Mac for NAS?

dcheng

Registered
I'm not sure of the best place to put this question, and I didn't find a thread quite with my question, so I hope I'm not duplicating.

Anyway, my question is this: is there a good Mac to use as a file/print server? The main requirements are low power, expandable, and quiet. The new Mac Mini looks like it would handle the quiet part, and possibly the low power, but the expandability is a problem as I see myself then needing to attach external firewire enclosures which are loud. I currently have about 800GB of storage that I would like to share among several Macs and a couple PCs.

I currently have these drives in a G4 tower, but it's not the quietest machine on the block...:) Am I asking for too much?

Thanks!
 
I hate to be heretical, but if you're just looking for storage, why not get a server case (the tall towers -- try lian li and coolermaster) to put the drives in and run freebsd? It'll be relatively cheap, and you'll have lots of space.
 
I have no problem being heretical...:) I have considered going the PC tower route, using a *nix (I'm more comfortable with Linux than FreeBSD, but perhaps I should do more with BSD because of the Mac, huh?). I guess I just wasn't too sure about the sound and power, and whether it would just be easier to go with a silent Mac and a noisy enclosure...

Thanks.

dc
 
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