I got the base M4 mini, so I'm currently looking for ways to extend the storage. Getting a thunderbolt m.2 ssd dock is the best way, but I figured, why not make it available to my other PCs... Then started looking for NAS options, realized exactly what was told in this video, then it kicked in "M1/M2 mac minis are literally 300$ nowadays".
When you buy a Synology you're essentially buying a software suite attached to hardware. You have to go in knowing you're going to use some of the Synology apps to reconcile the value. If you just want the storage I like what Matt has done here. Depending on your file sizes I don't know how important RAID really is with quality SSD being orders of magnitude more reliable than spinning rust. What i'm eyeballing is a M2 Mac mini with 10G Ethernet, something like a Sonnet Tech Echo Dual (Thunderbolt Dock with two NVME SSD slots inside) and Econ's Chronosync on the Mini and the Chrono Agent on the clients. Apple's SMB implementation is "basic" Chronosync will give you much faster transfers and folder synch along with many more features and it's a one time payments ...no subscription. Then I'm going to offline important storage to Backblaze B2 cloud. Remember RAID really isn't about backup it's about business continuity. The typical home doesn't need 24/7 services. You don't need hot swap bays, parity striping and all that mess. The typical home needs more synchronization and automation functionality.
Will the echo dual be quiet? NVME’s are getting cheaper buy they run hot, I am also looking for something like that but want it to be absolutely quiet. As for the thunderblade, it’s 700+ usd, too much for home use. Currently having an rpi4 driving a 1TB samsung T5, one samsung 870 evo 2TB sata ssd and a 8TB hdd. The hdd is connected to usb 2.0 which is slow, but rarely used.
@@radikk7874 That Model I couldn’t say one way or another, I never owned one. I own the Thunderblade, and Thunderbay Mini. The Thunderbay Mini I never hear at all.
@@radikk7874 Well today I found a bug, that prevents me from recommending this solutions any longer. If you are a single user or don’t need the security for file access this is still a good solutions. If you need Security access on a file level or root Folder security then using a Mac mini as a Network Attached Storage isn’t a good device. Which my might be able to mess with plist or Terminal to solve the issue I am having but I really don’t have time for it any longer. I already have a Synology NAS and it takes care of all the security feature that I need. My Mac mini isn’t going to be the center point to my network anymore, because of this reason. While it will still be the Media Server, I just can’t have issue like this while my storage need change.
I would agree with this for the most part. Regardless of whether it's a RAID enabled NAS or a Mac mini, backup is important. While RAID isn't a backup, in a 2 bay RAID 1, or 4 bay RAID 10 setup a failed drive means nothing is lost. In this Mac Mini setup - it's all gone. These aren't enterprise SSDs. While they're reliable, they can and will fail, and when they do, you're totally hosed unless you use a data recovery company. Again, RAID is not a replacement for a good backup solution, but unless I missed it, backup wasn't mentioned here, and if you're going to run without a backup, I will chose raid 10 over a single SSD every day of the week. If it was me, I would have gone NAS with 10 gig ethernet, and NVMe cache. Great performance and better compatibility with Windows. Having said all of that, if I was going to do this, I would do what you said and get some sort of external raid enclosure for storage.
I have been running a mini as my home server for over 10 years. I am on my third mini and I am up to 10 4 TB drives, 6 remain power off most of the time, they are used for very cold storage. For people with Macs in their house I think it is the ultimate server. Thanks for the video.
I do this too! Instead of the M2, I use an older Intel 2018 Mac mini. It has 4 thunderbolt ports so I have a total of 8 TB connected to them + a time machine drive. Most of the drives' capacity (4 TB x2) is for seeding content for private trackers. But I also have about 30% set up for content I want to watch.
Thanks for the heads up on Hazel, looks interesting. I can see how this setup makes sense to a Apple/creator type, but as an IT guy, I'm dying inside. A NAS will have redundancy (RAID1 or RAID5 say), so when a drive fails, you don't lose any data. You get notified, you replace the failed drive, and it recreates the redundancy. A NAS will also run diagnostics, so you'll often be warned when a drive is showing warning signs of failure. Zero downtime. That's what you are paying for. None of your connected USB drives are designed for 24/7 uptime, it's just a matter of time before they fail. Also, these celeron NAS devices are actually pretty capable, you won't overload them doing SMB, they're also capable of running services & containers, and these are generally accessible from a web interface. Once you get to 4 drives, the limiting factor is generally the speed of the network connection, not the disks or the CPU. This mac mini setup is going to be better at a bunch of stuff than a Synology, it'll run cool and quiet, and is a really great and interesting thing to play with - but you still need a proper NAS to backup all this stuff to!!
I've had a setup like this for a few years now - a late 2014 Mini set up in my living room to be my iTunes Player for my stereo and also a Time Machine backup for my Mac Studio in my studio. On the whole it works well, but occasionally I would find that for some reason the Mac had just switched itself off, and hadn't been backing up and I hadn't noticed. To be fair I hadn't mapped the drives to my finder - perhaps now I'll notice quicker when this happens. Also it does regularly need software updates for security, which means restarting and logging back in. Also my Samsung SSD just died after 2 years, and it was a right faff fixing it, because recovery wouldn't work and it's using an older MacOS. Next time I'll make a bootable copy of the internal drive and use an external drive for the actual storage.
Keeping files on an external drive plugged in 24/7 is a terrible idea. The big problem is any loose connection and you're guaranteed to lose data. NASes in general offer features to improve data reliability - e.g. ZFS & BTRFS, RAID, Data scrub schedules, auto SMART test, drive pre-fail detection - all things that USB drives don't have. Switching over to a Thunderbolt DAS attached to the Mac Mini would be a better idea than this, at least there's hardware RAID support, plus SMART checks.
This would be the case with prior Apple filesystems like HFS+ but APFS supports CoW with atomic safe-save writes so even if you lost connection at the very least the data written to disk is safe. Since APFS was created to leverage SSD his SSD drives are the safest and he admits his HDD is cold storage. I do agree though for easy of management the ultimate goal should be a ZFS level RAID system with checksums to avoid data corruption. I'm more bullish on SSD based network storage for people who aren't cramming ripped movies on a Plex server.
