2014 mac mini + USB HDs instead of a NAS?

[nicho]

Hi everyone,

I'm not going to give actual $ figures because that's not the point of this post - "but this is only $X" would be useless to me since you're probably in the USA and I'm in China. But keeping it all relative, I have a couple of options I'd like help to balance.

A few months ago my late 2013 13" MBP had a battery expansion. I figured it was time to replace it, and since it hadn't left my desk in a couple of years i got a mac mini 2018 to replace it. I had a thunderbolt 2 dock for my MBP, which out of laziness I had hooked up to my mac mini, but likely don't need since it only has 2 USB 3 HDs hanging off it and a mini dp to dp cable for my monitor. gigabit ethernet is now possible by connecting directly to the mac mini.

I moved one 4TB external hard drive and connected it to my router as an SMB share as a light "test" for using infuse, mostly. This data isn't 'backed up' per se, but whenever I add files to it I copy them to a local hard drive attached to my mac mini too. I intended to buy a NAS for media storage at some point to allow for a bit more redundancy, and possibly time machine backups over the network. I'd been looking at the synology DS218+ as a solution that would probably serve my needs. but now the curveball.

I've found someone selling 2014 mac minis (seller refurbished, HD replaced with 256GB SSD) for less even than the cost of a DS218play. It's only the dual core model, so I know it's going to be slow even compared to my old MBP. But would it serve my purposes? I think I could move my thunderbolt station to that mac mini and use link aggregation to have a 2Gbps connection to my router. I'd be able to use it as a reliable time machine destination for all of the family macs, and reduce the amount of stuff I have plugged in in my office by relocation another couple of hard drives out there (embracing the fact that I'd have a computer with multiple drives hanging off it, vs the idea of having a single, clean nas and being reluctant to make use of the 4TB external). Would there be any downsides I'm not thinking of, going Mac + DAS as a network file server rather than buying a NAS?


It will be plugged in underneath a TV that I don't use much, but for which I'd planned to replace my old 3rd gen apple tv with a newer model. How do mac minis work as HTPCs nowadays (what software could I run, and control without a mouse and keyboard?) I could maybe justify stretching to the i5 they're selling with 8G of ram if I was going to be saving the money elsewhere (no apple tv).

 

[Krevnik]

As a server, it’s good. The trade off is that you get to maintain the services on the Mac Mini yourself, vs a NAS that’s meant to update more automatically. That said, the promise of a NAS appliance isn’t as nice as I thought. Plex needs to be manually updated on my QNAP anyways and it seems to want to update the main firmware much more often then macOS, meaning more reboots. Ugh. You can also get cheaper cloud backups using a Mac Mini vs NAS via something like Backblaze.

As HTPC, I’d avoid it. The issue is that the AppleTV 4/4K is where the HTPC apps themselves are being developed. I’m just not aware of any good couch-friendly clients for the Mac anymore, but the ATV has apps like Infuse that match with a NAS or Mini server very well.

There’s also the noise of a DAS enclosure, but that’s not a dealbreaker for everyone. It is for me though.

Personally, if I had to choose between a NAS or Mini + DAS, I’d take the Mini. The mini can be used to cache OS updates for other Apple devices, it can host more complicated services over most NAS boxes, and if you really want, can install Windows or Linux server software on it down the road, while the NAS is locked to Linux. It’s just more flexible at the cost of being a little more DIY. Performance of a Mac Mini is generally better than NAS boxes like the one you mention, as well. So network transfers will be a bit more reliable, and you can do more work on the server before network throughput starts to suffer.

EDIT: RAID is a little “easier” on NAS though. Especially if you want RAID5-like behavior. But SoftRAID does a good job here, and comes with some OWC DAS enclosures.

 

[ActionableMango]

Is your use case primarily media storage and playback to a TV? If so I'd consider something completely different, like a Zidoo Z9S, Z10, or maybe X20 depending on your budget and preferences for internal or external drives. Attach the drives to the Zidoo, enable SAMBA, and add them as network drives on your computer.

