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Buying advice for home fileserver hub

T

trifona

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 22, 2007
78
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Apple ecosystem home, with iPhones, tablets, 2020 13" M1 Air, 2019 16" MBP, Apple TVs, and doorstop of a 2007 24" iMac Core 2 Duo.

The iMac does not get used at all at this point but it does host 1GB of historical documents on the home network(family photos, videos, tax documents, iTunes, etc). I access files from it's internal 2TB HDD over the network from my MBP. An OWC Mercury enclosure with a 4TB HDD is connected to the iMac is its dedicated time machine drive.

I need to finally get rid of the iMac as the drives are ancient. The 2TB internal dates back to 2011. I have been researching Synology NASs to serve as a potential replacement since I don't really need a another desktop.

What I'm thinking about right now is to purchase an M2 Pro Mini 16GB 1TB to serve as a headless Mac being backed up via Time Machine. I may still pursue a Synology, but I think I need a new machine to serve as the hub for the home. I could purchase another Air to serve as the Hub instead but I would worry potentially about reliability / longevity. Am I right about thinking that I should get a Mini instead of just a NAS?

I'm not sure how to handle the family photos on the iMac and transfer them to a new device. I have a version of Lightroom on the iMac which cannot be installed on modern versions of Mac OS.

Any advice appreciated.
 
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trifona said:
Apple ecosystem home, with iPhones, tablets, 2020 13" M1 Air, 2019 16" MBP, Apple TVs, and doorstop of a 2007 24" iMac Core 2 Duo.

The iMac does not get used at all at this point but it does host 1GB of historical documents on the home network(family photos, videos, tax documents, iTunes, etc). I access files from it's internal 2TB HDD over the network from my MBP. An OWC Mercury enclosure with a 4TB HDD is connected to the iMac is its dedicated time machine drive.

I need to finally get rid of the iMac as the drives are ancient. The 2TB internal dates back to 2011. I have been researching Synology NASs to serve as a potential replacement since I don't really need a another desktop.

What I'm thinking about right now is to purchase an M2 Pro Mini 16GB 1TB to serve as a headless Mac being backed up via Time Machine. I may still pursue a Synology, but I think I need a new machine to serve as the hub for the home. I could purchase another Air to serve as the Hub instead but I would worry potentially about reliability / longevity. Am I right about thinking that I should get a Mini instead of just a NAS?

I'm not sure how to handle the family photos on the iMac and transfer them to a new device. I have a version of Lightroom on the iMac which cannot be installed on modern versions of Mac OS.

Any advice appreciated.
Click to expand...
Honestly, the M2 Pro Mac mini is way overkill for your application. I would look on Craigslist or eBay for a 2012 core i7 mini, or even the 2014 core i7 mini. You can upgrade the storage on both machines if needed. Your cost would be ~$100 instead of $1,500. You can also use OCLP to run the current version of MacOS on those machines. Edit: By the way, I am running a 2012 core i7 mini as a headless server running Ventura and it has been flawless...
 
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VegetarianNachos said:
Honestly, the M2 Pro Mac mini is way overkill for your application. I would look on Craigslist or eBay for a 2012 core i7 mini, or even the 2014 core i7 mini. You can upgrade the storage on both machines if needed. Your cost would be ~$100 instead of $1,500. You can also use OCLP to run the current version of MacOS on those machines. Edit: By the way, I am running a 2012 core i7 mini as a headless server running Ventura and it has been flawless...
Click to expand...
Why bother with OCLP? Why not just used the last compatible OS? It is just intended as a local file server
 
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trifona said:
I have been researching Synology NASs to serve as a potential replacement
Click to expand...

You might want to look at QNAP. Better hardware, though may be a bit more expensive.

trifona said:
I think I need a new machine to serve as the hub for the home. I
Click to expand...

To do what?
Serve as a simple file server or more demanding services such as running a media server?
How do you anticipate your storage needs will change over time? A NAS can make storage increases easier.
 
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HDFan said:
You might want to look at QNAP. Better hardware, though may be a bit more expensive.



To do what?
Serve as a simple file server or more demanding services such as running a media server?
How do you anticipate your storage needs will change over time? A NAS can make storage increases easier.
Click to expand...

My understanding is yes that QNAP has better hardware, but inferior software and has been hacked multiple times when exposed to the internet. That may not matter if the use case is home network file server but I'm not interested in buying into an ecosystem that introduces compromises like that. The HW limitations from Synology would be alleviated if I have a Mini serving as a hub anyway.

Would host media within our home network. I dont really have a use case for the 'Pro', however if I want to have 1TB + 16GB the cost to upgrade to Pro somewhat makes sense at +$300, no? Plus extra Thunderbolt ports.
 
