MAC Mini as NAS

[premierpark]

Hi everyone!

I’m thinking about buying a MAC Mini in addition to my current M4, with the goal of replacing my Synology NAS.

Do you think a MAC Mini would be suitable for this?

What’s worth mentioning is that it would run 24/7 all year round.
It would handle the following tasks:

• Running a torrent client
• Running a Plex or Emby media server
• Storing photos and videos
• Running Home Assistant

Do you think constant operation would be a problem for it?
Does anyone have any experience with this?

Thank you very much!

 

[p33t3r]

I'm doing exactly this, with the exception of Home Assistant, on a 2014 Mac Mini with an upgraded SSD and a number of external drives, and everything has worked fine for a number of years.

 

[smithrh]

Lots of experience, works great.

 

[pshufd]

I've did this with my M1 mini from 2021 with an external SSD. I upgraded to an M1 Max Studio and moved the external SSD to that system. I replaced my wife's 2018 mini with the M1 mini. I've been using the Studio as an SSD since then and it's been fine. I have it set up so that other Macs and Windows systems can access it.

The Studio is set up to sleep and there's a 15 second pause to access files on the Studio if the system is sleeping. If you need instant access, then you'd have to turn off sleeping.

This setup works well for us and I like the power savings of the Studio sleeping while not in use.

 

[IJustWannaTalk]

I'm doing exactly this, with the exception of Home Assistant, on a 2014 Mac Mini with an upgraded SSD and a number of external drives, and everything has worked fine for a number of years.

I am also doing this. Mine's been running continuously for 11 years.

The only thing that has failed are the external 2.5" spinning drives attached via USB2 that my FIL keeps providing to me because he gets them for very cheap.

But the Mini has been absolutely rock solid.

I do have it attached via Ethernet.

 

[OsloBergen]

With Synology's ever changing list of support options, I'm also considering this. My question to any of you is, what HD enclosures do you use? If I ditch all my Synology boxes I'll have about a dozen perfectly good drives without a home.

 

[drrich2]

Why a Mac mini can be WAY better than a NAS

Just watched that on YouTube yesterday, IIRC, saw your post and so I'm pointing it out.

 

[smithrh]

With Synology's ever changing list of support options, I'm also considering this. My question to any of you is, what HD enclosures do you use? If I ditch all my Synology boxes I'll have about a dozen perfectly good drives without a home.

OWC ThunderBay 8 Eight-Bay External Drive with Thunderbolt 3

This latest addition to the ThunderBay line, introduced in 2014, now offers 8 drive bays for either 2.5 or 3.5-inch HDDs and/or SSDs in any combination.

eshop.macsales.com

I got mine for quite a bit less, I don't actually remember how but it may have been a return.

It has worked flawlessly.

 

[Che Castro]

My Mac mini 2012 was running 12 years 24/7 without a problem as a server

 

[Che Castro]

With Synology's ever changing list of support options, I'm also considering this. My question to any of you is, what HD enclosures do you use? If I ditch all my Synology boxes I'll have about a dozen perfectly good drives without a home.

Are you looking for a das or Nas ?

 

[smithrh]

DAS or NAS, no matter, because once you attach a bunch of HDDs to your Mac, you have both.

 

[hajime]

For file sharing and backup across different OS platforms, is it better to get a Mini with M4 Pro which can connect to TB5 SSD over a M4 Mini? How is this setup compared with an UGreen NAS?

 

[drrich2]

For file sharing and backup across different OS platforms, is it better to get a Mini with M4 Pro which can connect to TB5 SSD over a M4 Mini? How is this setup compared with an UGreen NAS?

I question the odds of you being willing to pay the high cost for enough Thunderbolt 5 external SSD storage to hold the backups for a number of different devices. Not impossible, but sounds pretty pricey. I don't know what all you want to do with it. For that matter, paying for TB 5 speed for backup functionality, which can be slow (I back up my Mac Mini to a USB-C external SSD), sounds like a big waste of money.

Green offers a range of NAS products, from SSD-only to HDD with SSD cache as an option, for examples.

How many devices, and how much total storage space, do you anticipate the total backups from all your devices to take? And how much more storage (e.g.: for a photo library) do you anticipate needing beyond that?

If you want RAID style redundancy, then of course a single external SSD won't cut it.

It might be helpful to pick a particularly UGreen NAS product (e.g.: all SSD vs. HDD, 2 HDD bay vs. 4 HDD bay) and compare, and consider what all you want to do with it.

There will be incidental concerns. I don't know why, but I've read it's a bad idea to more your Apple Photos library onto a NAS, so you'd probably use a different app. to handle your photos on the UGreen NAS.