NAS to Replace Mac Mini

I have a QNAMP TS-431P 4-bay which I use as backend to a 2010 Mini running VNC. It's a nice setup which we've used for at least 5 years through varying hardware upgrades.

 

A Mini seems better in almost every way. A NAS is just a power efficient small computer with a crappy operating system, extremely limited features, a tiny number of applications, and dubious customer support.

The Mini is also a power efficient small computer, but has a great operating system, is fully featured, runs an enormous amount of applications, and has good customer support. This can include critical software like iTunes, and critical functions like iTunes backups of your iOS devices. You can even run Windows and thus Windows applications. It's a real computer and every once in a blue moon you'll just need a real computer.

Sure a NAS can cost a lot less, but cheap ones suffer from poor performance, especially if files are encrypted or you are moving many small files. So I guess I'm wondering what it is you are hoping to gain, especially since you've identified a couple of things you will lose.

The only advantage I see for a NAS is that if you need a lot of storage space spanning several drives, it is more tidy, physically speaking. A Mini with several USB drives isn't so tidy.

 

I'm using a QNAP TS453A NAS with 4x 6TB drives and 8GB RAM, and running multiple media servers on it including PLEX, Twonky Server, and Firefly. I keep my iTunes library on the NAS, with a copy backed up to an 8TB external Thunderbolt drive on my iMac using Carbon Copy Cloner on the Mac. I can access this library from my iMac or MacBook via iTunes.

However, I have not tried to integrate it with running iTunes itself, and I have not tried to get my iCloud Photo Library onto it. I access my iCloud photos via ATV, iPhone, iPad and Mac from the cloud.

But with Firefly server, it shows up in iTunes just as if it were another mac running iTunes. So I have a second way for all of my Macs in the house running iTunes to see the music and videos that it's serving, and don't have to mount the QNAP drive on the desktop to access my media.

I started keeping about 500GB of my iTunes library on my MacBook internal drive, and then accessing my full library via the firefly server, instead of mounting the QNAP drive on my desktop to access the media. It's not "Homesharing" though, so my iPhones and ATV's can't see the files. However, they can run the PLEX media player and then I can watch or play any non-DRM file on the iPhones and ATV's. I have about 330GB of music and 400GB of ripped DVD that is not DRM protected.

My Smart TV and xBox and PS Audio DAC can all see the music being served by Twonky Media Server on the QNAP, so that I can play music on them with their native interface without having to leave a Mac turned on to serve the music.

I can also access the non-DRM music, videos, or photos (and files) on my NAS from outside of my house, via small QNAP apps on my iPhone and iPad as well as my MacBook.

The QNAP also came with a license for 4 security video cameras, recording their video stream 24/7, so I can see what's happening in my family room, kitchen, and out the front window with my D-Link cameras.

Lastly, the QNAP has USB and HDMI ports, and I have a keyboard and mouse connected, and it's plugged into the back of my TV, and with HybridDesk Station it comes with software apps that will let me run Chrome or Firefox, the youtube app, plus run Facebook or Spotify and Skype, or do word processing, right on your 4K TV.

It also has a cloud sync app that will let it sign into your cloud drives like Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive and Box and sync to them. And dropbox will let you sync your Photos library to Dropbox, so all the photos could be in multiple places if you have enough storage. I have recently found instructions to let me mount other network drives on the QNAP OS, in order to back it up or sync data, such as to my Drobo 5N that I use solely for Time Machine on 5 Macs.