If you are interested, I have a Z9S and would be able to answer questions.

I agree with @Krevnik. Mac Mini isn't great for KB/mouse-free HTPC use. It's doable, but configuring and maintaining it will be a hobby unto itself and I 100% bet you will be having to pull out the mouse and keyboard all the time.

 

[nicho]

Is your use case primarily media storage and playback to a TV? If so I'd consider something completely different, like a Zidoo Z9S, Z10, or maybe X20 depending on your budget and preferences for internal or external drives. Attach the drives to the Zidoo, enable SAMBA, and add them as network drives on your computer.

If you are interested, I have a Z9S and would be able to answer questions.

Interesting idea - but the primary use case is media storage for sharing to multiple TVs, including the one we use most in another room and iOS devices. It looks like the cheapest of those would actually do the job but I worry about network performance. My ASUS router chokes when it is performing file sharing duties and I barely get about 15MB/s consistently over gigabit lan.

 

[nicho]

Personally, if I had to choose between a NAS or Mini + DAS, I’d take the Mini. The mini can be used to cache OS updates for other Apple devices, it can host more complicated services over most NAS boxes, and if you really want, can install Windows or Linux server software on it down the road, while the NAS is locked to Linux. It’s just more flexible at the cost of being a little more DIY. Performance of a Mac Mini is generally better than NAS boxes like the one you mention, as well. So network transfers will be a bit more reliable, and you can do more work on the server before network throughput starts to suffer.

EDIT: RAID is a little “easier” on NAS though. Especially if you want RAID5-like behavior. But SoftRAID does a good job here, and comes with some OWC DAS enclosures.

I think this is the line I will go down then. I currently use my 2018 mac mini to cache updates, but I've noticed it's a bit aggressive in clearing things out because I didn't allocate huge amounts of storage to it. I can afford to dedicate more storage on a single-purpose machine.

RAID isn't a huge concern of mine as gigabit ethernet will probably be the bottleneck to performance and on a mac I can use other backup strategies for the content (whether that's time machine backups, CCC or setting up my "copy to NAS" quick action to copy files to more than one location or some combination of all 3. perhaps i need to look more into rsync, too). I'd likely hang the 4TB USB3 drive that's attached to my router and an additional 4TB USB3 drive that's attached to my mac mini off the "new" mini, and supplement those with a new 8TB drive that can hold backups.

 

[sdp77]

I have attached 5 8tb external hard drives to my Mac mini where my iTunes library is stored. I have 5 AppleTVs that connect to the mini and all works well.

 

[ActionableMango]

Interesting idea - but the primary use case is media storage for sharing to multiple TVs, including the one we use most in another room and iOS devices.

I'm curious, what iOS application are you using for media playback?

 

[nicho]

I'm curious, what iOS application are you using for media playback?

Infuse. I’ll be updating my Apple tvs with 4K ones so I can use infuse there, too instead of airplaying it from the phone/iPad. Big fan.

 

[ActionableMango]

Infuse. I’ll be updating my Apple tvs with 4K ones so I can use infuse there, too instead of airplaying it from the phone/iPad. Big fan.

Thanks, I didn't even know there was an Infuse for iOS. I'll give it a shot.

 

[nicho]

Thanks, I didn't even know there was an Infuse for iOS. I'll give it a shot.

I actually used to be fully into iOS integration - syncing videos and music etc. Then apple music pulled me a little bit away from that habit... trying to add subtitles to my whole movie collection and realising what a pain in the bottom it was after the Bs was what really did it for me though. No play from my itunes library at home and using the videos app out of it - just streaming from my NAS with the help of infuse (or downloading the files to play locally, if away)

 

[Boyd01]

It's only the dual core model, so I know it's going to be slow even compared to my old MBP.