People have hard drives connected through USB everyday, most of them never have a problem. A Mac mini as a NAS is going to be in one of two places. Which would be in a Rack or the corner of a room. You not moving this computer around, the only way a USB drive is going to be unplugged is if a cat, dog, or kid does it. While I would never recommend his setup, it never matters at the end of the day. Now on to Raid software, guess what once aging it is software. Raid software is on every major platform out there today. MacOS has SoftRaid, Linux it is build into the most operating system, while Windows has it I not sure the correct software to talk about. While ZFS & BTRFS does have feature that APFS doesn't have the normal home user will never use those features. I bet most people that have those feature don't even use them. But APFS has feature ZFS & BTRFS doesn't have as well, and here a small news flash APFS has parts of ZFS built into it. I always love when your type of people get on here and talk about how these to files system are better then normal operating system features. Auto Smart test is build into MacOS and has been since I started using MacOS, you can check you SMART status by going into System report. SoftRaid even has Auto SMART built into it. The only feature that you have mention, which I don't even use is Data Scrub. If have have an incorrect or incomplete files I just delete it. Yeah, I am pretty sure there is software for this too. Now to the last part is schedule tasks. Guess what wrong once more every operating system has some scheduler build into it. MacOS LaunchD, Linux SystemD, & Windows Task scheduler. Absolutely nothing you said had any point what so ever to a NAS. The only difference to Synology Unit which I am talking about any above the model DS923+ is ECC ram. Trust me if you need it you need it most people doesn't really. Sorry you reading a bunch of blogs that say all this good stuff about why you should buy a NAS, but everyone of those reason have been debunk. The only difference between a Synology, TrueNAS, Windows as a NAS or MacOS as a NAS is software. That is it. What software are you going to use. Oh yeah I almost forgot, APFS does have the .ds files that can be a pain. MacOS even has RSync built into it! This software is what keep my Mac mini NAS and Synology system in sync. So, please do research before posting something you don't know anything about. Last thing, I don't use ECC Memory in my DS920+ or Mac min and never have a corrupted file in my life. I move stuff a crossed my network all the time.
I have a 2012 Intel MacMini with 9 drives connected via USB 3. It's been running 24/7 for 6 years. I've had one drive fail - in fact it was the case that failed, the drive was actually fine and still being used in another case. The mini runs a Plex Sever with an 8TB media driver mirrored to another 8TB. Other than Plex Server, it used as a NAS and Time Machine Server. Not a hiccup. I have replace the original HD with an SSD and have 16GB installed. The machine is only rebooted at system updates, which is rare now as it is macOS Catalina and when I want to dust the cabinet (once in a blue moon).
@@smnichandaria176I want to do something like your Mac mini setup for a media server and a Time Machine backup. Do you have separate drives for Time Machine and separate drives for movies? Tell me more about what you use for storage. I’m just beginning to learn about NAS.
I did close to the same with my M1 Mac mini. I have a Drobo 810, which is not fast enough, and no longer supported. So I've turned that into my offsite backup (shipped it to my father's house after initial setup.). I picked up a 10 bay HD enclosure with 10gbs. I have 6 x 8TB SSD's in it, as well as 4 x 2TB SSD's. Set up as different RAIDs just using the built in MacOS Disk Utility. Very fast, cheaper than picking up a NAS. I use it for multiple things, including a media server, IRC server, etc. I'm using Emmy for media. I use SyncTime to do both the local backups as well as to the offsite Drobo. I have had zero issues, it's super quiet and doesn't use as much power as the Drobo did.
remember that it is super easy to let others do backups to your nas, creating users(sharing only) and add a folder(right click on the folder and choose advanced options) or even from anywhere using a vpn
Thanks a lot for the video. As 2 base m4 mac minis cost the same as upgrading the storage, I'm really looking into using one as a NAS, with thunderbolt m.2 ssd docks.
I have this setup as well with a 2014 Mac Mini and as I have a couple of other Mac’s with thunderbolt 2 I have connected these via TB2 to the Mac mini and also via ethernet. As I also put an NVME drive in-the Mac Mini I get great access speeds. Note be sure to put the Thunderbolt bridge as the first network connection on all Mac’s as otherwise it will default to ethernet or WIFI. You can daisy chain Thunderbolt but as the devices need to run to make these available to all Mac’s I set it up so that the mini is the TB hub using both TB ports and than daisy chain on the connected Mac’s as required.
My understanding is that it gets rather complicated if you want to login and do screensharing from off site. I don't care too much about being able to stream videos from the office to home but I would like to be able to access cold storage files at the office... Or sync them between home and office. I've come to the conclusion that using a mac mini for this more trouble than the benefits you show for in office work between computers.
I use both! I use the Mac mini and the NAS as part of my 1-2-3 back up system with the Mac mini syncing to Backblaze as well. I already had bought the NAS before seeing this video, otherwise, would have opted for two Mac minis. The only thing I question: How to set up Mac as a server... what options such as iCloud, etc. do you turn off and on? Did you strip the system down with almost no applications? What applications did you think you had to keep?
After 4 months, are there anything new you noticed about using this setup? Pros and cons? Am interested in using a m1 mini due to much better performance compared to a nas at the same price range
I plan on doing the same but with an old Mac mini and OCLP, should do the job. If it ends up working on mine, then it will for sure work on his, 5 months later to your comment. But how would I be able to access this "Mac mini server" from outside my main network ?
OP, consider looking into using your old NAS to store all the media for Plex. I just read in the comments of another video that you can use the MacMini as your Plex server while using the NAS to serve up your media and files. This'll allow you to clean up all those USB drives while still having top notch encoding from your Mini.
What’s the point of having the NAS make noise and consume electricity, unless you need some kind of raid. The main advantages of mac mini are: low idle power consumption, quiet and powerfull. As for transcoding, that’s optional, nowadays we use gigabit internet speed, so we can play full quality, and if plex can’t play some video, Infuse will surely play it.
@@radikk7874 benefits of NAS would be storage capacity and share management mostly - samba shares are very useful. I don't use RAID which gives me a lot of extra capacity on my NAS. I'm also not a huge fan of having all these drives hanging off my sleek Mac mini. Even without any use for NAS software I'd be inclined to open up all these drives and attach them with a multi-bay mount to help clean up appearance.
@@kyma5224 I think you can set up samba on mac, as for hiding all those drives and cables, I would also like a solution, but it must be silent, using ssd’s. But it’s hard to find something good and cheap. Right now my solution is pretty messy, havind 2 ssd’s and one hdd connected to my rpi4. I still didn’t buy a mac mini, I want one with 10gb ethernet which is hard to get where I live. My reason for getting a mac mini aside from running running a samba share, hass, sonarr, radarr, plex and other apps in docker, is to run Xcode, so mac mini seems like a very good solution.
Why not download directly to the desired destination instead of using the extra app like "Hazel"? Can also use additional "mv" command to move the downloaded .mp4 file.
Great Idea ! Any thoughts on doing RAID1 on it to backup all my data? Also since I am currently using cloud i wished to "time machine" it on a hard drive, any software suggestion? thanks for your great content
Cool stuff but feels like an easy way to lose data if one of those drives dies, unless you're running backups you're at risk of drive failure, I do not recommend spending this amount of money in separate drives and mac mini and lose redundancy. NAS with at least 2 bays will give you RAID and are cheaper than what was built, if nothing else for backups. You can also do a mix of the setup if you already have a mac mini and have a NAS, keep using mac mini for all of the more performance demanding items and back everything up daily to a cheap NAS with redundancy. To note, at least Synology NAS can be somewhat silent if configured properly (use SSDs instead of HDDs and look at fan configuration in DSM), it's still a little background noise (at least with a DS218) but lower than most computers.
So… how do you back up this server? You have no RAID either so what if the 2TB drive fails for instance? Or is all data on the SSDs also on the 4tb drive?
