Using New Mac Mini To Replace NAS

[A1MB1G]

I'm seriously considering getting rid of my Asustor NAS and replacing it with a Mac mini. I primarily use my NAS to serve video files/movies to my other devices within the home using Plex.

My question is whether I can purchase the new Mac Mini based on the M1 chip to accomplish this or should i stick with the traditional intel based Mac Mini? I also do use torrent apps from time to time and wondering about compatibility with the new M1 and what the best approach might be for this.

Any ideas/suggestions?

 

[pldelisle]

I don't think it's a good purpose for a Mac mini to serve as a NAS.

A NAS, by definition, provides uptime, high storage capability and redundancy. A Mac mini can't offer any of these requirements.

If you want to get rid of your NAS, chose another one from Q-NAP or Synology, the two most capable, powerful, and versatile NAS manufacturers. These NAS aren't cheap, but one usually find what he needs in one of these two manufacturers. Both are also very easy to use and highly performing.

 

[Osamede]

I don't think it's a good purpose for a Mac mini to serve as a NAS.

A NAS, by definition, provides uptime, high storage capability and redundancy. A Mac mini can't offer any of these requirements.

Not true. Mac Mini uptime is as good or better than anything else. With the thunderbolt ports you can connect any type of storage you want at mega high speed.

 

[pldelisle]

Not true. Mac Mini uptime is as good or better than anything else. With the thunderbolt ports you can connect any type of storage you want at mega high speed.

Uptime means having good hard drives and RAID system that provides uptime when a disk becomes defective. A standard Mac mini without any external enclosure cannot offer that.

To provide this, you need Thunderbolt enclosure that supports RAID. We don't even know the compatibility status of these enclosure with M1 offering. And from my experience, it's even more costly than a standalone Synology or Q-NAP NAS. Plus, a dedicated server for storage is a lot safer than a computer you can use everyday for a lot of other tasks, potentially impacting security.

I prefer having a dedicated file server.

 

[Osamede]

What you may prefer is not the same thing as the device being incapable of it, as you claimed. That’s wrong.

You can connect any type of high speed or RAID storage you want to the Mac Mini, under and security profile that you wish so there’s nothing inherent about a Mac Mini that would ever be any worse than a “NAS”.

On the other hand the Mac Mini is actually ALSO a full fledged PC with a software ecosystem that of course surpasses any single purpose NAS....

 

[pldelisle]

What you may prefer is not the same thing as the device being incapable of it, as you claimed. That’s wrong.

This is a forum and a forum is there to give opinions and explore the question under multiple ways. Simply throwing "wrong" at people will get you absolutely nowhere and is disrespectful. Especially when there is absolutely nothing wrong in what I said.

What I said is that a Mac mini, in its pure version, cannot offer three basic requirements a server *must* have. There was never any question in OP of buying an external enclosure. So I thought about the Mac mini in its standalone, basic version.

You can connect any type of high speed or RAID storage you want to the Mac Mini, under and security profile that you wish so there’s nothing inherent about a Mac Mini that would ever be any worse than a “NAS”.

True. But you can install a variety of applications for usages completely different from a NAS-oriented server, which can impact security. Synology and Q-Nap also have an "app store" but this one is tightly controlled.

On the other hand the Mac Mini is actually ALSO a full fledged PC with a software ecosystem that of course surpasses any single purpose NAS....

Yes of course. It all depends of the intentions of OP. If having a working computer for everyday use PLUS having the capability of plugging external Thunderbolt RAID enclosure are his wishes, then, absolutely. If he only want to trade its current NAS for a standard Mac mini specifically for file sharing, I don't think it's the best solution at all.

 

[jeyf]

way back when rock was dirt:
i used an old pc running a totally clean copy of windows (no applications loaded). It did suprisengly well as a NAS. Along those lines your mac mini may work too. You might have to just use the mac mini as a file server and not install any apps on it.
-consider a mac mini not the sharpest tool in the shed and it is expensive for what you get. Low repairability too.
-home spun NAS box will not be able to assist you rebuild if you have a RAID 5 hard drive go bad. Bad will happen if you spin rust.

my file server:
i bought a QNap brand 4 bay unit 2-3 years ago. I have concerns about QNap in the area of security. Seems there is always undefined activity from the box. I added additional RAM to the box for a moderate increase in speed. I have a very old DROBO brand 5 bay NAS that i use for a backup from the QNAP via chronoSync. The company DROBO Inc. is unstable after several buy outs. Myabe Synology would be my next pick.

up time:
i bought a fan free micro ITX chassis to run the open source app pfSense. It has an up time of about 5 years and I paid ~$150 for the ITX box on ebay. Just saying electronics these days is super reliable.

quite frankly i have not seen my Qnap NAS box in a while. I set it up to email me if a drive goes bad. I put it in the basement where its a little cooler, less dust and less vibration. The NAS box has a built in maintenance web server i can access. Maybe it is 3 years old at this thme, i stopped coounting the run time.