FWIW, all of the 2014 Mini's are only dual core models. But I have been doing something similar to this for about 5 years and am very happy. Now, your needs are a bit more complicated than mine, I just use iTunes on the Mini itself, two Apple TV 3's, two Macs and two iOS devices. Also have the Mini connected to my stereo system with speakers in several rooms. I have file sharing enabled on the Mini and use it as a shared network drive also, but that use is not very heavy.

Originally I had a base model 2.5ghz/4gb/500gb HD 2012 Mini then gave that to my kids and replaced it with a base 1.4ghz/4gb/500gb HD 2014 Mini. That worked just fine as an iTunes server, but the base 2014 4gb Mini was much slower than the 2012 4gb Mini for other things. For example, it would take about 45 seconds just to open System Preferences! So if you are looking at that model Mini, you might think twice. They are really slow machines and the 4gb RAM is not upgradeable.

About 6 months ago I picked up a 2.8ghz/8gb 2014 Mini with fusion drive that B&H Photo was blowing out for $500 (this is one step down for the top of the line 2014 Mini). I split the 128gb SSD from the fusion drive and use that as a boot disk, so this is a much faster machine and I'm really happy with it.

All my media is on a 4TB USB 3.0 hard drive, with a second drive connected for nightly backups and I rotate that with another external backup disk periodically. I use Carbon Copy Cloner for this, and it already saved me once when the primary media drive failed. Only took a minute to swap it with the backup. I also have Backblaze for constant backups to the cloud.

Now there's only one thing I haven't figured out yet. The old, base 2014 Mini was coming close to saturating gigabit ethernet with about 100MB/sec performance. Tested this again when I upgraded to the faster 2014 Mini and it was only around 80MB/sec. Now the new Mini is running Mojave and the old one was running El Capitan, so maybe filesharing is less efficient on newer versions of MacOS? My media drive clocks around 170MB/sec and I also tried file sharing from the internal SSD which clocks over 700MB/sec with the same results. I don't really use file sharing very heavily, so I haven't done any troubleshooting.

 

[nicho]

That worked just fine as an iTunes server, but the base 2014 4gb Mini was much slower than the 2012 4gb Mini for other things. For example, it would take about 45 seconds just to open System Preferences! So if you are looking at that model Mini, you might think twice. They are really slow machines and the 4gb RAM is not upgradeable.

Are you sure the ram was at fault, not the HDD? The one I'm looking at has an SSD installed.

 

[Boyd01]

There are a bunch of threads here about the base 4gb 2014 Mini. I'm sure that an SSD will help, because swapping will be so much faster than a hard drive. But it's still not the same as RAM. So I just don't know personally, although others have suggested that 4gb is always going to be a handicap. Then there's also the "speedy" 1.4ghz CPU....

But if the machine is really just a server, maybe it doesn't matter much? Personally, I think these base 2014 Mini's are horrible and would not recommend them to anyone. When I got the new Mini, I just put my old one in the closet. Considered adding a SSD to it, but didn't think it was worth the effort. So there it sits. Have been thinking about installing Linux on it, just to play around someday.

 

[Krevnik]

I actually used to be fully into iOS integration - syncing videos and music etc.

I'm in the same boat, honestly. One of the best things the Apple TV 4(K) did was break me out of the iTunes ecosystem for media inside the house. Because of Infuse, specifically.

And yeah, Infuse on the 4K is brilliant.

But if the machine is really just a server, maybe it doesn't matter much? Personally, I think these base 2014 Mini's are horrible and would not recommend them to anyone. When I got the new Mini, I just put my old one in the closet. Considered adding a SSD to it, but didn't think it was worth the effort. So there it sits. Have been thinking about installing Linux on it, just to play around someday.

It doesn't take much memory or CPU power to serve files. Worst case, you put Linux on the thing and access it via SSH/SMB to free up memory from the Window Server. GUIs are what eat up a good chunk of your memory anyways.

To put it in perspective, the base 2014 Mac Mini will stomp all over a lot of the consumer NAS hardware available. You have to look at something like Synology or QNAP's Small-Medium Business line to get a CPU that actually beats the 2014, despite possible clock differences (laptop chips vs IoT/Embedded chips).

