[X4U] Using a Quicksilver G4 as a NAS?

[Neil Laubenthal]

You still need to run an OS on the Quicksilver and it will end up  
using more electrical power and making more noise than a NAS. One  
thing you might look at is the Drobo . . . this is a nice little box  
that connects via either FW or USB to another computer . . . or,  
through adding an optional interface . . . directly to ethernet. It  
holds up to 4 SATA drives in any combination and automatically RAIDs  
them together. When it gets full; you simply pull one of it's smaller  
capacity drives and replace with a larger drive and the RAID rebuilds  
itself.  It uses what they call "BeyondRAID" . . . but it's a lot of  
marketing speak for an automatically configuring RAID setup based on  
the size drives installed. Max capacity is 6 TB today (using 1.5 TB  
drives) although it says it goes up to 16 TB with larger drives . . .  
because we know they are coming. I've actually been thinking about one  
of these myself . . . I've got a couple of 250 GB SATA drives with  
plenty of useful life left in my old G4 file server that I could start  
populating it with. It works fine for TM destination as a local  
drive . . . but it's unclear whether the ethernet shared version does.  
The DroboShare ethernet option is essentially a Linux front end . . .  
and since networked Time Machine drives get stored as a .dmg file  
instead of the usual Finder readable but using hardlinks option . . .I  
would suspect it works fine for that . . . unless there is something  
in Time Machine that only allows you to select Apple approved network  
shares (i.e. a share on another Leopard machine or a Time Capsule).



www.drobo.com


On Jan 1, 2009, at 23:42, Neil wrote:

> I have an old Quicksilver G4/733 with 1.12gigs of ram and running  
> Mac os 10.4.11.  I need storage.  So, I'm thinking of adding a  
> couple SATA cards, pulling the existing drives (even the DVD), and  
> installing 6 or 8 SATA hard drives.   I know that can make a lot of  
> heat, but I think I would rarely access more that two drives at a  
> time.  I don't need RAID.  An 8 bay NAS would be expensive, and  
> while an 8 bay USB enclosure would suffice, that would run a few  
> hundred dollars too.
>
> My questions:
>
> Am I better off getting a USB enclosure?  If so, is there one in  
> particular that I should consider?
>
> If converting the G4 into a NAS makes sense, which SATA controller  
> card (inexpensive, Mac compatible and bootable), hard drives (low  
> heat)?  Should I run the Mac os or try Linux?  Thanks in advance.