2018 Mac Mini Owners Thread (2 Viewers)

[DaveF]

Reviews have been good, I was looking for more direct connected device than a nas I can still return it tell me why ?

Sorry, I was dashing around getting ready to head to the airport

That enclosure seems to me the solution for someone doing digital media production: RAID 0 for super fast, high capacity scratch drive, and then three individual drives for large stores of digital media assets or whatever is used for such work.

For an HTPC, you want a straightforward RAID type system. Three or more drives running in RAID 3, 5, or 6 configuration giving resiliency and recovery opportunity to failure of at least one drive in the ensemble. It’s also preferable to use a RAID variant (e.g RAID 5) that allows storage to grow with mismatched drive sizes.

Something like this (not specifically saying to buy this, but this is the sort of device that has the features I’m describing)
https://www.synology.com/en-us/products/DS418j

I don’t recommend a simple spanned volume as the loss of a single drive destroys half to all of the data depending on how the data is stored. It took me like three or more months, spending weekends and a few hours every evening, to rip, name, edit metadata, and populate my library. I never want to do that again. It’s too much data to have a compete backup of. But I can afford to have RAID-like resiliency to have some hope of surviving a drive failure.

If you can spare the time to re-rip all your media again more easily than you can spare the money for extra drive(s) and RAID hardware, then skip the raid. Or if you will have a compete separate backup, then a simple spanned volume might be preferable to you.

If you’re an enthusiast, you can build your own RAID built around software like flexraid, freenas, or snapraid. (I’m not familiar with Mac software for RAID builds.)

Hope that helps.

 

[Dave Scarpa]

Are you connecting it directly to your Mac? I don't even use a RAID enclosure. Just a basic 4 bay one, then I use OSX to create a spanned volume. Has worked just great for over ten years. I do back it up to another volume. If you're not sharing it over a network, I see no need for more.

yes directly into the mini

 

[Dave Scarpa]

Dave, I think the single disk mode on that enclosure is the same thing as what I suggested. RAID 1 will give automatic backup, but half the capacity. I still recommend single disk over RAID 0 since it has less wear on the drives.

yeah its looking like i'll go in a similar direction, are you using time machine to backup the spanned volume to the other spanned volume?

 

[Dave Scarpa]

what enclosure are you using ? on a Mac ?

 

[JohnRice]

yeah its looking like i'll go in a similar direction, are you using time machine to backup the spanned volume to the other spanned volume?

I use SuperDuper for all my backups, because I leave the backup drives turned off when they're not being used. I do this for an extra degree of protection, from electrical disasters for one. I don't want the back ups drives on all the time or automated backups.

Clearly there are options, and I'm never going to claim my way is the only way to do it, or discourage anyone from even considering anything other than the way I choose to do it. It works for me just fine, thank you, and I have everything fully backed up. Most of my video media in iTunes is TV shows, and I do compress them using HandBrake, because I don't want to use that much space for them. Plus, a lot of them are from DVD anyway. Currently, I have 112GB of podcasts, 680 GB of music, a lot of which is ALAC from CDs, 1.7 TB of movies and 6.8 TB of TV shows. I just went to (2) 8TB drives, so that capacity is likely to last me almost indefinitely, especially with the growth of streaming services. I've had this server set up for over ten years, and I have plenty of drives I've outgrown through the years, and they are now my backups, which sit unpowered 99.9% of the time. It's not all that unreasonable. I have a lot of other data I want to keep securely backed up, and I have an 8 bay USB 3 enclosure dedicated to that.

 

[JohnRice]

The enclosure I'm using for the server is a Vantec HX4, though I only have two drives in it. It's just a very basic, 4 bay enclosure. I span the drives with OSX. The big backup enclosure for all my stuff is an 8 bay Probox. Currently it has 5 drives in it. I make certain to only use enclosures that have adjustable fans, to make certain the drives don't heat up.

And yeah, Mac. With a brand new Mini six core i7 ready to be installed, TODAY!

 

[JohnRice]

Back to the topic at hand...

New Mini in the house and migrating as we speak. I wonder how long that will take.

 

[JohnRice]

A look at exactly how fast the SSD in the new Mini is.

 

[JohnRice]

@Dave Scarpa have you set anything up yet?