Could you use hazel software to basically create like a raid solution? Have it watch a folder or main folder of one drive and have it constantly copy to a second drive to save redundancy? Just a thought that I had watching this
Synology: Fans not the issue. I never hear mine. The Hard drives though...more of n issue with the big drives. Once the NAS does indexing or data scrubbing your NAS will have a mow volume low frequency rumbling. However you can set them to only do this at certain times of the day...like when you are not there.
My heartfelt thanks to you, Matt! I've just completed setting up my first NAS system and I'm so glad that my old 2015 Mac mini i5 8GB with 1TB SSD could be put to good use. I now have a Macbook Air M1, but I didn't want to part with my Mac mini as it's not worth much on the second-hand market. The sharing features, Infuse, and Apple TV 4K make it so easy to use, I can't believe I didn't think of it before. It's running 4K 2160p HDR WEB.DTS-HDMA.x265 perfectly, no lag, no glitches - it's incredibly smooth. I'm planning to experiment with more demanding files. Many thanks mate! 🫶
Thanks for posting this video. Very informative. However, the one thing I'm most interested in is the potential for using an M2 Mac Mini as a replacement for a NAS but... with a RAID configuration for the drives so that I can put my precious home movies, photos, and critical documents on it with less fear about losing everything after 5 or 10 years. And with alternative backups, they take an eternity an may also be prone to fail unless they are also stored in a RAID configuration. And I just don't want to pay for a cloud service and subject my person info to their services, as every day there are newly hacked services being reported. So I'm still trying to figure out what I should do here. I basically just one ONE system to store everything with sharable endpoints, in a RAID 5 config that has everything and will be safe for many many years. I agree that NAS manufacturers are all keeping their prices hyper inflated as you briefly mentioned. And you still have to add in your own drives, SSDs, or M.2 cards enough to make RAID configurations, ballooning the costs even further).
It's possible. There are multiple videos on TH-cam showing how to do it both over Thunderbolt and vanilla USB. When Apple deprecated Mac OS Server Edition they ported the majority of the core features in the general release OS.
Don’t bother with RAID for home or SMB. I’ve owned just about every Mac mini made. They make a great NAS. I’ve tried other hardware and other OSes, but I keep coming back. DO get 3 more drives and use software to create clones of the 3 drives you have. I like SuperDuper now, but I also used rsync and cron for years. I find clones are way easier to recover from than any kind of RAID. Also, easier to upgrade capacity too. Just my two cents. 🎉
Unless you have 10Gb networking, using the Samsung T7s seems overkill. You won't benefit from their speed over 1Gb Ethernet; you might get 120MB/s. I guess this would be fine for the home, but you give up so many things by not going with a dedicated NAS: Active Backups, RAID, easy VM hosting, easy VPN, RADIUS, DNS, or DHCP, colocation, Time Machine hosting, Archiving to S3/Glacier, and directory servers. You could make all that happen on the Mac, but only with some hassle. This costs more than a 2-bay NAS without simplicity, ease, and support. Also, you mentioned you upgraded to run Plex, but you chose to use Infuse (which is fantastic) as an alternative. Infuse would run fine on any NAS, as it only needs a shared folder to pull from. You could have done all this on a cheap Pi or 10-year-old Mini/SFF desktop rather than a $600 Mac Mini, not to mention you have $300 worth of storage (4GB total) which would cost less than $100 in the form of a NAS drive. So, if my math is correct, you spent nearly $1000 (with tax) on a setup rather than $400 for a Synology or equivalent dedicated 2-bay NAS with a 4TB NAS drive to get fewer capabilities with negligible performance benefits over 1Gb Ethernet.
I spent $600 total on this upgrade since I already owned the drives 😉. I have a Raspberry Pi and it sucks for doing anything in the GUI, and doing remote desktop just isn't as convenient/easy as doing it to a Mac either. I also didn't mention in the vide, but I can also disconnect those Samsung drives and connect them directly to any PC in my house if I want to move a truly massive file, and then the speed difference is enormous. I'm definitely not saying this is the right thing for everyone, and your proposed solution sounds cheaper, but it also doesn't sound at all like a solution I would enjoy 🙂
I don't see "Share Screen" showing up for me when I connect to my mac mini as smb server. How do you connect to your mac mini? Can you show how your settings for "Remote Management" look like? Thanks in advance!
I’ve been going back and fourth on NAS for a while, and I ended up going with a mini plugged into a slow 4bay OWC enclosure set up as jbod, and a raid 0 dual enclosure that’s a bit faster. I would love to be able to figure out if I can get things fast enough to video edit in fcpx over the network
Just seen your comment while researching NAS' etc. what is OWC? I couldn't find what it stood for with a quick Google. Is it like a DAS? (I'll also need to Google the jbod thing too cause not heard of that either - the joys of being a noob 😅)
Are you able to access the Mac mini when you are away from your home? I assume that it is pretty straight forward (as long as the Mac mini is on and connected), but I am curious if there were any unforeseen restrictions by using the Mac mini that other solutions may not present. Thanks
Hi all! My question does not connect strictly to this, but here goes: I am planning to retire my late 2008 iMac and buy an M2 Mac mini with 16 Gb RAM and 512 Gb storage. I get that the non-Pro M2 Mini does not support Dolby Atmos from the HDMI, but if I have a Plex server running on it, can I get Atmos if my main playback device is an Nvidia Shiled tube? I did not find any information on this. Appreciate all answers! Thanks!
I just have a zsh alias to download directly to the correct folder reducing wear on the internal ssd, or you could tell ytdl to put it on a download folder on the destination drive and then tell hazel to move it from there and there would be no delay or wear.
Ok video, I've just got rid of my old synology NAS after 5 years for the same reasons you outlines. I do have some points to make: You say its an old mac mini but you don't say what OS - I tried to download infuse for my 2012 Catalina mac mini and it doesn't work with that OS. Also, I came here to find out how to make my TV see those shared external drives, so I could watch media from them, you didn't show us that either, it's no good sharing them so they're visible on another mac, that's file sharing not media sharing.
How did you get that "Matt's Mac Mini" to show up under locations? Is it because you logged into both your Macbook and Mac mini using same apple Id? I can't get my Mac mini to show up under Locations in my mac. How do I do that?
Data must have multiple backups. Even RAID systems should have backups because they will eventually fail. Slow expensive NAS RAID systems exist for a good reason.
i have a late 2012 mac mini (i7, 16gb ram) Can I use it to as a server/home nas as you have it set up, but access it with my PC desktop in another room? In other words, can I access the mac mini through other operating systems besides apple devices?
Hey Matt! I'm super late to the party on this one, but does it matter if the external drive where my media files are stored for the Plex is a HDD or SSD? Do I need the faster transfer of an SSD to play my tv shows/movies?
I don't know how you guys make it work when Mini goes to sleep. My MacBook Pro won't see it: I'd have to go to my Mini and physically wake it (mouse or keyboard) and log into it/unlock the screen. I was hoping to be able to do it remotely from my macbook pro but alas...
