After getting my hands on a iomega UltraMax I started to think about how to share the data on my local network. I have a Windows XP Mediacenter from Sony but being Windows it is not extremely stable nor adequate to really serves as a file server. Plus, it wouldn’t allow me to use the drive with Time Machine on my MacBook Pro. Therefore, I needed a machine running on Mac OS X so I can plug the hard drive and share it on the local network. So, yes, I bought a new computer. I wanted something not too expensive and small enough to fit nicely in my leaving room. Without further ado I present you the Mac Mini:

I’m still setting it up but it looks promising so far. Now, I stop spending money…well, maybe!

I’ve been thinking of getting a new external hard drive system for some time. What I was looking for was an affordable RAID-1 (data mirroring) solution so I don’t have to worry about losing data if the hard drive fails. Earlier this week I spent some time browsing for such solution and came across the iomega UltraMax:

According to the reviews I read it seemed like good value for money. It supports both RAID-0 and RAID-1. On Saturday I popped down the Apple Store on Regent Street and there it was on the shelves. So, after arguing with myself for about half a second I decided to pick one up. Once back home I read the doc, set it up in RAID-1 (RAID-0 is default) and nothing happened. It wouldn’t appear on my desktop. After fiddling around for about an hour with no success, I checked online and found out that the doc provided with the hard drive was not complete and did not mention that after setting the hard drive up in RAID-1 you need to press the Rebuild button! Once the damn button pressed it was all fine.

Besides the fan being a bit noisy, it lives up to my expectations.