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Joined 8 months ago
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Cake day: June 11th, 2025

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  • Yeah, good call. How fast/reliable/cheap are USB drive enclosures? Maybe I should just go that direction instead of buying a whole new system for it. As long as the NAS software doesn’t require much overhead, I’ve got an old laptop that should be able to handle things well enough if that would work.

    Plus, then I could still grab one of these cheap Win 10 machine as a server box to run all of the services to go along with the NAS.

    Edit: tons of great info here - thanks so much!



  • Gotcha, yeah, physical space was the main thing I was worried about picking up one of these used corpo boxes.

    Would something like the HP DeskMini mentioned in another comment be a good enough choice for a service hosting machine? I suppose I could get one of the win-10 boxes for the hosting machine and then find a bigger case for a separate NAS.

    I have an old, pretty big Antec tower from like 10 years ago that should have plenty of space for drives - I suppose I could reuse that for the NAS and just upgrade my main PC case to something more modern like I already wanted to do anyway.

    I just wonder how necessary it is to add two full machines like this. Are there any specific reasons to separate the NAS from the hosting machine other than cost/size considerations? Like, would the systems interfere with each other?

    Could I use one of these machines to double as an HTPC for my main TV as well, or does that need to be a separate third machine, for stability/etc. reasons?

    Sorry for all of the questions!





  • Now that I’ve gotten home and played with it a bit, unfortunately, remote/presentation mode isn’t what she’s looking for, because it doesn’t work with her iPad Notes app the way she needs it to. It shows the entire iPad screen no matter what, instead of the portion she’s using for drawing/notes.

    It turns out that on the Mac and Windows versions of Zoom, there’s an option in Advanced Settings that is specifically connecting an iPad through AirPlay. Unfortunately, as I’ve found out, this is a proprietary setting only allowed on the Mac and Windows versions, and specifically excluded from the Linux version. There’s just a blank space where the option usually would be.

    Luckily, the notes app function she needs does work when using UxPlay, so that’s what we ultimately decided to go with, even though it’s a bit clunkier and laggier than connecting directly through Zoom.

    Thanks for the help!


  • The PC has multiple monitors, a full-sized keyboard, and support for many windows on the screen, which makes it much easier to get work done while on a call, while the iPad is very convenient for drawing diagrams, etc. when on a call, much more so than the built in whiteboard.

    So, she hosts the call on her computer so that she can do all of the multitasking she needs to during the meeting, and she connects her iPad so that she can draw and comment on precise diagrams in a way that isn’t really possible without the iPad.

    From another comment it seems like she might just be missing the feature that’s usually there, but I wanted to be prepared with alternatives when I got home this evening just in case so that she’d be ready for work tomorrow no matter what.

    Edit: See the OP - this is not the case. This is a proprietary function that is only available in the Mac and Windows version of Zoom, so it’s not present in the Linux version at all.