 

[pldelisle]

Low repairability too.

Crucial point for a NAS.

bought a fan free micro ITX chassis to run the open source app pfSense. It has an up time of about 5 years and I paid ~$150 for the ITX box on ebay. Just saying electronics these days is super reliable.

Nice ! I personally favours Ubiquiti, but pfSense is even more powerful and stable.

quite frankly i have not seen my Qnap NAS box in a while. I set it up to email me if a drive goes bad. I put it in the basement where its a little cooler, less dust and less vibration. The NAS box has a built in maintenance web server i can access. Maybe it is 3 years old at this thme, i stopped coounting the run time.

My Synology has been running for 7 years 24/7 with enterprise grade Western Digital SE drives. Not a single failure and drives are still 100% healthy. It's in my garage, which goes sometimes north 30 Celsius degrees during summer, and never even had a problem. This is the kind of hardware that you power on and forget.

 

[Boyd01]

I've been using a 2014 Mini as a Media server since about 2013, it has close to 100% uptime. I reboot a couple times a year, generally for issues related to iTunes/Apple TV's. Have lost two media drives on external USB disks. They are automatically cloned nightly, so no data was lost and it only took a few minutes to get back up and running.

Just re-purposed my 2012 quad Mini as a fileserver in June. Has been up continuously since then.

I suppose it depends on your needs and expectations, but the Mini does what I need. However, it seems like an M1 Mini is over-kill for a file server, a 2014 Mini is more than adequate, or a base model refurb 2018 which you can get for $599 from Apple.

 

[pldelisle]

I've been using a 2014 Mini as a Media server since about 2013, it has close to 100% uptime.

Again, uptime in server doesn't mean time between two reboots. It means that the system remains up EVEN WITH FAILURE of internal component. This is precisely what RAID provides : uptime, not backup.

It's a totally different meaning than talking about consumer grade hardware.

I suppose it depends on your needs and expectations, but the Mini does what I need. However, it seems like an M1 Mini is over-kill for a file server, a 2014 Mini is more than adequate, or a base model refurb 2018 which you can get for $599 from Apple.

Power-consumption wise, I think the M1 is far behind and cost less money to operate than any previous Mac mini, so I would be more encline toward the M1 even if performance-wise it is completely overkill.

 

[Osamede]

After using a QNAP NAS and a Windows server to great dissatisfaction.....I then used a Max Mini 2010 server edition as my NAS for 6 years. Then a 2012 with internal drives. Now currently running a 2018 base edition with Thunderbolt 1 2-drive enclosure as NAS and HTPC.

Sorry but I therefore call it fake news if anyone claims Mac Mini “does not fulfill requirements” for a NAS.

 

[pldelisle]

Sorry but I therefore call it fake news if anyone claims Mac Mini “does not fulfill requirements” for a NAS.

A standalone Mac mini isn't a NAS and doesn't fulfill requirements of a NAS in any way.

It can become a powerful file server when using external RAID enclosure and I've said it many times before. But a Mac mini in its purest expression isn't a NAS at all.

 

[Osamede]

No one needs a “ NAS”. What they need is to serve files.

Any computer can serve files. Many different types of devices can fit the purpose just fine

The choice of what computer to use then, is based on the details and your overall use case.


What you’re serving up is product positioning propaganda outlined by the makers of limited purpose file servers aka “NAS”.

 

[pldelisle]

I do have a NAS and I *need* one. I have Terabytes of data, logs to archive, family photos, research, and other type of files. I want them to be kept safely and always want access to them. That's why I needed a RAID 5 storage system that provides me resilience to failure with parity drive and uptime in case of a drive failure. A simple file server doesn't necessary include this resiliency to failure and uptime. The NAS itself also have off-site backup in case of physical disaster at one location. Again, this is not mandatory, but nice to have if needed.

I don't do any product positioning. Synology and Q-NAP are both extremely well known NAS appliance manufacturers and the de-facto choice for an incredibly high portion of prosumers and consumers needing storage solution. And I just have good experience with servers, SMB networks and general IT.

 

[A1MB1G]

Wow. My apologies to everyone for starting quite the hot debate or topic. Lol.

In my circumstance, I use my existing Asustor NAS primarily as a Plex Server. I have all my photos and files on iCloud through our family plan and have never really felt the need to back those up to my NAS.

