Accessing your Mac remotely via iCloud

Even though you probably use services such as icloud, dropbox, googledrive… which help you to access your stored data via the internet you still might have specific files only stored to your Mac that you might need to access when you can’t get your Mac. This can be done remotely several ways.

Apple’s back to my mac service is one option to access data remotely but you must have it setup on your Mac. First you have to open up your Mac’s system preferences and click iCloud. Make sure you are logged into your iCloud account. Enable the “back to my Mac” service. This now means that your Mac is configured with your iCloud. When you want to use this you need to make sure that your Mac is connected to the Internet as well as the computer to be active. You can ensure this by choose the energy saver preference and enable the wake for network access option. Make sure your router is up to date and allows you to have access remotely. 

Back to my Mac offers several options for connecting to your remote Mac. You can access and manage your remote Mac by screen sharing, which streams the desktop view from your remote Mac to the Mac you are currently using. To enable this option you need to go to sharing system preferences, ensure that your user account is allowed access. By default administrators are give access but you can add specific users to the list. To start up your remote Mac’s screen select the Mac in your finder of another Mac configured with the same iCloud account and then click the option that allows you to share the remote Mac’s screen and open applications and documents on it. 

Managing your media and data effectively with NAS

If you are a person with a lot of media stored on your Mac such as photos, videos and music and don’t have them organised, Network-attached Storage (NAS) is an effective way to collect your media data all in one collection.

Choosing an appropriately sized hard drive allows users enough space, allowing you to save everything without choosing what to keep and what to delete. NAS allows you to add more storage drives when they are full so you can continue to save all items. As it runs off the network it makes retrieving media and data off the drive on any computer easy. You can setup the drive so only certain people can retrieve off the NAS. The system presents your data and media in folders that make finding anything easy.

Choosing a drive that suites you is important. The Apple time capsule is offered in a 2 or 3TB sized drive, which smoothly integrates with all your Mac and Apple devices. If you are a business you are going to want a bigger one then that. There are many, which allow you to fill up the drive, as you need space with all sizes of drives. Then when the drive its full you can replace it with another, if you need the information back then you can add the drive back into the NAS.

 This is a common setup up for a lot of our clients; if it’s something you think you will benefit in then contact us we are located in Brisbane with excellent and experienced technicians.