Matt BirchlerOh man, this guy tried to school me on how as Raspberry Pi would be so much better for my needs than a Mac Mini.
I appreciate the feedback, but truly, "you could have done this with Linux" replies always make me laugh.
Alex Barredo š
Robb Knight@matt never forget https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
āFor a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystemā
@robb Oh man, put that in the āHacker News replyā hall of fame š
Zac@matt It seems to be the hardware variant of people offering Open Source products as suggestions when they only meet the most minimal set of requirements .
Christopher Lawley@matt The best reason why a Mac mini is better: you can actually buy one right now. Iāve been trying to get a modern Rasberry Pi for months.
marca56@matt and always written in Word on a PC :)
Nathan Snelgrove@matt what video is this a comment on? Because if itās about remote backups, Iām torn between Synology and a Mac Mini setup I have now that is kind of eh. Would love to watch if thatās what youāre covering here
@nathansnelgrove It was this video https://youtu.be/ek-7aTRmhvE, which does focus on things one could do on other hardware, but the Mini has been working absolutely great for me. Being able remote desktop into it and run the Mac apps I want has been enough on its own to elevate it for me.
I replaced my terrible NAS with an the cheapest Mac mini
@matt I will give this a watch! My experience thus far with the Mac Mini (been running it for two weeks) is that I want more storage attached, and I donāt need a whole Mac sitting there (especially one way less powerful than my M1 Max). Itās also been buggy in weird ways.
By the time I get all the storage I want, Iām almost at high end Synology pricing, so considering that direction regardless.
@nathansnelgrove Yeah I get that. For me I already owned all the drives so the Mini was the only new cost, which was way less than the Synology would have run me.
I'm also banking on an M2 being more than enough power today, but also enough to make me not grumble about it being slow and needed to think about an upgrade in a year or two.
@matt thatās fair! I bought the M1 Mac Mini, and I would need 3 8tb external drives, one of which needs to be plugged in to my laptop sometimes because itās archival. So about $1200 (CAD). For $300 more, I could get the whole Synology thing with 20tb and a RAID5 system. Itās tempting.
(Plus, then Iād have a place to store the 4K77, 4K80, and 4K83 Star Wars projects and stream them from Plex. Which is my only use for Plex lol.)
Itās nice to have all these options though!
@matt Iāll also just add Iām not trying to debate you, and Iām sorry if it comes off that way! I just donāt know whatās right for me. Eager to see your video as soon as I have more time.
@nathansnelgrove Definiyely not! Youāre describing your experience and what you think is the best thing for you, I love it!
The dude in the comments was more like āyou did a stupid thing and hereās what a rational person would have doneā š
@matt that dude is a douche. I did just finish the video, and I think what youāre doing is clever. I need a cold archive thing for work and I need photo backup and archival, so given how much storage itās going to take, I might spring for the Synology. But I donāt know. Iāve been stuck on this for weeks.
@matt one big advantage to the Synology for me is that it does it all automatically. Right now I do a lot of hard drive cloning, even to the drive attached to the Mac Mini. Itās a lot of room for human error and laziness.
@nathansnelgrove Thatās very true. My super power is not caring about redundancy.
It is also my weakness š
@matt I had a Raid 10 enclosure fry in such a way that every drive in it died while I was on holiday. The enclosure and the drives were all landfill. Lost 5 years of backups, including almost my whole wedding photography career. Iāve been insane about redundancy ever since.
@nathansnelgrove Woof, that sounds terrible, I totally get the paranoia!
For me, (basically) everything on my drives is also in the cloud somewhere, so thatās good enough for me, but my mental math might be different if Iād experienced a failure remotely close to that š¬
@matt Iām also paranoid about cloud software, just because I think Iāll outlive it. Having more redundancy gives me time to migrate to a new solution if, say, Backblaze becomes unaffordable or goes under. But I hear you! Iāve been living your life for a year with laptops, and if *stresses me out*
CaptainBackfire@matt Iāve been considering using a M1 Mac Mini as a NAS solution myself, was wondering if you had monitored the power usage at all?
Prices for electricity (in Australia) have been rising heaps the past few years so I was considering a Pi or a dedicated NAS product only for the potential reduction in power usage. Any insight?