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picpicmac said:
Why not just a base Mac Mini? And for a server, perhaps the money is better spent on the 10Gb Ethernet upgrade, if one is going to move to 10GBe for your home network.
Click to expand...
How would 10GB would benefit us in an intermittent use home server with only a couple of TBs being hosted? I thought the 10GB on the Mac Mini was on the WAN input not the LAN side, am I mistaken about how this works? My cable internet service is 800Mbps. I just replaced our WiFi 5 router with an AX6000 WiFi6 router that has dual 2.5GB.
 
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trifona said:
How would 10GB would benefit us in an intermittent use home server with only a couple of TBs being hosted?
Click to expand...
You had mentioned you are researching Synology NAS, so I wonder if you want to connect to such with 10GBe, as they come with 10GBe capability.
 
I use a base M1 Mac mini. I like the Mini because it runs the latest macOS, which means it's a Mac file server, a Time Machine server for my laptops, and it hosts media for my AppleTVs. I operate it headless using Screens 4, which means I can manage it both at home and away.
 
trifona said:
but inferior software and has been hacked multiple times when exposed to the internet.
Click to expand...

Synology software may be easier to use but it is also less configurable. I find Synology software to be inferior to QNAPs. QNAP has had its issues but not a problem if you don't allow outside access. I have both QNAP and Synology NAS units and the QNAP is so much better. Bright LCD tells me boot and shutdown status. Voice tells me when critical things are happening. QNAP has units with both thunderbolt and 10 GbE standard. Synology generally doesn't have any of these features and doesn't support thunderbolt.

Depending on the unit they may give annoying prompts telling you that your memory or whatever is not provided by Synology. They want you to buy upgrades from them at outrageous prices. That alone is enough for not want to buy from them. Doesn't happen on all units though. Not an issue with QNAP.


A good resource when choosing a NAS is nascompares. Reviews and compares a lot of vendors products.

nascompares.com

Vulnerabilities, Ransomware and Exploits on Synology & QNAP NAS - Stay Updated!

Be Regularly Updated on Security Concerns with Synology & QNAP NAS Recently there has been a spotlight on some NAS brands and their security and protection from attacks by hackers and online intruders. In some cases, this has been down to holes being found in the system software or system proto
nascompares.com nascompares.com
 
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I dont use a mac as a file server on my home network. I use a QNAP NAS that takes nvme blades. you can configure them lots of ways. I have 3 1tb blades in mine striped raid0 but its just a file bucket for moving file copies around. You can have 4x8tb in there if you want... and best of all its dead silent.
 
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How would a 10GBe Mini benefit or would it? I am confused on this.

Is it when plugging in a Synology Raid into the 10GBe port and utilizing Wifi to capture internet from the router? Still a benefit if we do not with a Synology Raid?

Most of the files on our server are small data files, not large ones by any means.
 
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trifona said:
How would a 10GBe Mini benefit or would it? I am confused on this.

Is it when plugging in a Synology Raid into the 10GBe port and utilizing Wifi to capture internet from the router? Still a benefit if we do not with a Synology Raid?

Most of the files on our server are small data files, not large ones by any means.
Click to expand...
Most people are stuck thinking in terms of huge files. Not much reason you would need 10GBe from what you've said. 16GB RAM is also huge overkill for a device you only plan on using as a server. (The $500 Synology ones only have 2GB, so even when you account for macOS overhead you really don't need more than 8)

If you really need a NAS, I'd lean towards a Synology. Dead simple to operate, I know someone who has one and have helped them do maintenance on it.

If you want to be technical you can always put TrueNas on any computer you can get ahold of and make a NAS like that.

You might also want to just consider iCloud for the majority of these files and then have a drive just for Time Machine backups, it would probably be more convenient than using a NAS for everything in day to day use. Plus they're the ones that have to think about not losing your data instead of you.
 
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I bought one of those cheap barebones off-brand mini PCs off of Amazon, put Ubuntu on the system drive and added a secondary drive to set up a shared folder via Samba for Mac backup and file sharing. It's great and despite the low end hardware it's still faster than most NAS boxes. I can add an external HDD unit to run backups with Linux's built-in backup tools as well.
 
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After doing some more googling, in order to make use of 10Gbe I would need to add a 19 GB switch between my router (2.5G)connecting to the Mac Mini and NAS? So less than $200 for a switch if/ when the time comes?
 
10 GbE or Thunderbolt tends to be rather useful if you are transferring large files. Not sure what a 19 GB switch is - typo? Every component in the path between the two devices that are transferring data need to support 10 GbE.

My Netgear XS708T 10 GbE switch has been discontinued. I don't see a similar replacement.
 
