How I turned my 2012 Mac Mini into a home server | Put your old mac to use!

Whats up guys! Welcome back to the channel. Todays video is how I put my 2012 mac mini to use as a personal home server. Since building my hackintosh I no longer was utilizing my mac mini for anything other than collecting dust. Instead I decided why not build a home server for file storage and archiving! I'll show you everything you need to know on how to turn an older mac, like my 2012 mac mini, into a home server with this guide to build a home server on a mac. All of the features are native to macs so there is no need to buy or download any software to your mac when creating your home server either on a 2012 mac mini or another mac device!

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#2012MacMini #MacMiniServer #HomeserverBuild
Thanks again for watching!

[GordonBagshaw-GBEnglishClass]

You are the first person I have ever heard inviting people to the option of a thumbs down. Respect. I gave you a thumbs up. Nice video

[Inkling]

Many thanks! I'm currently setting up a base Mac Studio to replace my venerable 2012 Mac mini. It has served me so well, I didn't want to confine it to a closet. You've inspired me to use its 1GB SSD to back up that Mac Studio.

[destructodisk]

Thanks for making this. I am a pretty high level user, but messing with networking always intimidates me. It's pretty simple on the Mac I guess.

[SprayArtguy]

Nice, with time in isolation I'm now going to set up my old mac mini like this, thanks for the vid!

[newt]

Thanks Dylan! Great tutorial. I love using old tech that has been collecting dust. Using your setup I went back to my old 2009 Mac Mini and it works like a champ using Catalina. I even setup a plex server for all my music and movies.

[waltergrant]

Excellent tutorial, very simple and straightforward to follow and all worked a treat. Good find on youtube and I'm now a subscriber!

[yodabeeshdc]

Thanks for the video. I have pretty basic needs for our Apple ecosystem house:

1) Store personal home videos which I prefer to access via Apple TV, . I prefer to use the "TV" app to manage my videos specifically (probably < 1TB right now) as I can do playlists, etc. (I know that Plex can probably do this, but TBH, I use iTunes/TV to manage my stuff and allows for easier sync to my iPad for when I travel.) 
2) Time Machine


I'm faced with either building a new NAS or just getting an older Mac Mini. When doing price comparison, I can get a 2014 Mac Mini on eBay with 1TB HDD, 4GB Memory, i7 1.4 GHz for less than $300. (I can easily upgrade the HDD.). I wonder if I can partition the drives so that my husband can use 1 drive for his TM, and I use the other drive for my own TM.

TBH, the primary need is a "home media center". TM is nice-to-have, but my new 2020 MBA syncs files to iCloud and it's easy enough for me to plug in my external SSD at the end of the day.

Any thoughts on buying a brand spanking new NAS vs buying a used Mini and upgrading the HDD?

(Side note: a friend gave me an old Mini, but at the end of the day it wouldn't work bc it was a "hyper drive" 1 TB (which was 2 drives... one HDD and the other SDD). I also ran out of "Family Sharing authorizations" which was annoying and will need to kick someone off.)

[jari]

Loving the idea of this. You can get high spec 5's or medium spec 6's all day long in the UK (just not that popular on the used market) - add the low power usage and it's a great file server once you can get RAID sorted out.

[crod]

Good info! Please do a video accessing the Mac Server from a Windows 10 or 11 PC on the same network. Also, another video on accessing it remotely as a Cloud Storage. Would another software like Synology be needed for remote access?

[jfishin_]

Thank You!! i was doing this myself and i had a couple hiccups, you saved me lol

[EM-mljq]

great video, relative passed his mini to me 2014 catalina w. 8 gig unified memory 256 ssd m1, kind of hot dog. Don't use daily but file server status is right on--thumbs up

[ketlo]

Amazing video! I was thinking about maybe buying a used Mac mini server 2012.

[andrewbrown]

rather than setting the static IP on the mini, I rather do that on the router as it means the router won't give out the IP address if, for some reason, the server is off-line potentially causing a conflict of address if it comes back online while the other device has that IP address. The other setting turned on is power on when power is turned back on so it boots back automtically if the power goes out and is then restored

[Murlock]

Not bad.. Nice video.. I would love to see a video where you go more in depth with it

[David_JA_Noble]

thank you ... you have got me started ... moving my 2012 mini to under my stairs ... it will manage all my content and importantly all my photos and their back up. Hopefully everyone will then be able to access . Worried the share size of the data may be the hindrance.

[bokitostylez]

Great tutorial dude thanks a lot for this.

[fmlazar]

Did you consider running Linux with ProxMox or TrueNas intead of MacOS?

[jimsimpson]

What I'm not very clear about is the actual drives being used on the mac mini. Are you using external usb drive(s) or is it just the internal hdd/ssd?

[kyqnpgw]

I had repurposed mine into a webserver. No Mac OS, clean Ubuntu Server install, runs like a dream.

[techmap]

I would like you to show services most used if you can. Also, can I use this Mac mini server as a plex server as well?