ZimaCube local connectivity in addition to remote access!

Insight & Feedback
1

I am seen posts that seem to ask this before, but they are older, and I am hoping the situation has changed. Can the ZimaCube support direct connectivity via USB ports?

I was hoping to connect it directly to my Mac desktop and use it like a local drive to copy files, perform backups, but also use the network connectivity of the “cloud” functionality for Plex and other tools.

I found an article that says the basic ZimaCube can have peripherals attached to the USB ports.

Is there any way to enable direct mounting with a ZimaCube basic?

They also mention PCIe expansion… how would one do that?

I have tried to use SMB connectivity and the experience from MacOS X was painful! Lots of timeouts, refresh speeds, and OS “wait” events that cause the “Finder” to show the spinning wait cursor and not let you continue for 5+ seconds or more – making it pretty unusable, and NOT the experience I was hoping for.

Thanks!

1 Like
2

I was one of the ones figuring this out too.

The best advice I got was not the PCIe but the 2.5GB NIC with Cat6 crossover ethernet cable. However, I have not figured out how to set it up yet…

4

There are several ways to connect to you ZimaCube.

Direct connection
Through LAN
Through WAN

Whichever ways, the common uses will be SMB, SSH and WebUI after connection.

We recommend using RJ45 connector to connect your client device with Zima device and use SMB to mount ZimaCube’s drives into your Mac. For ZimaCube Pro users, thunderbolt direct connection is better since it has data transfer speed of 20Gbps.

5

And yet I have zimacube pro, and I can’t get the thunderbolt to work consistently. Only way I’ve done is via network, so I’m hoping an update will come to make the direct connection more reliable.

6

Hi, would you please provide more info about your problem?

For troubleshoting purpose, consider:

  1. What is your client type? Mac or Windows?
  2. How did you connect? Direct connection or through thunderbolt docking station?
  3. What type of cable are you using? USB4 or Thunderbolt?

The more detailed your description, the higher the chance we can identify the cause of the instability.

7

  1. Mac Studio running the latest version of Sonoma.

  2. Direct connection through thunderbolt is what I’m trying to do. I can get it to work fine via network connection, but I prefer direct for the faster speeds. It’s not plugged into a hub, but direct into my Mac Studio.

  3. Using a thunderbolt cable.

8

Hi, you are using the default connection method we recommend, which is to connect directly using a Thunderbolt cable.

What exactly do you mean by ‘can’t work consistently’? Did you experience performance degradation or disconnection during use? There is one possible cause of disconnection: the Mac’s power management will put the Mac into sleep mode, and after resuming from sleep mode, Thunderbolt may need to reestablish the connection. If you want a more clear network establishment behavior, unplugging and replugging the Thunderbolt cable once may be an effective approach.

9

Yes, I have it directly connected with a thunderbolt cable from the Zimacube Pro to my M2 Max Mac Studio. It’s not plugged into a hub or anything. It’s a direct connection.

What I mean by “not working consistently” is the drive literally becomes inaccessible after minutes of plugging it in. It shows up, but then stops working. I can’t get access it via zimacube.local, etc. After it stops working, it is not possible to access it anymore, unless I unplug the thunderbolt cable, and plug it back in. Then the drive shows up for a few minutes, but then the process repeats. Really hard to use this locally when it only works for minutes at a time.

I have tried different thunderbolt cables, and I am making sure they are thunderbolt cables versus regular USB-C cables.