I'm really struggling on a decision here. You can see there's a reason I havent update this iMac for 17 years. I almost pulled the trigger on a Mini M2 Pro spec'd out with 2TB SSD, 16GB ram, and 10GBe, but I keep looking at other, less costly options. A non-Pro M2 only saves me $300 on an identical spec. What's a better solution? 3rd party desktop SSD drives are still expensive. The OWC MiniStack STX enclosure / hub with 2TB NVMe drive costs $520 by itself. A Samsung t7 Shield with 2TB would cost less than $175, but is that the right solution for data I want to archive? I basically need a secure way to keep family photos, videos, personal documents, and a music collection safe. Right now the iMac still works perfectly, it backs up to an external over Time Machine. The main reason I had for getting rid of it is the fear that eventually the hardware will fail. We rarely need to actually use it unless we want to access something very specific on it. I have SMB & AFP enabled so I can access everything through the Finder on my MBP or through Screen Mirroring.

Even a used 2018 Mac Mini from OWC would cost in excess of $500 with enough drive space. I dont feel I "need" a NAS since I dont have a need to access these files over the internet, should I reconsider? I originally thought a new Mini was the smart way to approach it and to spec up the internals to what I would need to store all of our documents. What's the smart thing to do here?
 
trifona said:
I thought the 10GB on the Mac Mini was on the WAN input not the LAN side, am I mistaken about how this works?
Click to expand...
The mini would likely not be configured as a router, if I understand what you mean. Both the WiFi interface and Ethernet interface are available for you to use as you see fit. In the default configuration, you would just plug the mini's ethernet port into your switch (likely an ethernet port on your WiFi router for now, a 10Gb switch maybe in the future) and the mini would be available on your LAN using its ethernet.

If you also connected its WiFi to your WiFi router, then the mini would have two different IP addresses, both available on your LAN. Outgoing traffic initiated from the mini would default to the interface that is first in the network service order.

But, you could configure it as a router, routing between the two interfaces, but that doesn't sound like your intention.
 
trifona said:
I'm really struggling on a decision here. You can see there's a reason I havent update this iMac for 17 years. I almost pulled the trigger on a Mini M2 Pro spec'd out with 2TB SSD, 16GB ram, and 10GBe, but I keep looking at other, less costly options. A non-Pro M2 only saves me $300 on an identical spec. What's a better solution? 3rd party desktop SSD drives are still expensive. The OWC MiniStack STX enclosure / hub with 2TB NVMe drive costs $520 by itself. A Samsung t7 Shield with 2TB would cost less than $175, but is that the right solution for data I want to archive? I basically need a secure way to keep family photos, videos, personal documents, and a music collection safe. Right now the iMac still works perfectly, it backs up to an external over Time Machine. The main reason I had for getting rid of it is the fear that eventually the hardware will fail. We rarely need to actually use it unless we want to access something very specific on it. I have SMB & AFP enabled so I can access everything through the Finder on my MBP or through Screen Mirroring.

Even a used 2018 Mac Mini from OWC would cost in excess of $500 with enough drive space. I dont feel I "need" a NAS since I dont have a need to access these files over the internet, should I reconsider? I originally thought a new Mini was the smart way to approach it and to spec up the internals to what I would need to store all of our documents. What's the smart thing to do here?
Click to expand...
how much data do you to back up and how often do you access it?

my photos live in the cloud and downloaded locally to my desktop and laptop and the desktop is connected to a lace 2 big so technically I have 4 copies of my data.

I do the same with my data and that is kept on iCloud Drive.

in addition to the lace 2 big I also have have super important files saved on a Samsung T7.
 
trifona said:
I'm really struggling on a decision here. You can see there's a reason I havent update this iMac for 17 years. I almost pulled the trigger on a Mini M2 Pro spec'd out with 2TB SSD, 16GB ram, and 10GBe, but I keep looking at other, less costly options. A non-Pro M2 only saves me $300 on an identical spec. What's a better solution? 3rd party desktop SSD drives are still expensive. The OWC MiniStack STX enclosure / hub with 2TB NVMe drive costs $520 by itself. A Samsung t7 Shield with 2TB would cost less than $175, but is that the right solution for data I want to archive? I basically need a secure way to keep family photos, videos, personal documents, and a music collection safe. Right now the iMac still works perfectly, it backs up to an external over Time Machine. The main reason I had for getting rid of it is the fear that eventually the hardware will fail. We rarely need to actually use it unless we want to access something very specific on it. I have SMB & AFP enabled so I can access everything through the Finder on my MBP or through Screen Mirroring.

