Turning old MBP into a NAS

[woolypants]

Mid-2015 MBP with 1TB SSD that I'd like to turn into a NAS, Time Machine destination, caching server, and more. Adding in a few USB3 SSDs.

The only issue I can foresee is the fans being on 24/7. I can set it to go into sleep mode, and activate wake-on-lan, but that doesn't seem to work for SMB/AFP access.

Also, I've half a mind to turn it into our household's Wifi access point, too, by getting a USB adapter with external antennae. But this would again require it being on 24/7, which doesn't sound healthy.

 

[chrfr]

Mid-2015 MBP with 1TB SSD that I'd like to turn into a NAS, Time Machine destination, caching server, and more. Adding in a few USB3 SSDs.

The only issue I can foresee is the fans being on 24/7. I can set it to go into sleep mode, and activate wake-on-lan, but that doesn't seem to work for SMB/AFP access.

Also, I've half a mind to turn it into our household's Wifi access point, too, by getting a USB adapter with external antennae. But this would again require it being on 24/7, which doesn't sound healthy.

I’d be more concerned about the battery swelling up and causing problems than the fans running all the time. Laptops just don’t make for good servers. They also don’t make good wireless access points- something designed for that job will work far, far better.
I’d sell the laptop and get a Mac mini, and an access point or router.

 

[woolypants]

I’d be more concerned about the battery swelling up and causing problems than the fans running all the time. Laptops just don’t make for good servers. They also don’t make good wireless access points- something designed for that job will work far, far better.
I’d sell the laptop and get a Mac mini, and an access point or router.

The battery is new. To be honest the power supply is a bigger worry.

But you're right overall. It's not a great idea. Selling it isn't an option for sentimental reasons. I have thought about removing the bottom case panel, removing the battery, disconnecting the fans, and attaching a large passive heatsink to the CPU and GPU. More as a fun project. But I'm not sure I can be arsed.

 

[chrfr]

The battery is new. To be honest the power supply is a bigger worry.

But you're right overall. It's not a great idea. Selling it isn't an option for sentimental reasons. I have thought about removing the bottom case panel, removing the battery, disconnecting the fans, and attaching a large passive heatsink to the CPU and GPU. More as a fun project. But I'm not sure I can be arsed.

The problem is that the batteries just get hot; I've seen a relatively disproportional number of 2015 models where the battery swells up. Removing the battery is not an option because the computer will only run at about 800MHz if you do that.

 

[bobcomer]

Mid-2015 MBP with 1TB SSD that I'd like to turn into a NAS, Time Machine destination, caching server, and more. Adding in a few USB3 SSDs.

The only issue I can foresee is the fans being on 24/7. I can set it to go into sleep mode, and activate wake-on-lan, but that doesn't seem to work for SMB/AFP access.

Also, I've half a mind to turn it into our household's Wifi access point, too, by getting a USB adapter with external antennae. But this would again require it being on 24/7, which doesn't sound healthy.

I had a 2017 MBP that ran all the time, it lasted 3 years from brand new and then blew up like a balloon.

 

[Boyd01]

You could use it, but a Mini would be a much better solution. I have a headless 2012 quad Mini as a fileserver and time machine destination with 20tb of USB disks. Runs 24/7 and works great. Also have a 2014 Mini as a media server with my content on a 4tb SSD, running iTunes with home sharing 24/7 (under MacOS Mojave). Again, this is great. Never tried using a Mac as an access point though.

Used 2012 and 2014 Mini's are really cheap these days, I would look into that and save the MBP for something else (or sell and use the proceeds to buy the Mini).

 

[jerryk]

If you want a NAS, I think you would better off going with a Synology or other NAS brand. They have things like redundant drives built in, a dedicated NAS OS, video streaming, cloud backup, etc. that they support. And you can get a NAS pretty cheap these days.