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MP 1,1-5,1 What to do with my cMP 3,1? NAS possible?

OldMacPro2

OldMacPro2

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 23, 2022
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I have a perfectly good cMP 3,1 sitting idle. And I don’t have a NAS or real file server on my LAN.

Any suggestions on what makes sense, if I want to turn it into something useful?
 
"if I want to turn it into something useful?"
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tsialex said:
Think about power draw, makes no sense whatsoever to use a absurdely power hungry 2008 Mac Pro as a file server, you can get more power/throughput with a NAS or a 20W SFF PC.
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Understood, but power where I live is fairly inexpensive. (An old nuclear power plant provides most of it.)

And this would be more of a "learning experience' than anything else.

But....you are correct in questioning the financial wisdom of doing it. Long term, doesn't make much sense. :)
 
OldMacPro2 said:
Understood, but power where I live is fairly inexpensive. (An old nuclear power plant provides most of it.)

And this would be more of a "learning experience' than anything else.

But....you are correct in questioning the financial wisdom of doing it. Long term, doesn't make much sense. :)
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Yep this was my inclination back in the day when Apple actually used to release server software. But they kept moving features I was interested in out of the server software into the OS (that's how they evolve products btw) until it didn't make sense to use a Mac for that purpose. No doubt there is some third part software that makes it do more than serve up movies, but that was a stretch for me. So I went with a power sipping purpose made device, the Synology. Now that's been fun to learn on and not that expensive.
 
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About 8 years ago I repurposed a 1,1 for exactly this role. Installed Snow Leopard Server on it, put in I think 500GB drives and RAID-0 them, the SATA2 was slow but the drives themselves aren't fast anyway, and being stripped helped. It ran surprisingly stable, almost set-and-forget kind of stable, but it had more to do with Snow Leopard being Snow Leopard. The file sharing was for about 5 people accessing small document files every day. It was not mission critical and there are live backups elsewhere so it did what it did.

The power draw was indeed a concern, the Xeon even at idle was wasting a few dozen watts. Heat and noise are manageable, nothing we haven't seen. Been using it for I think 3 years, ended up getting an actual NAS that was a Synology DS1618+ and quickly switched to DS1821+, if not for power consumption alone. With these actual NAS brands you also get much more dedicated and modern suite of server oriented software.

I'd say just go for it, since you already claimed it being just a learning experience. There are some advantage running it on a Mac Pro, since you can get PCIe network cards very cheaply, adequate number of SATA bays, ability to install OS X Server, which also entails can run some OS X exclusive stuff like caching server / TM target / iTunes server etc.
 
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I was assuming this thing would have "Wake on Lan" or something and would be sleeping a lot of the time.

Forgetting the old Mac Pro....what Apple hardware makes sense for a dedicated NAS? (Something like a Mac Mini?)

Or should I just look for a used Synology...that seems to be the recommended box.
 
The problem with using old Macs as servers in my opinion, is the lack of internal drive bays. If the files you want to serve will fit in the existing drive, you'd be fine with a Mini or older laptop. But once media files (or TM backups) become large, you're limited to Mac Pros or needing external drive arrays.

Then the Mac Pros push you to a dedicated NAS for space and/or electricity, and the laptops push you to a dedicated NAS for reliability of connecting external drives. If they fail to mount when waking from sleep, you get frustrated NAS users.

I've used a 2011 MBP as a server from time to time. It works better if I prevent it from sleeping. So the external drives never go away. But then you get back into electricity usage, with a laptop that's always on, and external drives that never fully power down.
 
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I was going to state the same as far as drives
reader50 said:
The problem with using old Macs as servers in my opinion, is the lack of internal drive bays. If the files you want to serve will fit in the existing drive, you'd be fine with a Mini or older laptop. But once media files (or TM backups) become large, you're limited to Mac Pros or needing external drive arrays.

Then the Mac Pros push you to a dedicated NAS for space and/or electricity, and the laptops push you to a dedicated NAS for reliability of connecting external drives. If they fail to mount when waking from sleep, you get frustrated NAS users.

I've used a 2011 MBP as a server from time to time. It works better if I prevent it from sleeping. So the external drives never go away. But then you get back into electricity usage, with a laptop that's always on, and external drives that never fully power down.
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i use a few old mac pros with linux (debian) to control some CNC machines I built for industrial production of milled aluminum and plastic parts. Great computers.
 
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I’ve seen a video from a guy in Australia who has been running Unraid on his old MP 3,1. That’s what got me interested in the idea.
 
My old 5,1 is setup for backups. 24TB of storage in the internal bays. I have it scheduled to turn on daily from 8 to 11 pm. Electricity rate is only $0.076/Kw at that time of day. If I bought a NAS for this, it would take a few years to break even.
 
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rx7dude said:
My old 5,1 is setup for backups. 24TB of storage in the internal bays. I have it scheduled to turn on daily from 8 to 11 pm. Electricity rate is only $0.076/Kw at that time of day. If I bought a NAS for this, it would take a few years to break even.
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That is basically free electricity. Our rates are capped at $0.36/Kw, so energy concerns dictate how much use we can make of our retro equipment. I can't remember when I last turned on my PMG5.
 
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