Even a used 2018 Mac Mini from OWC would cost in excess of $500 with enough drive space. I dont feel I "need" a NAS since I dont have a need to access these files over the internet, should I reconsider? I originally thought a new Mini was the smart way to approach it and to spec up the internals to what I would need to store all of our documents. What's the smart thing to do here?
Click to expand...
A few random thoughts based on prior comments:
  • 10Gb ethernet is probably overkill for your use case; WiFi on a Mac maxes out at 1200 mbps in ideal situations so unless you're accessing things via a wired connection or you're accessing the server/NAS from multiple devices at once you're unlikely to saturate that level of bandwidth. That's especially true if you get a two drive NAS model with spinning hard disks and set the drives to back the other up; you'll be limited by the read/write speed of the drive.
  • On the flip side many NAS devices especially by Synology only come with gigabit Ethernet which could actually be a bottleneck in ideal conditions. Since your router supports 2.5 Gbe that might be the sweet spot. Asus makes a well reviewed NAS unit under their Asustor brand that comes with 2.5 Gbe standard.
  • Plain old USB-C is perfectly fine for setting up a shared external drive on a headless Mac/Linux server; Thunderbolt is overkill for that application. Sabrent makes a great USB-C NVMe enclosure that sells on Amazon for like $25 that you can stick a PCIe 3.0 SSD of your choosing from a reputable brand into (PCIe 4 is overkill). It won't be blazing fast but it will still be extremely fast. As a bonus if you need to access the data faster than your network allows you can just disconnect it from the server and plug it into your Mac. I wouldn't worry about having enough internal storage outside of what you need for the OS.
  • Keep security updates in mind if using older hardware. That's why I went the Linux route; it supports older hardware but is kept up to date.
 
entropyfl said:
how much data do you to back up and how often do you access it?

my photos live in the cloud and downloaded locally to my desktop and laptop and the desktop is connected to a lace 2 big so technically I have 4 copies of my data.

I do the same with my data and that is kept on iCloud Drive.

in addition to the lace 2 big I also have have super important files saved on a Samsung T7.
Click to expand...

1.5TB on the 2007 machine. Pictures are mostly in Lightroom 3.0 but some in the legacy photos app too. Mostly family photos and videos. Not accessed often. Backed up to a 4TB OWC Mercury Pro HDD.

<1TB on my MBP, backed up on a Samsung T7 and also have a copy OWC external.
 
trifona said:
1.5TB on the 2007 machine. Pictures are mostly in Lightroom 3.0 but some in the legacy photos app too. Mostly family photos and videos. Not accessed often. Backed up to a 4TB OWC Mercury Pro HDD.

<1TB on my MBP, backed up on a Samsung T7 and also have a copy OWC external.
Click to expand...

I'm biased and not the advice you want but I would use my set up which is pretty much what you have with the iMac.. so id be tempted to buy a desktop for the security of you family photos/videos.

option 2 for me is to subscribe to iCloud or Lightroom to keep all photos and videos in the cloud.
 
bradman83 said:
A few random thoughts based on prior comments:
  • 10Gb ethernet is probably overkill for your use case; WiFi on a Mac maxes out at 1200 mbps in ideal situations so unless you're accessing things via a wired connection or you're accessing the server/NAS from multiple devices at once you're unlikely to saturate that level of bandwidth. That's especially true if you get a two drive NAS model with spinning hard disks and set the drives to back the other up; you'll be limited by the read/write speed of the drive.
  • On the flip side many NAS devices especially by Synology only come with gigabit Ethernet which could actually be a bottleneck in ideal conditions. Since your router supports 2.5 Gbe that might be the sweet spot. Asus makes a well reviewed NAS unit under their Asustor brand that comes with 2.5 Gbe standard.
  • Plain old USB-C is perfectly fine for setting up a shared external drive on a headless Mac/Linux server; Thunderbolt is overkill for that application. Sabrent makes a great USB-C NVMe enclosure that sells on Amazon for like $25 that you can stick a PCIe 3.0 SSD of your choosing from a reputable brand into (PCIe 4 is overkill). It won't be blazing fast but it will still be extremely fast. As a bonus if you need to access the data faster than your network allows you can just disconnect it from the server and plug it into your Mac. I wouldn't worry about having enough internal storage outside of what you need for the OS.
  • Keep security updates in mind if using older hardware. That's why I went the Linux route; it supports older hardware but is kept up to date.
Click to expand...

10GBe For the cost I was thinking it may be worth it? My router has both 2.5G WAN & LAN ports, so if I were to go the NAS route and pickup a a Synology capable of 10GBe I could marry everything up to a small 10GBe switch and get increased performance; at least that is how I understood things. I assumed a new Mini would be hardwired to the NAS. But if get a new Mini not sure if I really need a NAS at all.

I've been watching Youtube videos to learn about Synology options. Youtuber 'SpaceRex' does a good job explaining these things. Would have to buy a unit that had an upgradeable network slot and decide on either a 2,4, or 5 bay unit; though the latter definitely feels like overkill.

Another option I looked into this week is just to add an offsite backup like BackBlaze for $8 a month and just keep the old machine around until it dies.
 
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