This is a recipe for disaster. DON'T DO THIS. You want your data to be in a RAID and that isn't counting the two more backups you need to have. I work setting up networks and data systems and I've seen TONS of people losing all of their personal data because they had setups like this one. Having your data connected via cable and without any kind of redundancy and no backups at all will lead to disaster and you will lose everything.
you could technically connect the mac mini to a nas and then setup a time machine backup to said nas over networking cable, that would add safety to this setup.
Fact if the matter is the only thing he’s lacking a backup, technically having a raid with this setup doesn’t really help him at all tbh.. he just needs to get a bigger hdd or 2 & make those his default Time Machine backups
I wish i saw this video 10 months ago, when i bought my WD 2x4tb my cloud ex ultra. That thing is exactly how you described here, noisy, fans, and very slow. You won't be able to do anything else than storage because it's toooooooooo sloooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow. And also you can't use it to stream things to your devices (which i did not knew whn i bought it). You have to use PLEX. They even recommend it. And yes, you have to pay a fee for PLEX, be it monthly, yearly, or life.
this is not ideal for data resiliency. perhaps a mac mini can be a good standalone docker node. for running services like frigate nvr and ai processing, transcoding with the built in media engine etc.
I'm just concerned about RAID set up in case the drive dies!?! Especially with my older mac mini, drive is more at risk of dying without warning.... maybe TWO mac mini's with auto back up potentially using carbon copy cloner or some such...
Everything I download from YT shows up as “other” in Infuse. I want it to show as TV Shows. I created a custom XML for my videos but Infuse ignores the category and keeps marking videos as “other.” How do you fix that ?
Was literally about to buy a synology this week but this might be better. Would it be possible to move files from my MacBook to the Mac mini when they are different Wi-Fi networks?
It's possible, yes. Before going ahead with the Mini, make sure you know what you want the device to do. Here's a video that goes over converting a Mac Mini to a NAS in a bit more detail: th-cam.com/video/y2CpEEjrG3Q/w-d-xo.html, focusing on some of the issues from the perspective of someone more experienced with home servers. Generally, I'd say it's safer to go for a device designed to be a NAS. You have an easier time managing drives and get a bunch of software and easy set up of external access outside your network that a M1 Mac Mini can't provide. Unless you need more than what is shown in this video, this - to me - is the way to go.
The big problem with this setup is how all the drives are external - any loose connection and you're guaranteed to lose data. Plus, NASes in general offer features to improve data reliability - e.g. ZFS, RAID, Data scrub schedules, auto SMART test, drive pre-fail detection. If you're using external drives like so, which isn't their intended purpose at all, it's very easy to shoot yourself in the foot. I wouldn't recommend this setup personally.
@@holeo196 No need for proprietary NAS, just shuck the drives, put into an enclosure, run unRAID on main machine. It's cheaper and you don't need to pay the Synology tax. It won't run on M2 though.
@@xervoo6419 no offence but feel the kid is rather biased, HE wants to use HIS legacy hardware, apply HIS perception on how things suppose to look like...and than blames that HIS old non apple hardware increasing the power consumption and poor performance on apple?!? plus, if he would use apple native software on the M1 machine to cater for his video transcoding it would blow almost everything out of the water....but, lets get a 'not quite developed" VM or third party software to to do the job and bitch about the buffering and poor fps?!? and his claim about ram....M1 is a new chip with memory swap, if those 8 or 16gb are exhausted the OS grabs space from the SSD, and with their speed its almost impossible to notice. find videos were people stress test it to the limit to feel a difference between the 8gb and the 16gb. I reckon he seems to live in his x86 / linux bubble were a home set up has to look like a business grade server. love the last few seconds were he prefers that massive box with in his room, loaded with fans and spinning disks to his minimum spec quiet M1 MacBook, reckon that says a lot.
@@cloobs1 If you want a home SERVER, you want a server. I can't blame him for evaluating it on those metrics. MacOS does not easily support some of the things you might want to do with one. If all you need is to access files and do video transcoding with plex or jellyfin I'm sure a M1 mac might work (once the programs have been updated to use HW transcoding). But you have to be REALLY SURE that that is where you will stop. Otherwise, getting a purpose-built NAS would be a better choice for the flexibility.
This seems like a user friendly alternative to NAS. Are you able to integrate this with Apple HomeKit storage needs, i.e., avoid Apple's iCloud requirement for video storage? How about just accessing files when away from home over the Internet? Or am I way off base on what is possible with an iMacMini as a storage hub?
I was just considering this very same thing with that new M4 Mini. Really glad I spotted this.
same! M4 mac mini's idle power consumption is only 4W, so crazy
This is how I plan it as well. Heck im getting an m4 pro so I can remote it for video editing as well
I got the base M4 mini, so I'm currently looking for ways to extend the storage. Getting a thunderbolt m.2 ssd dock is the best way, but I figured, why not make it available to my other PCs... Then started looking for NAS options, realized exactly what was told in this video, then it kicked in "M1/M2 mac minis are literally 300$ nowadays".
this ^^^
Yep here for that, imo it would actually be overkill haha
When you buy a Synology you're essentially buying a software suite attached to hardware. You have to go in knowing you're going to use some of the Synology apps to reconcile the value. If you just want the storage I like what Matt has done here. Depending on your file sizes I don't know how important RAID really is with quality SSD being orders of magnitude more reliable than spinning rust. What i'm eyeballing is a M2 Mac mini with 10G Ethernet, something like a Sonnet Tech Echo Dual (Thunderbolt Dock with two NVME SSD slots inside) and Econ's Chronosync on the Mini and the Chrono Agent on the clients. Apple's SMB implementation is "basic" Chronosync will give you much faster transfers and folder synch along with many more features and it's a one time payments ...no subscription. Then I'm going to offline important storage to Backblaze B2 cloud. Remember RAID really isn't about backup it's about business continuity. The typical home doesn't need 24/7 services. You don't need hot swap bays, parity striping and all that mess. The typical home needs more synchronization and automation functionality.
I would look at the OWC ThunderBlade, I cheaper than Sonnet Tech Echo Dual. Unless you have to have everything together.
Will the echo dual be quiet? NVME’s are getting cheaper buy they run hot, I am also looking for something like that but want it to be absolutely quiet. As for the thunderblade, it’s 700+ usd, too much for home use.
Currently having an rpi4 driving a 1TB samsung T5, one samsung 870 evo 2TB sata ssd and a 8TB hdd. The hdd is connected to usb 2.0 which is slow, but rarely used.
@@radikk7874 That Model I couldn’t say one way or another, I never owned one. I own the Thunderblade, and Thunderbay Mini. The Thunderbay Mini I never hear at all.
@@radikk7874 Well today I found a bug, that prevents me from recommending this solutions any longer. If you are a single user or don’t need the security for file access this is still a good solutions.
If you need Security access on a file level or root Folder security then using a Mac mini as a Network Attached Storage isn’t a good device. Which my might be able to mess with plist or Terminal to solve the issue I am having but I really don’t have time for it any longer. I already have a Synology NAS and it takes care of all the security feature that I need.