The issue I have with most NAS boxes including the one I have now is that often times they need to transcode on the fly to play various MKV files. I’ve built a script to convert many of them so they play without transcoding but I would prefer a solution where it can just basically serve up those video files without the need to transcode.

Aside from that, I’m really not getting much use from the NAS box to be honest.

 

[Erehy Dobon]

While I am not familiar with all of the options others have proposed in this thread, I am puzzled by why you aren't considering something like a Raspberry Pi 4 especially in the light of the fact that you have the skill to write scripts for content transcoding.

That said, I understand that some of these NAS solutions (Synology, etc.) provide torrent services as well as on-the-fly content conversion. You might save a few bucks by rolling your own with RPi4 but it is unclear how much effort you want to put into this as well as your overall budget.

In my mind, an Apple Mac mini is a big waste of money for what you are trying to do despite how poorly you have described it.

 

[harshw]

Have you looked at kobol.io? It has a Rockchip RK3399 SoC, with dedicated H.264 encode/decode hardware. There's also a battery backup for graceful shutdown. And it's open source so that you can tinker with it.

Now if they only made a version for 2.5" drives, I would buy it in a heartbeat

 

[jeyf]

... Nice ! I personally favours Ubiquiti, but pfSense is even more powerful and stable...

i looked at the Ubiquiti's Security Firewall box. I also liked their wifi products but seems Ubiquiti has a total buy in situation and you need to install their managment software somewhere on the LAN. I have an old DROBO NAX box with external managment softeare and guess what --- this software will not update to the next macOS. Even if it did will it match my very old DROBO firmware.

pfSense, an open source project funded my NetGate, may go out of business. They have been stuck at revision 2.4 for years. No recent updates tho there is a 2.5 beta avaliable. I question how long pfSens will be around in its current forum.

The Ubiquiti Security Firewall box was incredibly low cost. I might buy one off craigsList and play with it??

 

[eksu]

I was thinking of getting a two bay direct attached storage solution (I’m thinking TR-002) and connecting it to a M1 Mac Mini over the USB-A port, and putting in two 10TB drives.

I am hoping to be able to then mirror them, and then format that as APFS, to use as storage for Plex (just for the home locally) as well as for time machine backups and serving stuff over SMB.

I don’t believe APFS is “supported” on these direct attached storage devices, but I am hoping that they expose the drive for me to format as I wish, instead of going through lots of layers like a NAS.

 

[ronster22]

Or you can get a RPi 4 with some external drives and run OpenMediaVault as a NAS?

 

[jeyf]

I was thinking of getting a two bay direct attached storage solution... then mirror them ... then format as APFS,

if you must spin rust you should use raid 05 and this would usualy require a 4 bay solution. If you wrap your drives with the SMB protocal who cares how the drives are formated. You will not actually not see the drive format, it is covered up by the SMB. Usually a off the shelf NAS box formats the drives in a propriatary format to best match the linux firmware they use. APFS is a depricated format from the 90's.

doing drive(s) as a mirror is raid 01. Not the best considering a write error wll just mirror and than you have two errors. Joy. Again consider raid 05

as I wish, instead of going through lots of layers like a NAS.

off the shelf NAS boxes are efficient. Like a Synology brand situation, the initial setup you adjust a built in web page for raid 5 and other settings. The NAS box firmware will format the drives to the settings and usally with success. If your time is limited & important a off the shelf soulution is fast reliable. The new crop of NAS products allow the user to run applications on the box. This complicates the setup and reduces security.

I like a networked solution as opposed to a direct connection. I have a MB, desktop and an iPhone. All of these can access my home network and manage my files. If one device is not working i got a backup covered. If apple stopps supporting usbA or usbC hardware the network connect will always be there.


I dont represent / work for any of these people. No big love but the push for the avg joe mac user is some sort of for cost on-line file hosting service. Your personal storage requirements are not going to go away next few years. If you use a cloud file service at least make sure it has effective encryption.

 

[eksu]

I want my Mac Mini to serve some files over SMB but the majority of the use of my storage will be for the Mac Mini, and I want APFS for the newer time machine backups.

 

[koruki]

I was looking over my current quad core synology NAS with a UPS and realise if you got a macbook air, its got a better battery life than my UPS when there is a power outage lol.

 

[pldelisle]

I was looking over my current quad core synology NAS with a UPS and realise if you got a macbook air, its got a better battery life than my UPS when there is a power outage lol.

this is the most absurd comparison I’ve ever seen on this forum.

 

[koruki]

this is the most absurd comparison I’ve ever seen on this forum.

Yeah when you've just joined in this forum a few months ago lol, get ready for crazier comments