Give it a few more years though and then the 2014 Mini will start to get beaten out by these appliances. But by then, the i3 2018 will get even cheaper on the used market, and that is an even better deal, IMO.

I do think it'd be worth trying to get a little more out of the 2014 instead of buying the lowest end model, but the lowest end model still beats out a consumer Synology or QNAP, so I'm not going to say "don't do it" either.

 

[Boyd01]

I'm sure you're right about that. Back in 2014 I was considering getting either the Mini or a NAS also, and was surprised at how weak the hardware specs were on the entry level NAS. And the NAS couldn't really serve iTunes content - I think the software could serve music but not video. The Mac was just dead simple though, turn on home sharing and file sharing and you're all set.

You might be fine with the base Mini, like I said, I used it for a couple years and it was fine. But most of my media library is SD, ripped from DVD's with Handbrake. And my old AppleTV's only support 100 base-T ethernet, so the base Mini had absolutely no problems with that.

It was just notable that everything else on that Mini was unbelievably slow. I don't doubt that a SSD would speed that up however. I certainly wouldn't pay much for one of those Mini's. FWIW, at the same time I got my 2.8ghz/8gb Mini, B&H Photo was also blowing out the base 1.4ghz/4gb model for $350.

 

[getrealbro]

I’m in the process of converting my old daily driver (2014 Mini 8GB 1T HDD running Mojave) into a headless file/music NAS. I’m collecting the 8TB drives that have been hanging off our Macs, cleaning them up and adding them to the 2014 Mini for file sharing. I’ve been pleasantly surprised with the Mini’s performance and that 8GB RAM is no longer an issue as a NAS

Next I’ll collect our music and consolidate it too. The 2014 Mini is directly hooked to one of our old fashioned stereo systems. And it can play music to our Apple TV HD and a 2nd old fashioned stereo (hooked to an AirPort Express) when using iTunes & AirPlay 2. BUT…

AFAIK Amazon Music doesn’t support AirPlay 2 Any work arounds to distribute Amazon Music to multiple old fashioned stereos?

Thanks in Advance - GetRealBro

 

[nicho]

I do think it'd be worth trying to get a little more out of the 2014 instead of buying the lowest end model, but the lowest end model still beats out a consumer Synology or QNAP, so I'm not going to say "don't do it" either.

Thanks for the advice. Going to a model with 8GB increases the cost by 50% (and comes with a 1TB HD installed instead of an SSD). To my mind that means it needs to lay 50% longer before it is replaced and I’m not really sure that it will.

 

[ActionableMango]

trying to add subtitles to my whole movie collection and realising what a pain in the bottom it was after the Bs was what really did it for me though.

I've experienced this and I sympathize. At some point the process has "time costs" similar to chores. But it's supposed to just be a solution, not a chore.

 

[Krevnik]

Thanks for the advice. Going to a model with 8GB increases the cost by 50% (and comes with a 1TB HD installed instead of an SSD). To my mind that means it needs to lay 50% longer before it is replaced and I’m not really sure that it will.

Yeah, I tend to agree for something like this. And at least in this comparison, it just needs to beat the NAS in price and value, not be a good primary/secondary computer.

I've experienced this and I sympathize. At some point the process has "time costs" similar to chores. But it's supposed to just be a solution, not a chore.

Sure, and this is the gap that lets things like Infuse or Plex shine, TBH. I'm honestly glad that I've been able to skip the Handbrake & Subtitle steps in my flow with them.

 

[nicho]

Yeah, I tend to agree for something like this. And at least in this comparison, it just needs to beat the NAS in price and value, not be a good primary/secondary computer.

Base model 2014 on the way. I took a few days to decide because I got distracted by the availability of (older) mac pros at similar low prices. Head ruled over the heart though, since at least the mac mini has USB3 for attaching hard drives and runs catalina.