My Mac mini isn’t going to be the center point to my network anymore, because of this reason. While it will still be the Media Server, I just can’t have issue like this while my storage need change.
I would agree with this for the most part. Regardless of whether it's a RAID enabled NAS or a Mac mini, backup is important. While RAID isn't a backup, in a 2 bay RAID 1, or 4 bay RAID 10 setup a failed drive means nothing is lost. In this Mac Mini setup - it's all gone. These aren't enterprise SSDs. While they're reliable, they can and will fail, and when they do, you're totally hosed unless you use a data recovery company. Again, RAID is not a replacement for a good backup solution, but unless I missed it, backup wasn't mentioned here, and if you're going to run without a backup, I will chose raid 10 over a single SSD every day of the week. If it was me, I would have gone NAS with 10 gig ethernet, and NVMe cache. Great performance and better compatibility with Windows. Having said all of that, if I was going to do this, I would do what you said and get some sort of external raid enclosure for storage.
Thank you so much, this is a great idea. I upgraded from a Mac Mini M1 to a MacBook M1 Pro, so now I can use my Mac Mini as a NAS. Cheers!
I have been running a mini as my home server for over 10 years. I am on my third mini and I am up to 10 4 TB drives, 6 remain power off most of the time, they are used for very cold storage. For people with Macs in their house I think it is the ultimate server. Thanks for the video.
I do this too! Instead of the M2, I use an older Intel 2018 Mac mini. It has 4 thunderbolt ports so I have a total of 8 TB connected to them + a time machine drive. Most of the drives' capacity (4 TB x2) is for seeding content for private trackers. But I also have about 30% set up for content I want to watch.
Thanks for the heads up on Hazel, looks interesting.
I can see how this setup makes sense to a Apple/creator type, but as an IT guy, I'm dying inside. A NAS will have redundancy (RAID1 or RAID5 say), so when a drive fails, you don't lose any data. You get notified, you replace the failed drive, and it recreates the redundancy. A NAS will also run diagnostics, so you'll often be warned when a drive is showing warning signs of failure. Zero downtime. That's what you are paying for. None of your connected USB drives are designed for 24/7 uptime, it's just a matter of time before they fail. Also, these celeron NAS devices are actually pretty capable, you won't overload them doing SMB, they're also capable of running services & containers, and these are generally accessible from a web interface. Once you get to 4 drives, the limiting factor is generally the speed of the network connection, not the disks or the CPU.
This mac mini setup is going to be better at a bunch of stuff than a Synology, it'll run cool and quiet, and is a really great and interesting thing to play with - but you still need a proper NAS to backup all this stuff to!!
Was thinking the same. I'm paranoid when it comes to backups.
I've had a setup like this for a few years now - a late 2014 Mini set up in my living room to be my iTunes Player for my stereo and also a Time Machine backup for my Mac Studio in my studio. On the whole it works well, but occasionally I would find that for some reason the Mac had just switched itself off, and hadn't been backing up and I hadn't noticed. To be fair I hadn't mapped the drives to my finder - perhaps now I'll notice quicker when this happens. Also it does regularly need software updates for security, which means restarting and logging back in. Also my Samsung SSD just died after 2 years, and it was a right faff fixing it, because recovery wouldn't work and it's using an older MacOS. Next time I'll make a bootable copy of the internal drive and use an external drive for the actual storage.
This is EXACTLY what I needed to find - I just didn't know how to search for it until today. Thanks.
Keeping files on an external drive plugged in 24/7 is a terrible idea.
The big problem is any loose connection and you're guaranteed to lose data. NASes in general offer features to improve data reliability - e.g. ZFS & BTRFS, RAID, Data scrub schedules, auto SMART test, drive pre-fail detection - all things that USB drives don't have.
Switching over to a Thunderbolt DAS attached to the Mac Mini would be a better idea than this, at least there's hardware RAID support, plus SMART checks.
This would be the case with prior Apple filesystems like HFS+ but APFS supports CoW with atomic safe-save writes so even if you lost connection at the very least the data written to disk is safe. Since APFS was created to leverage SSD his SSD drives are the safest and he admits his HDD is cold storage. I do agree though for easy of management the ultimate goal should be a ZFS level RAID system with checksums to avoid data corruption. I'm more bullish on SSD based network storage for people who aren't cramming ripped movies on a Plex server.
People have hard drives connected through USB everyday, most of them never have a problem. A Mac mini as a NAS is going to be in one of two places. Which would be in a Rack or the corner of a room. You not moving this computer around, the only way a USB drive is going to be unplugged is if a cat, dog, or kid does it. While I would never recommend his setup, it never matters at the end of the day.
Now on to Raid software, guess what once aging it is software. Raid software is on every major platform out there today. MacOS has SoftRaid, Linux it is build into the most operating system, while Windows has it I not sure the correct software to talk about. While ZFS & BTRFS does have feature that APFS doesn't have the normal home user will never use those features. I bet most people that have those feature don't even use them. But APFS has feature ZFS & BTRFS doesn't have as well, and here a small news flash APFS has parts of ZFS built into it. I always love when your type of people get on here and talk about how these to files system are better then normal operating system features.
Auto Smart test is build into MacOS and has been since I started using MacOS, you can check you SMART status by going into System report. SoftRaid even has Auto SMART built into it. The only feature that you have mention, which I don't even use is Data Scrub. If have have an incorrect or incomplete files I just delete it. Yeah, I am pretty sure there is software for this too.
Now to the last part is schedule tasks. Guess what wrong once more every operating system has some scheduler build into it. MacOS LaunchD, Linux SystemD, & Windows Task scheduler.
Absolutely nothing you said had any point what so ever to a NAS. The only difference to Synology Unit which I am talking about any above the model DS923+ is ECC ram. Trust me if you need it you need it most people doesn't really.
Sorry you reading a bunch of blogs that say all this good stuff about why you should buy a NAS, but everyone of those reason have been debunk. The only difference between a Synology, TrueNAS, Windows as a NAS or MacOS as a NAS is software. That is it. What software are you going to use. Oh yeah I almost forgot, APFS does have the .ds files that can be a pain.
MacOS even has RSync built into it! This software is what keep my Mac mini NAS and Synology system in sync. So, please do research before posting something you don't know anything about. Last thing, I don't use ECC Memory in my DS920+ or Mac min and never have a corrupted file in my life. I move stuff a crossed my network all the time.
I have a 2012 Intel MacMini with 9 drives connected via USB 3. It's been running 24/7 for 6 years. I've had one drive fail - in fact it was the case that failed, the drive was actually fine and still being used in another case. The mini runs a Plex Sever with an 8TB media driver mirrored to another 8TB. Other than Plex Server, it used as a NAS and Time Machine Server. Not a hiccup. I have replace the original HD with an SSD and have 16GB installed. The machine is only rebooted at system updates, which is rare now as it is macOS Catalina and when I want to dust the cabinet (once in a blue moon).
@@smnichandaria176I want to do something like your Mac mini setup for a media server and a Time Machine backup. Do you have separate drives for Time Machine and separate drives for movies?
