[Music] All right guys, welcome back to the channel. Today we're going to be doing something a little bit different in terms of what we're doing today. We're going to be turning our old MacBook, or newer MacBook, or I guess Mac device in

general into a storage server. Um, time and time again I'm having to go between Windows and Mac, and the AirDrop feature isn't always available to me. As well as it is kind of annoying having to go from one device, um, you know, having to log on

and sometimes transfer to an SSD, take the SSD and transfer it that way, um, or just have to go over there and AirDrop it. Uh, yeah, so that's what I want to, I want to tackle that and get that out of the way, so I can reuse this and um, actually make

I guess use of a device that might just be laying around. So let's go ahead and get into that and um, let's go and get started with how we can set up our Mac device to be our storage server. All right, so right now I'm on my MacBook Pro

um, I've set this up on my MacBook here, but I'm going to walk you through exactly what I did. Um, so in the System Settings, that's what you want to open up first, and we want to go ahead and search for File Sharing. And right here on the left hand

side, you want under Sharing, you want to hit File Sharing, and you're going to see it as your first option. If you don't, just look for the um option for File Sharing. Next we want to make sure that we turn this on and hit the I icon. Now

by default you're going to notice that the allow full disk access for all users is enabled you can go ahead and disable this if you want um but I'm the only person that's going to be accessing my device and there's sometimes where I might put store or I guess put media on

it and I might not put it in a certain folder that I shared so I want to make sure that I um have the I guess the whole device accessible to to me right but if you only want a certain folder what we can do is hit this plus

icon and right here if we go to our downloads I have this shared folder I created with nothing in it and create that um if you know wherever you want or whatever folder you want to be shared then um we just simply click it and hit open now that that folder is going to be

accessible now for the fun part right so I want to be able to add storage to this down the road cuz right now it's only got 256 GB of storage on it I can simply plug in a dock plug in an SSD so what we can do is hit this plus sign and

I can now select this entire SSD and give it access to where I can just simply store on there and retrieve the data from that device and then obviously I can connect more in the future let simply just hit that hit open and now we have access to that entire SSD so it's

an easy way to expand your um I guess storage device that way you don't have to invest into a NAS at the moment now one more thing I guess one other thing you're going to need in here is the um user make sure you have read and

write and this is the user that you sign into on that MacBook, um, with um, I guess like a username and password when you first set up the device. If you don't see this here, we can remove this and hit the plus sign. Now you want to make sure that

you see your user and just hit select and it adds it. So now that that's good, we want to go ahead and head over to options. Now you're going to see we want to make sure the "Share files and folders using SMB" is enabled because this is the

protocol that um, Windows uses to communicate back and forth, and this is just, you know, making sure that we can do that, especially if you're on a Windows device. If not, then don't worry about it; you don't need it. But we want to make

sure we have our um, profiles here that we created because I, I guess because I added and deleted one right now, it's going to have both, but simply just type in your password um, for your current user or the one you're using. I'm just going to go and enable both of them, but

you should only see one here, um, more than likely you should. Um, but yeah, so just simply hit that, hit done, and you're good to go. Now one last piece of information you're going to need is the device's IP for your Local Host. Um, up here at the top, you may see an actual IP

address. Now the issue is, right for me, that I guess going through Charter or what is Spectrum now, they don't give me my IP in this section. So an easy way to find that is simply go to our Wi-Fi settings. So let's search for it and click and make sure your device

is connected to the I guess the network that you're going to just leave it and forget it um and just hit details and under here you're going to see the IP address that we're going to need um so that way we can connect to it from

another device my MacBook is a little bit different um so you're going to see me connect to a different IP address um but it's still be like 192.168 it's just going to be a different endpoint or a different I guess port essentially um

and that's the that's the only difference you're going to see but yeah just write this down make sure we have this and let's go ahead and hop over to um the Mac portion to show you how we can connect to it all right so now we're

on the Mac that we want to connect to our other device for so the first thing we're going to want to do is head over to our Network tab so this you can see I've already connected to it before let me just go and get rid of it just so I

can give you all a fresh example so the first thing you're going to notice is that you should see your other Mac device um already here um it's not going to have anything on it so what we want to do is hit the in the top left in on

the go or on the um I guess the toolbar um hit the go button and then hit connect to a server and you're going to see here it's already pre-populated my um IP address cuz it's the IP that I I was just connected to but simply just

type in SMB um colon 44 and then do 1 192.168 or I guess sorry type in the IP address of your device um and just simply hit connect and it's going to connect to it um I've already um put in my username and password but if it

simply asks for it simply just put it in um you know straightforward from there hit shared or I guess whatever you want to um I've given it access to the entire drive so essentially you can just click whatever um but for this instance since I showed

you the shared folder let's just go ahead and hit shared hit okay and now you can see I am connected to my MacBook Air so I can simply go to Old footage that if I need access to it um or just simply take this profile picture say I

want to use it for my current uh Premiere project drag it to my downloads and it is here um as you see 938 it is 938 and you're good to go on that so um I'm going and get rid of this cuz I already have it uh but yeah so let's hop

over to our Windows portion so that way we can connect to it from our Windows device all right so now we're on our Windows machine and what we need to do is go to network and you're going to notice that we don't see anything like

we did on our Mac um I'll simply just go to your address bar and right here you're going to see that I've connected to it before but it's the same IP address but just do backslash backslash we don't need the SMB colon part um just

do back slash SLB followed by the IP so I'm just going to click on it cuz I've done it before and see it's going to ask me for my username and password so simply type in what we set in the settings and then obviously like

I said the password that you use to log in to the device and just hit remember my credentials and click okay and boom same thing that we had on our Mac have access to everything simply go to our share you're going to notice that this is literally the same profile

picture um and I can just drag and drop and and there you go complete and we're good to go 9:39 a.m. and yeah so that is the cool part about having a um a Macbook or an extra Mac device even if

it's like an older uh generation as long as you um set it up like what I just showed you uh you should be good to go you don't have to invest in a NAS or sorry a NAS um and you can continue to

add storage until you actually need to invest more money into something like that but yes hopefully you guys enjoyed this simple tutorial um hopefully I broke it down for you guys if you enjoyed it make sure to hit that like button comment anything um down below or if you simply have

questions or you're stuck on a certain portion please feel free to drop your questions and I will make sure I get to them and with that being said uh hope you have a great rest of your day and I'll see you in the next one see you

How To Turn A Mac Into A Storage Server

How To Turn A Mac Into A Storage Server