Network Drive Woes

[Christian Dupuis]

On Jul 16, 2004, at 8:07 AM, Power Macintosh G4 List wrote:

> Message-ID: <009c01c46a6e$06248520$cb8c0b99 at AD242556EB>
> From: "Joe Ellis" <jellis at gdeb.com>
> Subject: Network drive woes
> Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2004 09:17:05 -0400
>
> Has anyone had any experience with using a Netwok Drive? Specifically a
> Ximeta drive. I recently purchased a 160 GB hard drive that supossedly 
> can
> be mounted dirtectly to the network. According to their website the 
> drive is
> supposed to work with Macs and I successfully downloaded and installed 
> their
> drivers. However, I have not been able to get it to show up on the 
> network.
> I can mount it by using a USB connection directly to my G4, but I 
> wanted to
> have it on the network where it would be available for both my G4 and 
> my
> TiVo DVR.
>
> Joe Ellis

I have no experience with Ximeta; however, I have field tested a LaCie 
Ethernet Disk (160 Gb capacity) and an IOGear BOSS (200 Gb capacity). 
Both have been returned to their respective makers after less than a 
week of use, but for different reasons.

LaCie Ethernet Disk: the system runs an embedded Windows XP system with 
some sort  of Appleshare support. It worked for access and copying, 
however it showed an unacceptable slowness in network file searches 
(i.e., performing a find on the network storage unit could take from 45 
minutes to 2 hours). Since my client is a service bureau, and wanted to 
store all client jobs, fonts and graphics on that drive for shared 
access, it was problematic. I'll be installing OS X server on a G4 for 
them instead, since it addresses that issue. However, if you don't need 
to perform a search on thousands of folders and files, the LaCie 
Ethernet Disk might work for your needs.

The IOGear BOSS unit I got for evaluation gave me errors (filenames too 
long), and that's just by copying the contents of my iMovie folder over 
as a test; while the concept (an all in one router/gateway/ftp & 
apple/windows network file server) seems great, the actual 
software/firmware implementation has filename issues which don't occur 
on OS X's personal file sharing (or even OS 9's). I'm not sure what the 
IOGear runs on (although, at the speed it boots, I suspect it's an 
embedded Linux system), but that "filename too long" is something 
that's been addressed by Apple and Microsoft a long time ago. 
Hopefully, IOGear will address this issue rapidly and provide an 
updated unit that supports longer file names; form-factor wise, it's a 
very neat package.

I run Panther server on an old G4 at home (and I've run it on an even 
older 350Mhz Blue & White G3 at the office) and it works great for file 
services (I even get decent performance when I access it over the 
Internet).

Chris Dupuis