Tell me more about what you use for storage. I’m just beginning to learn about NAS.
I did close to the same with my M1 Mac mini. I have a Drobo 810, which is not fast enough, and no longer supported. So I've turned that into my offsite backup (shipped it to my father's house after initial setup.). I picked up a 10 bay HD enclosure with 10gbs. I have 6 x 8TB SSD's in it, as well as 4 x 2TB SSD's. Set up as different RAIDs just using the built in MacOS Disk Utility. Very fast, cheaper than picking up a NAS. I use it for multiple things, including a media server, IRC server, etc. I'm using Emmy for media. I use SyncTime to do both the local backups as well as to the offsite Drobo. I have had zero issues, it's super quiet and doesn't use as much power as the Drobo did.
Fantastic explanation, thank you for showing the correct way to setup permissions and including the Windows how-to as well. (some of us use both!)
remember that it is super easy to let others do backups to your nas, creating users(sharing only) and add a folder(right click on the folder and choose advanced options) or even from anywhere using a vpn
Great walkthrough! And Hazel is a super helpful app. Would love that video too!
Would love a video about Hazel
I second this
It’s uploaded now 😁
Great way to use a Mac mini, Hazel and Infuse (which I didn't know about). Thanks for sharing, again!
Great tutorial, thanks
Small typo in the title: "I replaced my terrible NAS with ***an the*** cheapest Mac mini"
Thanks a lot for the video. As 2 base m4 mac minis cost the same as upgrading the storage, I'm really looking into using one as a NAS, with thunderbolt m.2 ssd docks.
Thank you so very much for this video outlining how everything works! I need to figure out how to replicate this with Linux...
Hazel is the absolute best! I love it!
I have this setup as well with a 2014 Mac Mini and as I have a couple of other Mac’s with thunderbolt 2 I have connected these via TB2 to the Mac mini and also via ethernet. As I also put an NVME drive in-the Mac Mini I get great access speeds. Note be sure to put the Thunderbolt bridge as the first network connection on all Mac’s as otherwise it will default to ethernet or WIFI. You can daisy chain Thunderbolt but as the devices need to run to make these available to all Mac’s I set it up so that the mini is the TB hub using both TB ports and than daisy chain on the connected Mac’s as required.
Thank you for sharing. Can you teach me how to access my files from outside the network I.e. when I’m overseas?
Grabbing a couple of large HDD’s and adding them as a software raid on that Mac will solve a guaranteed future problem
I love this setup!
Nice video. How do we connect this from external network connections from outside?
My understanding is that it gets rather complicated if you want to login and do screensharing from off site. I don't care too much about being able to stream videos from the office to home but I would like to be able to access cold storage files at the office... Or sync them between home and office. I've come to the conclusion that using a mac mini for this more trouble than the benefits you show for in office work between computers.
This is great. Exactly what I needed. Is there a way to access the data from outside the local network?
Great video! thank you!
I use both! I use the Mac mini and the NAS as part of my 1-2-3 back up system with the Mac mini syncing to Backblaze as well. I already had bought the NAS before seeing this video, otherwise, would have opted for two Mac minis. The only thing I question: How to set up Mac as a server... what options such as iCloud, etc. do you turn off and on? Did you strip the system down with almost no applications? What applications did you think you had to keep?
u should do a video on your desk set up and how you film videos! always super interesting to see how youtubers make videos.
After 4 months, are there anything new you noticed about using this setup? Pros and cons? Am interested in using a m1 mini due to much better performance compared to a nas at the same price range
I plan on doing the same but with an old Mac mini and OCLP, should do the job. If it ends up working on mine, then it will for sure work on his, 5 months later to your comment.
But how would I be able to access this "Mac mini server" from outside my main network ?
@@LUKAS-bb4jc not sure if you found the solution yet, but I personally recommend Tailscale
Wait so what's your backup solution? What happens when one/two drive failed?
OP, consider looking into using your old NAS to store all the media for Plex. I just read in the comments of another video that you can use the MacMini as your Plex server while using the NAS to serve up your media and files. This'll allow you to clean up all those USB drives while still having top notch encoding from your Mini.
What’s the point of having the NAS make noise and consume electricity, unless you need some kind of raid. The main advantages of mac mini are: low idle power consumption, quiet and powerfull. As for transcoding, that’s optional, nowadays we use gigabit internet speed, so we can play full quality, and if plex can’t play some video, Infuse will surely play it.
@@radikk7874 benefits of NAS would be storage capacity and share management mostly - samba shares are very useful. I don't use RAID which gives me a lot of extra capacity on my NAS. I'm also not a huge fan of having all these drives hanging off my sleek Mac mini. Even without any use for NAS software I'd be inclined to open up all these drives and attach them with a multi-bay mount to help clean up appearance.
@@kyma5224 I think you can set up samba on mac, as for hiding all those drives and cables, I would also like a solution, but it must be silent, using ssd’s. But it’s hard to find something good and cheap. Right now my solution is pretty messy, havind 2 ssd’s and one hdd connected to my rpi4.
I still didn’t buy a mac mini, I want one with 10gb ethernet which is hard to get where I live. My reason for getting a mac mini aside from running running a samba share, hass, sonarr, radarr, plex and other apps in docker, is to run Xcode, so mac mini seems like a very good solution.
Why not download directly to the desired destination instead of using the extra app like "Hazel"? Can also use additional "mv" command to move the downloaded .mp4 file.
To compete with a built NAS that have raid I would get a thunderbolt raid cabinet for the storage attached to the mini.
Thanks for making the video, if I have an old macbook pro, can I use it the same way?
Great video! i have been thinking about this use case for Mac Mini glad I searched and found this. Like and sub for this.
Great Idea !
Any thoughts on doing RAID1 on it to backup all my data?
Also since I am currently using cloud i wished to "time machine" it on a hard drive, any software suggestion?
thanks for your great content
Could you show how to connect to your mac mini 1) from iPhone 2) from other network?
What is the oldest Mac Mini this would be viable in?
Which model are You using? Can You do a tutorial how to make it internet accessible so I have my personal cloud?
I think it is time to give my Raspberry Pi a different task and a much needed break! Great video! Thank you!
Cool stuff but feels like an easy way to lose data if one of those drives dies, unless you're running backups you're at risk of drive failure, I do not recommend spending this amount of money in separate drives and mac mini and lose redundancy. NAS with at least 2 bays will give you RAID and are cheaper than what was built, if nothing else for backups. You can also do a mix of the setup if you already have a mac mini and have a NAS, keep using mac mini for all of the more performance demanding items and back everything up daily to a cheap NAS with redundancy. To note, at least Synology NAS can be somewhat silent if configured properly (use SSDs instead of HDDs and look at fan configuration in DSM), it's still a little background noise (at least with a DS218) but lower than most computers.
So… how do you back up this server? You have no RAID either so what if the 2TB drive fails for instance? Or is all data on the SSDs also on the 4tb drive?
