Shared drive between Mac and PC

Sep 6, 2018
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Hi, I’m in the process of building a powerful PC for Lightroom/Photoshop and some gaming. I have a MacBook Pro, which I intend on using as my primary computer for surfing the web, email, document production, Citrix, etc. I’d like to keep all of my documents on the Mac and all of my photos for Lightroom on an internal or external SSD connected to the PC.

Can someone please suggest an elegant solution for sharing the photos between the computers and backing everything up? I’m comfortable using Dropbox for syncing my documents between my MacBook and the cloud so that I have read access to everything on my PC and iPhone/iPad, but I’m not quite sure what to do with the photos that will be on a PC-drive. I’d like to have them backed up nightly, but I also want to have them accessible (read only) on my MacBook/iPhone/iPad through a cloud service.

I haven’t used a PC in about 15 years, so I’m not sure if Macs and PCs play nice when it comes to shared storage or network drives.

Please help! I’ve tried doing the research but haven’t been able to find anything on point.
 
Solution
your best option is to buy a small NAS unit and have that as your central repository. Not only can this NAS provide a common folder for both MAC and windows. It can also act as a time machine to backup your mac.

For example I use a Synology 415 to do what you describe.

You could of course do it with just PC, MAC and network link, but the NAS is a more elegant (and simpler solution).

asoroka

Distinguished
Apr 19, 2009
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your best option is to buy a small NAS unit and have that as your central repository. Not only can this NAS provide a common folder for both MAC and windows. It can also act as a time machine to backup your mac.

For example I use a Synology 415 to do what you describe.

You could of course do it with just PC, MAC and network link, but the NAS is a more elegant (and simpler solution).
 
Solution