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I'm considering buying an iMac mini for storage (to archive my Photo library, so not like a server but to log in incidentally and make backups). Because I will not use it often, I thought of the following procedure to use the iPad as the display for the Mac.

  1. Boot the Mac mini without display.
  2. Connect to the Mac with Screen Sharing (with a different iPad/iPhone/Mac).
  3. With the VNC viewer, connect the iPad I want to use with sidecar to the Mac.
  4. Use the Mac with sidecar.

What are your thoughts on this setup? One of the things I don't know for sure is if I can directly connect and log in to the Mac mini with VNC directly after booting.

All advice on how to do this is very welcome, also if you have different suggestions for connecting the iPad to the Mac mini.

ralphjsmit
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  • Give it a go. I won’t cost anything to try so your risk is minimal. – Allan May 06 '20 at 15:14
  • Hi @Allan thanks for suggesting that. I did not yet buy it. I'm just looking for the cheapest Mac setup with 1 TB internal storage. I do not need a lot of computing power or RAM. I want a Mac with internal storage and no external drive, bc. I have bad experiences with hard drives and big photolibraries. – ralphjsmit May 08 '20 at 12:08
  • You're probably better off buying a Synology NAS that has RAID built in along with a Photo Library support. It's purpose built, it's designed for reliability and most importantly, much, much, cheaper. – Allan May 08 '20 at 14:05
  • That's also a good idea. Do you have a specific recommendation for a fast NAS system? My wifi is (quite) fast and I do not want the NAS to be the bottleneck in speed. Should I use SSD? – ralphjsmit May 09 '20 at 12:23
  • Yes. The Synology. The slowest NAS won’t be a bottleneck, it will always be WiFi – Allan May 09 '20 at 15:30
  • Allright thanks. Also if wifi is 200 mb/s? Do you have a specific NAS model recommendation? There are so many variants. And should it have an SSD or an HDD? My association with HDD is always that it is very slow, but I only have experience with HDD external hard drive and not a NAS. Is an HDD in a NAS fast enough? – ralphjsmit May 09 '20 at 15:48
  • It depends on you’re needs. Define what you want to do (i.e. transcode video, file server, mail server, etc.), estimate how much space you’ll need and select a model. – Allan May 09 '20 at 15:50
  • I want to use and work with a Mac photo library that I can access in Finder. The library is now approx. 320 GB and growing. It should work very smoothly and fast. – ralphjsmit May 09 '20 at 15:51
  • And probably also store some files as an alternative to iCloud Drive, but that doesn't have priority. – ralphjsmit May 09 '20 at 15:51
  • I like the DS218+. Just get your own disks, I like WD Red and you’re good to go. You can pick the size of disk that you want - I’m using 6TB in mine. – Allan May 09 '20 at 15:57

1 Answers1

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What you want to do is entirely possible (in fact, it's pretty close to what I do). There are a few things to be aware of.

  1. For initial set up you will need to connect your MacMini to a monitor, keyboard and mouse. Once you've set it up you can hide it away (provided that you have a good flow of air for cooling) and connect from your iPad.

  2. Due to some oddity in macOS or in the Mac Mini yourself, you won't get full performance in this configuration. To get full performance you will need to connect a dongle to your Mac's monitor port to make it think that it has a monitor connected. Weird, no? But it works. Something like this. https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=CompuLab+Display+Emulator&ref=nb_sb_noss

Enjoy.

headbanger
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  • Hi @headbanger sorry for the late response. Does it also work when I shut the Mac mini and disconnect it from the power source and the next time I want to use it plug it in again and boot it? And can I also do software updates like this? – ralphjsmit May 08 '20 at 12:06
  • For sure. After the initial set up is done then, with one proviso, you can can keep using it like this forever. The one exception is if an update fails (so you need to use recovery mode). Under these circumstances you will then need to plug in a real monitor, keyboard and mouse. – headbanger May 10 '20 at 11:30
  • Do you have any source regarding the second point and the lower performances without a screen connected to the Mac mini? – Louis Roché Jan 04 '21 at 11:00
  • @LouisRoché macOS "App Nap" is one of the culprits, it slows or even suspends/pauses apps when they're not visible. It can be disabled though. OS updates were hit or miss, too often they required plugging in a monitor to dismiss a dialog before remote desktop was loaded/available. – jmiserez Mar 12 '23 at 16:52