MP 1,1-5,1 Will a Classic Mac Pro make a good RAID NAS or just a buy Synology etc?

[Melbourne Park]

I can see the M processors being a good choice now, so I am wondering, is it sensible to use my 5,1 as a NAS, or just go out and by one? I figure too that with a slow and cool CPU, the tower will continue to do the job and last a long time. Maybe faster clock speed would improve the software RAID.

For a NAS, there's no point in having SSDs ... the biggest problem might be, only 4 standard drive bays. I'm not sure if it would work, but could the DVD disk bays and their connections, be used for two further drives, making a low cost 6 Drive RAID box?

I guess add a faster USB or thunderbolt card, and a faster ethernet ... which closes the gap on buying a NAS which is setup. And which would use less power.

What do you guys think?

 

[mattspace]

I guess add a faster USB or thunderbolt card, and a faster ethernet ... which closes the gap on buying a NAS which is setup. And which would use less power.

6-Bay Synology is around 50w during access and 25w at idle, a cMP loaded with drives is IIRC about 240w at idle.

Personally, I'm thinking strongly about becoming Synology-centric in my computing, given how little interest I have in the direction Apple is taking their hardware and operating systems.

 

[rx78]

I can see the M processors being a good choice now, so I am wondering, is it sensible to use my 5,1 as a NAS, or just go out and by one? I figure too that with a slow and cool CPU, the tower will continue to do the job and last a long time. Maybe faster clock speed would improve the software RAID.

For a NAS, there's no point in having SSDs ... the biggest problem might be, only 4 standard drive bays. I'm not sure if it would work, but could the DVD disk bays and their connections, be used for two further drives, making a low cost 6 Drive RAID box?

I guess add a faster USB or thunderbolt card, and a faster ethernet ... which closes the gap on buying a NAS which is setup. And which would use less power.

What do you guys think?

At one point my 4,1 was working as my file server for the rest of my machines.

I had 5x3.5" HDD (3 in the bays, 2 in the DVD bay) 4x2.5" HDD (PCIE adapters) , 1xSSD (boot drive in bay 1), 1xNVME (PCIE adapter, win 10) all living inside. Plus a FireWire hard drive.

It worked (and still works) great, but I'd consider moving to a dedicated NAS. If noise, heat, and energy aren't a worry then it might be ok.

 

[Soba]

Your Mac Pro will use a lot of power and produce significant heat as a NAS. It might also be challenging to expand as your needs grow, so I do suggest a dedicated NAS unit.

I recently bought a Synology DS418 when I moved my main workstation from my 5,1 to a 2018 Mac mini. The Synology works all right, but I am very disappointed with the noise; it’s poorly engineered and is LOUD, even with just one drive (which I’ve since expanded to three). There are many posts online about ways to quiet the unit and Synology even published a support article about this. I installed Velcro strips around the drive trays to cushion them from rattling and had to move the thing into a closet to isolate it from my workspace.

If I were to do this again, I’d look more closely at one of the systems from TrueNAS. They’re slightly more expensive, but I am not altogether happy with the Synology.

If your capacity needs are more modest than mine, perhaps you could use nice, silent SSDs.

 

[quatermass]

Buy the Synology. No question. A proper dedicated NAS, made for the job. I've had one for years and it's a proper quality product, with all the software you need built in - I think it's the software that really makes it. All manner of benefits, like having all you data right there and not on someone else's Cloud. Make sure you also get a backup solution for it. You won't need it - until you do!
Mine's always on, with no issues at all. In fact, I'm thinking of getting a new one, maybe a 4 bay, and more RAM, better processor. Bizarrely, no noise at all from mine apart from the occasional faint chugging of the disks. I suppose it depends on the environment and what noise level bothers you.
Personally, I'd happily recommend Synology NAS.

 

[krakman]

The real question is whether you want it on all the time or you just want to turn it on occasionally as an archive server.

For me I want the second option so power draw is not an issue as it will only be on a few hours every month.

you can fit 6 Hard drives into the bays, plus SSD via the pcie slots and use Free NAS to control the drives.

 

[Melbourne Park]

As to noise, I doubt it would be noisy unless working hard, with conventional drives. I imagine working SSDs would get hot though, and then the fans would turn on. I think the hard drive noise would be quieter than the sound of fans. My 5,1 is super silent. Then again while I have bought faster CPUs for it (a pair of 3.66 4 cores and a pair of 3.3 6 cores) I've not installed them - the unit is 2 x 4 core 2.4, so the CPUs must run very cool. Maybe that is why its silent.

It would be for myself, so I'd only need it when editing. And my house has a lot of solar, so the electricity cost is not there in the daytime. So I'm not worried about the power cost. I also like the idea of keeping the unit going, because that sounds what society needs - making quality things that last.

Against all that though, is the ease of a NAS setup. I haven't used a Mac as a server.

I suspect I could leave the SuperDrive in, but I am wondering if I can share that port with the start-uo SSD, which is uses the other drive's connection. I prefer the concept of 5 raid drives compared to 4 ...