silicon, as it's more power efficient. I know Apple Silicon is a system on a chip and doesn't have SATA ports or M.2 slots. What I'd like to do is pick up a used M1 Mac Mini, and run it as a headless RAID server. But since it's SoC, there's no native way to connect those drives. According to the specs of the M1 Mac Mini, it has two USB-4/Thunderbolt-3 ports. Can I connect multiple drives (perhaps 4) to the Thunderbolt ports, and set them up as a RAID? If so, would multiple drives on the Thunderbolt Ports cause a bottleneck? My main goal is data redundancy rather than speed, but it still needs to be usable for video streaming and editing.

I have a 2020 Mac Mini, with 512 GB of onboard storage. I set up my system where my programs are on the onboard storage, and I set up an external USB drive for my Users folder, which contains all of my personal data. I've had them both since early 2021, and now the external drive is failing. I've only used 318 GB so far on the external drive, not even a full terabyte of the 5TB this is supposed to hold. The drive has been stationary, mounted to my wall, since I got it. It's already out of warranty from WD. And the one time I didn't get Geek Squad Protection, is the one time I have a drive failure. The drive has been running slow and I just noticed it start clicking in the last few days. I've had many WD hard drives over the years, internal and external, laptop and desktop. None of them have ever failed. What would cause a drive to fail after only 21 months? Since I'm gonna have to replace it, I'm thinking about plugging my new storage device directly into my Synology Router using it as a NAS. My whole house is hardwired with ethernet, and I don't believe the performance hit would be much worse than the external drive connected via USB directly to the Mac. This would also allow my other computers and Apple TV devices to connect to the NAS. I was hoping I'd be able to get several more years of use out of this 5TB drive. Eventually I'll need that much storage, as I work with photos and video, but I don't wanna buy a 20TB drive just for it to fail before I get much use out of it. Would also be interested in building a RAID NAS for some redundancy. What would you all recommend for types of drives and the direction I should go? Also, can I put my MacOS Users folder on a network drive? Attached are the drive diagnostics from DriveDX.

Yeah I seen the video where Linus used this in his home, but I don't know if I have enough space left in my crown moulding to run more. How bendy is optical HDMI?

I've dedicated one room in my home to be my studio. I have connected several input devices including computers and gaming systems into an 8x8 HDMI Matrix, that is currently only outputting three displays and one HDMI capture. That leaves me 4 HDMI Outputs sitting idle. I have a TV in my bedroom and the living room that sometimes I would like to game or use my computer for recreational or business purposes, without having to sit in a computer chair in the studio. I live in a small modular home, built in 2002. The house sits on a crawlspace, and getting under the house is not feasible for running cable. I've already run ethernet cable behind the crown moulding, and there's no space behind the baseboards to run cable. The walls are thin and they're all on the same level, but I live near many neighbors where there's a chance I could have network interference. I'm looking for recommendations for solutions to get HDMI signal from my Studio Room to both my Bedroom and my Living Room. I don't want to have to unplug and replug a receiver between inputs or rooms, I just want to switch inputs on the matrix, turn on the devices, and go. The Studio is about 20 feet from the Bedroom TV with 4 walls in between. The Studio is about 25 feet from the Living Room TV with 3 walls in between. The walls are made of drywall.

Can both batteries be charged simultaneously while installed inside and operating the remote?

I just seen this video, and it got me thinking… this shouldn’t be too hard, and it would save me money, time, and headaches of AA batteries. Does anyone know of any pre made kits designed for the Logitech Harmony 665? Something that would fit in place, Dremel if I need, I can solder in and it has a nice replacement battery door with a usb charging slot built in? Preferably with the logic board that prevents over charging and allows “play and charge.” If a kit like that doesn’t exist, could someone recommend a battery and the logic board that isn’t going to catch fire, and would physically fit in the Harmony 665, with or without slight modification.

I'm already using a free Cloudflare plan for cacheing and DDOS protection. It looks like they offer that round robin DNS service. Their site mentions some advanced services can detect when servers are down, and I assume they're referring to their own services. https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/dns/glossary/round-robin-dns/

I was planning to upgrade to business internet for this (as stated in my initial post). Electricity costs are miniscule. Is it possible to point the DNS entries to both IP addresses? If not, is there software I can run similar to Dynamic DNS that would somehow make it link to both as a failover option? For this, I'm currently on Google's G Suite for my email, but I'll likely drop them since they're plan to start charging me for the service. I use my standard GMail account for most of my email anyway. Do these services allow me to use my own domains and allow SSL? I'm already planning to get the DSL for failover, since my current internet is unreliable. It constantly goes down while I'm working and when I wanna relax and watch TV. I would just switch to DSL, but it's much slower than cable when it's working. I also plan to setup a home VPN sometime in the future, so I can access my network remotely, and eventually to allow future employees or contractors to access my servers from their homes. Since I'm already getting the extra connection, I might as well use the connections for webhosting as well. It'll save me money in the long run.