Could you use hazel software to basically create like a raid solution? Have it watch a folder or main folder of one drive and have it constantly copy to a second drive to save redundancy? Just a thought that I had watching this
How did you achieve that cool tracking label effect starting at 2:11?? I love it, and something tells me you used an app that made it really easy :P
Hey, this is great. I am trying to the same. Do you have a tutorial on how to turn an old macbook pro into a NAS system?
Synology: Fans not the issue. I never hear mine. The Hard drives though...more of n issue with the big drives. Once the NAS does indexing or data scrubbing your NAS will have a mow volume low frequency rumbling. However you can set them to only do this at certain times of the day...like when you are not there.
What wallpaper are you using on the main mac?
would love an update video of this mac mini server. thanks
Thank you for this idea, do you suggest to just stick with HDD for storing 1080p or 4K movies and tv shows or an SSD, M.2 or NVME?
Does the M2 chip transcode for Plex (intel quick sync)? Live Antenna tv, dvr recordings & dvd’s in my Plex libraries
My heartfelt thanks to you, Matt! I've just completed setting up my first NAS system and I'm so glad that my old 2015 Mac mini i5 8GB with 1TB SSD could be put to good use. I now have a Macbook Air M1, but I didn't want to part with my Mac mini as it's not worth much on the second-hand market. The sharing features, Infuse, and Apple TV 4K make it so easy to use, I can't believe I didn't think of it before. It's running 4K 2160p HDR WEB.DTS-HDMA.x265 perfectly, no lag, no glitches - it's incredibly smooth. I'm planning to experiment with more demanding files. Many thanks mate! 🫶
Thanks for posting this video. Very informative. However, the one thing I'm most interested in is the potential for using an M2 Mac Mini as a replacement for a NAS but... with a RAID configuration for the drives so that I can put my precious home movies, photos, and critical documents on it with less fear about losing everything after 5 or 10 years. And with alternative backups, they take an eternity an may also be prone to fail unless they are also stored in a RAID configuration. And I just don't want to pay for a cloud service and subject my person info to their services, as every day there are newly hacked services being reported. So I'm still trying to figure out what I should do here. I basically just one ONE system to store everything with sharable endpoints, in a RAID 5 config that has everything and will be safe for many many years.
I agree that NAS manufacturers are all keeping their prices hyper inflated as you briefly mentioned. And you still have to add in your own drives, SSDs, or M.2 cards enough to make RAID configurations, ballooning the costs even further).
It's possible. There are multiple videos on TH-cam showing how to do it both over Thunderbolt and vanilla USB. When Apple deprecated Mac OS Server Edition they ported the majority of the core features in the general release OS.
can i use plex with this set up? can you do a step by step guide for it to set up the macmini as a nas replacement?
This looks like a great setup. Which model Mac Mini are you using?
Am also thinking about this setup can you update us with more details thanks you 🙏
use Hazle when you can do the same with Automator?
Great video! I’m definitely going to do this with my old Mac Mini, how are you connecting from your computer to the Mac Mini, is it wired at all?
Don’t bother with RAID for home or SMB. I’ve owned just about every Mac mini made. They make a great NAS. I’ve tried other hardware and other OSes, but I keep coming back.
DO get 3 more drives and use software to create clones of the 3 drives you have. I like SuperDuper now, but I also used rsync and cron for years.
I find clones are way easier to recover from than any kind of RAID. Also, easier to upgrade capacity too.
Just my two cents. 🎉
Unless you have 10Gb networking, using the Samsung T7s seems overkill. You won't benefit from their speed over 1Gb Ethernet; you might get 120MB/s. I guess this would be fine for the home, but you give up so many things by not going with a dedicated NAS: Active Backups, RAID, easy VM hosting, easy VPN, RADIUS, DNS, or DHCP, colocation, Time Machine hosting, Archiving to S3/Glacier, and directory servers. You could make all that happen on the Mac, but only with some hassle.
This costs more than a 2-bay NAS without simplicity, ease, and support. Also, you mentioned you upgraded to run Plex, but you chose to use Infuse (which is fantastic) as an alternative. Infuse would run fine on any NAS, as it only needs a shared folder to pull from.
You could have done all this on a cheap Pi or 10-year-old Mini/SFF desktop rather than a $600 Mac Mini, not to mention you have $300 worth of storage (4GB total) which would cost less than $100 in the form of a NAS drive.
So, if my math is correct, you spent nearly $1000 (with tax) on a setup rather than $400 for a Synology or equivalent dedicated 2-bay NAS with a 4TB NAS drive to get fewer capabilities with negligible performance benefits over 1Gb Ethernet.
I spent $600 total on this upgrade since I already owned the drives 😉. I have a Raspberry Pi and it sucks for doing anything in the GUI, and doing remote desktop just isn't as convenient/easy as doing it to a Mac either. I also didn't mention in the vide, but I can also disconnect those Samsung drives and connect them directly to any PC in my house if I want to move a truly massive file, and then the speed difference is enormous.
I'm definitely not saying this is the right thing for everyone, and your proposed solution sounds cheaper, but it also doesn't sound at all like a solution I would enjoy 🙂
I don't see "Share Screen" showing up for me when I connect to my mac mini as smb server.
How do you connect to your mac mini?
Can you show how your settings for "Remote Management" look like?
Thanks in advance!
great video!
I’ve been going back and fourth on NAS for a while, and I ended up going with a mini plugged into a slow 4bay OWC enclosure set up as jbod, and a raid 0 dual enclosure that’s a bit faster. I would love to be able to figure out if I can get things fast enough to video edit in fcpx over the network
Just seen your comment while researching NAS' etc. what is OWC? I couldn't find what it stood for with a quick Google. Is it like a DAS? (I'll also need to Google the jbod thing too cause not heard of that either - the joys of being a noob 😅)
I can’t figure it out with infusion or vlc on apple tv 🤔
Are you able to access the Mac mini when you are away from your home? I assume that it is pretty straight forward (as long as the Mac mini is on and connected), but I am curious if there were any unforeseen restrictions by using the Mac mini that other solutions may not present. Thanks
Hi all! My question does not connect strictly to this, but here goes: I am planning to retire my late 2008 iMac and buy an M2 Mac mini with 16 Gb RAM and 512 Gb storage. I get that the non-Pro M2 Mini does not support Dolby Atmos from the HDMI, but if I have a Plex server running on it, can I get Atmos if my main playback device is an Nvidia Shiled tube? I did not find any information on this. Appreciate all answers! Thanks!
it seems this exactly what I am looking for, could you please show us the steps, I mean very those with less technical skills. thanks
Great! But how do you connect remotely to your mac mini. When your off your home network, is there a way to access your mac?
How do you control for the risk of someone outside hacking into the systems?
I just have a zsh alias to download directly to the correct folder reducing wear on the internal ssd, or you could tell ytdl to put it on a download folder on the destination drive and then tell hazel to move it from there and there would be no delay or wear.