 

[Dave Scarpa]

@Dave Scarpa have you set anything up yet?

Yes I'm actually am replying on the mini right now. It attached to my Samsung 65" TV perfectly, I'm not sure what profile to use I chose P3 and it looks pretty nice. I have not set up the storage device yet that will be for after the holidays. The base model is faster than my 2011 I5 iMac. I encoded a video just to test and it is definitely faster maybe 20% or so. Its perfect for my use case I'm glad I did not go any higher, I'm looking to replace my iMac and I'm waiting to see what apple does in that space next.

 

[JohnRice]

Something weird with the new Mini, or it could be Mojave. Everything worked great, but when I updated to from 10.14 to 10.14.1, it dropped my media volume, which is two spanned drives. When the computer restarted after the update, it mounted the volume, then dropped it and I got the "Not properly ejected" warning. That volume had been connected through a USB 3.0 hub, and if I connect it directly to the computer, it works fine. What makes things more odd is my backup volume, which is also spanned, works fine, but it's a different housing connected through a different USB 3.0 hub. The best I can guess, but I haven't checked it yet, is that the first USB hub is deficient in some way. Except, it worked until the 10.14.1 update.

 

[Dave Scarpa]

that is very strange have you resolved

 

[JohnRice]

that is very strange have you resolved

Just connecting it directly to the computer, for now. Most likely the problem is the USB 3.0 hub. Since the new Mini only has two USB 3 ports, and 4 USB-C ports, I used a USB-C to USB 3.0 cable to connect this hub, which could be some kind of problem. I think, ultimately, I want to look for some real USB-C hubs to use instead. I think I'd like one that has a couple USB-C ports and at least eight USB 3.1 ones. I have a LOT of peripherals connected.

 

[Citizen87645]

My nominally similar issue where an external HD would mount fine when connected to a USB hub, but still throw a "not ejected properly" warning when it just mounted, seems to have been resolved by making sure I connect the HD to the hub after I've logged in. If I connected the HD and then logged in, it was throwing that false positive (or is it a negative?) more often.

 

[Dave Scarpa]

i lucked out i have a 10 port usb hub all filled and recognized, and a USBC Enclosure with two 10gb drives all recognized

 

[JohnRice]

Well... the USB glitchiness continued today. I'm usually a pretty patient, rational troubleshooter, and it seems to most likely be my Amazon Basics 10 port USB 3.0 hub. What I just can't understand is, it works fine one day, then another day something refuses to mount. It doesn't get dropped, it just won't mount. It will go through all the motions, but nothing. At first it was my spanned iTunes volume. Today it was any of my optical drives.

I probably need a real USB-C hub, but the ones I've seen don't have enough USB 3 ports. I know you typically weren't supposed to daisy chain two hubs, but I wonder if it's OK to have a USB-C hub and connect a USB 3 hub to it. Does anyone know? Another option is always a Thunderbolt 3 dock, and then connect my two (or new) USB 3 hubs to it. That option is rather pricey, though.

I have stuff working right now, and have one other connection option available, but as it is, both of the Mini's USB 3.1 ports are being used. I've always had a rule of trying to keep one direct USB port on the computer available for troubleshooting and other problems.

 

[JohnRice]

I think my USB problems are entirely due to the Amazon Basics hub. I also couldn't mount a thumb drive on it. Basic stuff like keyboard and trackball work fine, but memory related stuff doesn't. It won't mount volumes of any kind, thumb drive, optical or hard drive. I kind of wonder if its power supply is dying. I had tried a lot of USB 3 hubs and liked the Amazon ones the best, so I decided to try their newest 3.1 version. It was almost the only hub I could find that said it was 3.1 instead of 3.0, and I'm going to try connecting it directly to USB-C. The other hub is an Anker, and it seems to be working fine.

 

[Citizen87645]

I feel somewhat responsible for jinxing things for you.

BTW, THIS is the Amazon one. 3 1/2 years with it and I don't recall a single drop. Except, I see it's gotten bad reviews recently.

 

[JohnRice]

It's all YOUR fault, Cameron.

 

[JohnRice]

OK, hooked up the Amazon USB 3.1 hub to USB-C on the computer, and everything that wasn't working is now working perfectly. All is right with the world.