I run four low traffic websites. Three are running Wordpress, one is running Yourls. They’re for my business portfolio, personal blog, Twitch streaming, and a URL shortener. I get such little traffic and I don’t expect it to go up any time in the near future. I can’t justify paying a few hundred dollars a year on hosting, for such little use. I know there’s free hosting out there, but many ISPs block those hosts at the DNS level for spam and abuse violations. I’m currently on Comcast Internet 600Mbps , 20Mbps . The speed is decent, but I lose connection a couple of times per day. I recently purchased a Synology router with load balancing and fail over, and I intend to add AT&T DSL to make my connection more reliable. Unfortunately there are no fiber-to-the-home options in my area. I have found a mini workstation (similar to the corporate computer provided by my employer) that should be more than powerful enough to run my four sites. HP Elitedesk 800 G3 Mini Business Desktop (Intel Quad Core i5-6500T, 16GB DDR4 RAM, 512GB SSD) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B086RF1SLK/ I currently have residential internet with Comcast, and my IP has been the same for years (even after several modem power cycles). I might even bump it up to a business account, just in case they block ports or traffic, and so I don’t run afoul of their terms and conditions. I don’t know how IPs are handled with AT&T, but I would likely get a business account with them as well. Since my router supports load balancing and fail over, is there a way to setup my home internet server to use both connections (mainly for the fail over aspect) to maintain uptime on my websites. I’m currently on Dreamhost, and I’m actually quite impressed with them. They have automated updates for all of my sites. They handle automated renewals of SSL with Let’s Encrypt. I would kind of like to have that level of ease of use, after the initial setup. Basically I want a Ron Popeil webhost. Set it and forget it. (Hoping I’m not aging myself with that reference.) To accomplish all of the above, what direction should I be heading? What OS? What webserver software? If load balancing a website is possible, what terminology and software should I be researching? Any other advice? Any fatal flaws in my logic? I’m confident I could eventually do all of the setup by following various tutorials. But I’m not into doing a lot of tedious work, so I’d consider hiring someone to do that for me. Though I’m not ready to move forward on that right away. This is a longterm plan, I’m just researching right now.

I’ve tried patching and upgrading in the past, but the installer crashed. Might be because I’m only running 4GB of RAM.

This one is actually DDR3. Do those weird configurations you mentioned affect DDR3?

I have: Late 2009 iMac 10,1 OS X Yosemite 10.10.5 Core 2 Duo, 3.06 GHz Socket 775 4GB RAM 500GB HDD Obviously I’d max out the memory to 16GB. Thinking about swapping in an SSD for my boot drive. This takes a Socket 775 CPU. The fastest one in that form factor is a Xeon X3380. Does anyone know if I could swap the Xeon CPU into an iMac, or does Apple lock it down, only allowing the CPUs they initially offered? If it is possible would the performance increase be worth it? Would I run into issues with thermals? Is the overall upgrade worth it? This is my old, casual use computer. Browsing the web (lots of tabs open at once), watching videos, etc. I have an M1 Mac Mini for my creative endeavors.

I just disabled NAT on the Netgear router and now the Synology router is sharing the internet connection to all the other devices. The Synology router was only detecting the internal IP provided by the Netgear router, now it's detecting the public IP provided by Comcast.

I can't seem to find a way to enable Bridge mode on the Netgear C7800. The Synology Router is detecting the WAN connection, but it's not passing that connection to attached devices. I tried this tutorial, but I don't have this option available on my particular Netgear Modem/Router. https://kb.netgear.com/27191/How-to-set-the-cable-modem-router-to-be-on-modem-only

Just got the new Synology router and I’m having trouble getting everything setup. I disabled DHCP on the old Netgear modem/router. The new Synology gateway IP is 192.168.1.1 and the IP range starts at 192.168.1.2. I changed the gateway IP of the Netgear to 192.168.1.2. The Synology router is not detecting the Netgear modem on the WAN port. It won’t let me force it to use that IP for the gateway, and no other device on my network is currently using that IP. What am I doing wrong?