On command line just change directory into the destination drive you want, then tydl will download directly in that directory
Ok video, I've just got rid of my old synology NAS after 5 years for the same reasons you outlines. I do have some points to make: You say its an old mac mini but you don't say what OS - I tried to download infuse for my 2012 Catalina mac mini and it doesn't work with that OS. Also, I came here to find out how to make my TV see those shared external drives, so I could watch media from them, you didn't show us that either, it's no good sharing them so they're visible on another mac, that's file sharing not media sharing.
How did you get that "Matt's Mac Mini" to show up under locations? Is it because you logged into both your Macbook and Mac mini using same apple Id? I can't get my Mac mini to show up under Locations in my mac. How do I do that?
Data must have multiple backups. Even RAID systems should have backups because they will eventually fail. Slow expensive NAS RAID systems exist for a good reason.
I have a 2012 Mac mini.
I wanna use it as a server.
We use both Mac and Windows.
Can someone help with a solution?
thanks for the video. I'm thinking of a similar set-up. How have you plugged in *three* drives to your base Mac mini?
Little typo on the video title
The smb link is for Linux samba sharing. Is that the link you wanted us to use to share the Mac with windows users?
i have a late 2012 mac mini (i7, 16gb ram) Can I use it to as a server/home nas as you have it set up, but access it with my PC desktop in another room? In other words, can I access the mac mini through other operating systems besides apple devices?
getting an m4 mini as a nas
Hey Matt! I'm super late to the party on this one, but does it matter if the external drive where my media files are stored for the Plex is a HDD or SSD? Do I need the faster transfer of an SSD to play my tv shows/movies?
Like the cold storage name ha
How you can get access from outside? Not local!!
I don't know how you guys make it work when Mini goes to sleep. My MacBook Pro won't see it: I'd have to go to my Mini and physically wake it (mouse or keyboard) and log into it/unlock the screen. I was hoping to be able to do it remotely from my macbook pro but alas...
What Mac mini did you use? Is it possible to have a raid with that same setup?
Cool video, but are you able to access the Mac mini home "server" when you're off your home network and somewhere else?
This is a recipe for disaster. DON'T DO THIS. You want your data to be in a RAID and that isn't counting the two more backups you need to have. I work setting up networks and data systems and I've seen TONS of people losing all of their personal data because they had setups like this one. Having your data connected via cable and without any kind of redundancy and no backups at all will lead to disaster and you will lose everything.
you could technically connect the mac mini to a nas and then setup a time machine backup to said nas over networking cable, that would add safety to this setup.
@@aliazimi91Or even make redundant copies in a different location in your house. Seems like a decent solution on a budget…
Fact if the matter is the only thing he’s lacking a backup, technically having a raid with this setup doesn’t really help him at all tbh.. he just needs to get a bigger hdd or 2 & make those his default Time Machine backups
You could just do a back blaze backup or something too.
I have my Mac Mini 10gbe acting as a NAS, backing up to a DS219+ which backs up to BackBlaze AND Wasabi for cold storage.
You did not explain how the Mac mini was connected to the desktop computer
What is U2DL and how is it used?
I wish i saw this video 10 months ago, when i bought my WD 2x4tb my cloud ex ultra.
That thing is exactly how you described here, noisy, fans, and very slow.
You won't be able to do anything else than storage because it's toooooooooo sloooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow.
And also you can't use it to stream things to your devices (which i did not knew whn i bought it). You have to use PLEX. They even recommend it. And yes, you have to pay a fee for PLEX, be it monthly, yearly, or life.
this is not ideal for data resiliency. perhaps a mac mini can be a good standalone docker node. for running services like frigate nvr and ai processing, transcoding with the built in media engine etc.
I'm just concerned about RAID set up in case the drive dies!?! Especially with my older mac mini, drive is more at risk of dying without warning.... maybe TWO mac mini's with auto back up potentially using carbon copy cloner or some such...
I may have missed it, but what model mini are you using?
Does the "Client"-Mac index the files from your Mac-Mini-Drives? I'm planning to setup a NAS like yours but for me tagging is important!
Yes, you can set it up. Mileage may very through.
how to you download youtube video from terminal? thanks
Everything I download from YT shows up as “other” in Infuse. I want it to show as TV Shows. I created a custom XML for my videos but Infuse ignores the category and keeps marking videos as “other.”
How do you fix that ?
Was literally about to buy a synology this week but this might be better. Would it be possible to move files from my MacBook to the Mac mini when they are different Wi-Fi networks?
It's possible, yes. Before going ahead with the Mini, make sure you know what you want the device to do. Here's a video that goes over converting a Mac Mini to a NAS in a bit more detail: th-cam.com/video/y2CpEEjrG3Q/w-d-xo.html, focusing on some of the issues from the perspective of someone more experienced with home servers.
Generally, I'd say it's safer to go for a device designed to be a NAS. You have an easier time managing drives and get a bunch of software and easy set up of external access outside your network that a M1 Mac Mini can't provide. Unless you need more than what is shown in this video, this - to me - is the way to go.
The big problem with this setup is how all the drives are external - any loose connection and you're guaranteed to lose data. Plus, NASes in general offer features to improve data reliability - e.g. ZFS, RAID, Data scrub schedules, auto SMART test, drive pre-fail detection. If you're using external drives like so, which isn't their intended purpose at all, it's very easy to shoot yourself in the foot. I wouldn't recommend this setup personally.
@@holeo196 No need for proprietary NAS, just shuck the drives, put into an enclosure, run unRAID on main machine. It's cheaper and you don't need to pay the Synology tax. It won't run on M2 though.
@@xervoo6419 no offence but feel the kid is rather biased, HE wants to use HIS legacy hardware, apply HIS perception on how things suppose to look like...and than blames that HIS old non apple hardware increasing the power consumption and poor performance on apple?!? plus, if he would use apple native software on the M1 machine to cater for his video transcoding it would blow almost everything out of the water....but, lets get a 'not quite developed" VM or third party software to to do the job and bitch about the buffering and poor fps?!? and his claim about ram....M1 is a new chip with memory swap, if those 8 or 16gb are exhausted the OS grabs space from the SSD, and with their speed its almost impossible to notice. find videos were people stress test it to the limit to feel a difference between the 8gb and the 16gb. I reckon he seems to live in his x86 / linux bubble were a home set up has to look like a business grade server. love the last few seconds were he prefers that massive box with in his room, loaded with fans and spinning disks to his minimum spec quiet M1 MacBook, reckon that says a lot.
@@cloobs1 If you want a home SERVER, you want a server. I can't blame him for evaluating it on those metrics. MacOS does not easily support some of the things you might want to do with one.
If all you need is to access files and do video transcoding with plex or jellyfin I'm sure a M1 mac might work (once the programs have been updated to use HW transcoding). But you have to be REALLY SURE that that is where you will stop. Otherwise, getting a purpose-built NAS would be a better choice for the flexibility.
To bad that Apple locks the capability’s of there silicon Asahi Lux unleashes the power.
King
This seems like a user friendly alternative to NAS. Are you able to integrate this with Apple HomeKit storage needs, i.e., avoid Apple's iCloud requirement for video storage? How about just accessing files when away from home over the Internet? Or am I way off base on what is possible with an iMacMini as a storage hub?