Dear LazyMastodon: Hey, we have this ancient 2008 Mac Pro, used to be the Family Mainframe and homework machine for the kids. All It does now is feed music to a DAC and run a Plex server. But it's hot and eats watts and MacOS is so old it won't run browsers or anything useful.
I think I'm gong to replace it with a basic Mac mini and a couple TB of outboard disks. What's a good choice for those disks?
@timbray yup. almost out the box.
You may need to install some 'ugly' codecs, but that should be it.
@timbray in this case the 'almost' is because the m4a is not #OpenSource as far as I remember, so many Linux distros may not distribute the codecs out-of-the-box for not being FREE.
In case you chose a distro that didn't do it, you would need to run 1 sudo apt command that would be it.
I listen to m4a in my Linux boxes all the time, the support comes with a question at install like "would you like to add support to *ugly* formats?' - Answer YES to that and you are done.
I think you're problem could be too many options to choose from...
Dear LazyMastodon, reporting back:
I ended up getting a new basic Mini because I didn't want to go back to USB-A and because that desk, in an end of the living room, already has a CalDigit Thunderbolt hub on it (they're great), so anybody who wants to use the screen/kbd/mouse/USB-DAC already on the desk only has to fool with one wire.
Got a 5T USB-powered Seagate on advice from @jwz - absurdly small. Copying over a couple of T on the old Mac at about 1.2G/minute. It'll be done tomorrow…
@timbray FWIW, our Plex instance is a headless Intel NUC backed by a Synology NAS.
for disks, i just buy whatever Backblaze's stats suggest is best:
https://www.backblaze.com/b2/hard-drive-test-data.html
@timbray mine are mostly connected via usb hard drive docks, which require external power. i have dual drive docks, which are under $50. they come with either a single usb port or one port for each drive & generally one port should be fine, but i wanted flexibility & got dual port docks.
jwz's portable drive suggestion makes good sense if your capacity needs are less & you want to plug in easy.
@timbray you don't need spinning disks anymore for "a couple TB". Put any 2TB PCI-E NVME SSD in a USB-C enclosure (https://smile.amazon.com/SSK-Aluminum-Enclosure-Adapter-External/dp/B07MNFH1PX/ for example). **Much** faster and more reliable than anything mechanical. Regardless, even the slowest spinning rust is an order of magnitude more performance than a home media server needs so if you do that, anything will work. The 2.5" drives in a USB enclosure like the one jwz linked to work nicely and are close to silent.
If you don't intend to use this for any actual modern mac hooked to a display uses, a fanless $400 intel NUC will already be overkill feeling infinitely more powerful than your old thing.
@timbray @bradford Old Mac minis hold up surprisingly well. Even a 2011 i5 is absolutely performant enough for watching movies or even streaming with OBS.
I've kept even older Minis in service by replacing the disk with a $30 SSD, just because I like keeping them out of landfill as long as possible. Until recently the club's lighting controller was still a 2006 model, I think.
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