I don't think mine is quite as elaborate as everyone else's. Also don't have any redundancy for if a point fails... though I'm not running anything too mission critical that I can't just run to a store and pickup a new switch. Not pictured are the wireless devices. The Bedroom access point has a bathroom heater, air purifier and an Amazon Echo Show. I also have a Macbook, iPhone, iPad, and Windoze laptop which connect to either access point, depending where I'm at in the house.

Cool, thank you for the recommendation. The Synology system looks perfect. My current modem/router was working fine until they pushed a firmware update a few months ago. I’ve read it’s a common issue with my router and that particular firmware. I’m on a Netgear C7800. Firmware version 6.01.07. Almost all of my television is streaming through the internet. Sling, Peacock, YouTube, Netflix. I get the locals with an over the air antenna to a Tablo DVR which I access over the network from my AppleTVs.

I currently have Comcast/XFinity. I have a high end modem/router combo that I purchased. Recently, Comcast pushed a firmware update that makes my modem/router constantly lose connection and reboot itself. This always happens when I'm in the middle of work, or just trying to watch TV. This happens on a daily basis, sometimes multiple times a day. I’ve called Comcast and they can’t even detect that there’s an issue. Today, my power blinked, and that killed the whole Comcast backbone in our area, and my internet has been down for 2 hours, and has an ETA of another 3 hours. This is ridiculous. The only other viable provider in my area is AT&T DSL. When I had DSL in the past it was extremely reliable. My internet never went down in the several years I had it. But the speed comes nowhere close to Comcast. I work from home, and all of my entertainment is streamed from the internet. This is extremely frustrating that my internet goes down at all, let alone constantly and for long periods of time. My whole house is hardwired for ethernet, and I already have a switch that handles that. There’s currently about 30 devices on my network. About 10 of those are wireless devices. All provisioned with reserved IP addresses. I’ll likely be adding more devices for home automation. I also use a Pi-Hole DNS server network wide. TLDR: Looking for a recommendation for a router that can bond internet connections from two modems: a cable and DSL modem.

Nylon straps would keep it from opening flat, but it won’t keep it from closing on itself, if someone bumped into it. Would need some stronger support. I’m planning to use a wireless mouse, but having a separate keyboard is more stuff to carry and taking up more space on a tabletop.

Not the most ideal solution, but I think I can make it work. The PC is a little thicker than I had planned for, so I’ll need some padding between the PC and the screen, when the case is closed. Not sure how a keyboard will fit in this either. I also need to work out a way for the back of the case to stand up on its own. Either a kickstand or maybe a hydraulic/pneumatic piston would suffice. Kickstand would take up more space on a table, potentially annoying other people at a Starbucks. Cable management is gonna be a challenge as well. I can splice a power cable or a USB cable rather easily, but don’t think I’d do well with an HDMI cable. Need something with angled heads, and a short cable length. Would also be drilling holes to run the cables between the top and bottom clamshells. Wish I could do it without cutting out a large piece to fit a plug through. LCD panel and the computer itself have VESA mounts, so I can bolt them right to the case. This computer does not output video through USB-C, but it gives me enough power for the monitor, meaning I don’t need a separate power brick.

Because I work 5 days a week, and get limited PTO, and I want to travel hundreds of miles away to beaches, theme parks, and other interesting places. Continue to work while I travel, and when I'm off for the day, I can go find something cool to do for the evening. Then take a day or two off when I have something major I want to do.

I think I'm gonna go with the Pelican Case https://www.amazon.com/Pelican-1085-Laptop-Case-Black/dp/B0069IY9A4/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=laptop%2Bhard%2Bcase&qid=1624489973&sr=8-3&th=1 One of the portable monitors, though I have a feeling I can't get video over the USB-C port due to the computer being locked down, so I'll need one with HDMI. And a wired USB keyboard. Then I can just mount everything in the case. Probably have to drill some holes, and dremel slots for ventilation. Depending on the screen I get, I might have to get some kind of plexiglass to protect the screen from getting smashed when I close it with the computer and keyboard inside.

I could do that, but it's just a lot of things to carry, plus a bunch of wires strung out on a table, bothering other people and attracting attention at a Starbucks. Basically, I don't wanna be this person: Now if I could take that portable monitor and a mini keyboard plus the computer and fit it into a custom built enclosure, that could work.