Mac Mini or NAS for wireless/remote backups and storage?

[boss.king]

Are there any benefits to using a Mac Mini instead of a NAS for backing up and extra storage? My wife and I currently each use 1TB external HDDs to back up our Macs, and we don't back up our phones at all. I'm trying to convince her that this isn't a great way to keep going.

As someone who's sort of stupid when it comes to network stuff, I was hoping someone could explain how a Mac Mini might be better or worse than a NAS for this sort of thing. I'd essentially like to be able to store and access things remotely (a large-ish photo collection, documents, etc) as well as backing up our MacOS and iOS devices. As a bonus, I thought the Mac Mini (likely a 2012 or 2014 upgraded with an SSD) could serve in place of a streaming box under our TV. I don't need it to be a media server as I don't have a large show or movie collection, just streaming from sites like Netflix, Youtube, Hulu, etc.

Are either of these (NAS or MM) harder to set up or more maintenance-heavy? Is there another, easier option out there? I'd really like to avoid a cloud storage subscription if possible.

Any input would be greatly appreciated.

 

[MikeDr206]

I’ve done both: a Synology NAS and a Mac Mini connected to a RAID 1 storage box. I prefer the latter for shared storage and for TM backups. The NAS had a lot of features that we just didn’t use, and seemed to require more maintenance than the MM.

 

[boss.king]

I’ve done both: a Synology NAS and a Mac Mini connected to a RAID 1 storage box. I prefer the latter for shared storage and for TM backups. The NAS had a lot of features that we just didn’t use, and seemed to require more maintenance than the MM.

Good to know. If you don't mind answering a follow-up question, how did you have your MM set up? I think I'm getting a little confused by the server vs NAS distinction, my understanding is that the MM would be a server rather than a NAS, and that a NAS would function more as dumb connected storage, right? Is there any meaningful distinction?

 

[HDFan]

1. Make sure you have implemented a 3-2-1 backup strategy. TM can only be one of these backups as it tends to fail. You can backup to a NAS via other utilities such as Carbon Copy Cloner that are less likely to fail than TM. You can also backup to inexpensive on-line services such as Crashplan or BackBlaze, or attached storage.

2. TM NAS backups tend to be very slow, even with very fast 10 GB or thunderbolt connections, depending on the backup size. Wireless will be even slower.

3. CCC backups to a NAS are generally as fast as your NAS and network permit. After the first backup they are incremental. Just did a CC incremental backup of ~460 GB of a 28 TB volume in 1 hour 40 minutes. This is slower than it should be, but my NASs' firmware currently has a problem with thunderbolt.

4. You should be able to backup to direct storage attached to a Mac Mini via a network share. Haven't tried this, and unsure if the share would show up in TM as a backup destination. On a NAS getting the TM volume to display can sometimes take a bit of work.

5. As for phone backups it depends on what you are backing up.

a. Applications can simply be reinstalled if they need to be restored.

b. Application data is backed up if you have chosen the encryption option if you backup via the Finder. You can backup to your Mac, or to iCloud.



I have never lost an phone backup, as opposed to many TM backups. Did have some issues when restoring to a new phone which eventually got resolved. If your photos are in iCloud and you don't have any application or other data (such as for the health app) then you may not have to worry about phone backups - they are just a convenient way to quickly do a restore.

 

[boss.king]

1. Make sure you have implemented a 3-2-1 backup strategy. TM can only be one of these backups as it tends to fail. You can backup to a NAS via other utilities such as Carbon Copy Cloner that are less likely to fail than TM. You can also backup to inexpensive on-line services such as Crashplan or BackBlaze, or attached storage.

2. TM NAS backups tend to be very slow, even with very fast 10 GB or thunderbolt connections, depending on the backup size. Wireless will be even slower.

3. CCC backups to a NAS are generally as fast as your NAS and network permit. After the first backup they are incremental. Just did a CC incremental backup of ~460 GB of a 28 TB volume in 1 hour 40 minutes. This is slower than it should be, but my NASs' firmware currently has a problem with thunderbolt.

4. You should be able to backup to direct storage attached to a Mac Mini via a network share. Haven't tried this, and unsure if the share would show up in TM as a backup destination. On a NAS getting the TM volume to display can sometimes take a bit of work.

5. As for phone backups it depends on what you are backing up.

a. Applications can simply be reinstalled if they need to be restored.

b. Application data is backed up if you have chosen the encryption option if you backup via the Finder. You can backup to your Mac, or to iCloud.

View attachment 1911853

I have never lost an phone backup, as opposed to many TM backups. Did have some issues when restoring to a new phone which eventually got resolved. If your photos are in iCloud and you don't have any application or other data (such as for the health app) then you may not have to worry about phone backups - they are just a convenient way to quickly do a restore.

Thanks for the detailed response. Lots to look into there.

 

[MikeDr206]

Good to know. If you don't mind answering a follow-up question, how did you have your MM set up? I think I'm getting a little confused by the server vs NAS distinction, my understanding is that the MM would be a server rather than a NAS, and that a NAS would function more as dumb connected storage, right? Is there any meaningful distinction?

nothing special. I enabled file sharing. And then at each Mac connecting to the MM, connected to the MM as a server. basically it is dumb storage from the perspective of the other Macs.

You can also use the MM as a Time Machine target.