Build NAS using Power Mac G4 or G5?

[SlCKB0Y]

Also considered, but I figured it wouldn't be any worse than using an old PC tower, which is where I began this journey.

No, not really any worse than using an old PC tower, but I wouldn't really recommend that for this either.

I could access a movie on my home network and watch it on my iPad?

Of course! By far the best way of doing this is using Plex Media Server. This would run on your FreeNAS server as a plugin:
http://www.freenas.org/whats-new/2013/09/plex-on-freenas.html

Then you would install the client software on each iOS device:
https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/plex/id383457673?mt=8

There are also Plex clients for Android and other operating systems.

For OS X, you would simply create an SMB share on the FreeNAS server, connect to it from your Mac and the share would appear as a network drive in Finder. From there you would simply play the file in Quicktime or MPlayerX or Plex for Mac if you like.

#7= Slightly confused. Used Windows for years and never want to have to again. I've never run Linux or BSD and don't totally get how they are Mac-compatible. I think Linux is related to Mac somehow via Unix... Maybe?

Ok, forget Windows 😀 I was just pointing out that you could run any x86 software if you want to repurpose your server at a later date. You could not do this on PPC.

Linux developers have reverse engineered network file protocols used by companies like Microsoft (SMB) and Apple (AFP). They have then used this knowledge to code compatible opensource servers. Samba is the Linux implementation of Windows file sharing and OS X actually includes this software in order to connect to Windows machines.

You do not really need to know anything about Unix/Linux in order to use FreeNAS. The installer is text based but fairly easy and then once that is done, all configuration is done through a very easy to use browser interface.

Eg:

#8-9= Again, yay for cheap. I was planning on connecting the NAS to my wireless router via ethernet so I can access it wirelessly over my home network. No need for a WiFi card then, right?

No need for a wireless card in the freeNAS server - Simply plug it directly into your router.

#10= Awesome, as you can see I need a lotta help. 😛 Actually, once I understand something, I'm usually ok.

You would learn a lot doing a project like this and if you have geeky inclinations you should enjoy it. It is satisfying when everything works.

#11= A USB Key is more or less a flash drive, yes? I remember reading something about FreeNAS booting from a key... What size is needed?

2GB
http://doc.freenas.org/index.php/Hardware_Recommendations#Compact_or_USB_Flash

So here's a RAID question, and everyone please feel free to chime in. I'm not sure if I want a RAID. Redundancy is important. No one wants to lose data. I am pretty good about keeping multiple copies of my most important stuff, which is mainly photos and videos, and a handful of other files.

While it would suck to lose all of my other media, such as TV shows, movies, and music. Technically, it can all be replaced.

My understanding is that I would need an additional drive for a RAID array, which means more $$. I would like to start out now with 2 drives and be able to expand in the future. My friend, who is the only person I know who knows anything about RAID, tells me it is not easily expandable/upgradable. He uses unRAID and loves it, but he's a Windows user and it doesn't seem to be very Mac-friendly.

The other thing is that I have read a countless number of times over the past past few days that "RAID is not a backup system", that is not it's purpose. So I don't understand why I would want to set up a RAID array if it's technically not for backup, it's inflexible, and will cost a billion times more. Feedback?

If you can afford to use RAID, you should. It's not a backup solution but it adds hardware redundancy (except RAID 0). Say I have 3 x 2GB drives in RAID5. This will give me 4GB of usable space, will perform better than standalone disks and is tolerant for one disk failure. If a drive failed, you would replace it, sync the RAID array and no one would ever known there was an issue.

Of course, you don't have to use it if you don't want to.

 

[Cox Orange]

Don't get on your own nerves and time and flash!

You do the flashing, only for the purpose, that you can use a Windows-PCI-Card as a Card from which you can boot/start into the Operation System. You do not need this for just transfering files.
You have an IDE-Drive that is perfectly fine for the OS!

You can buy a cheap Windows Card with Sil 3124 Chip on it and just install the drivers to your Mac (no firmware, firmware gets on the card itself, drivers just sit on your hard drive and can be manually deleted everytime you like). the SIl-drivers are on the internet, if it does not come with a CD. Then you can connect SATA-drives. You will be able to access data from them, but you can not put your OS on it an boot/start from these drives, which you do not want, because you have your IDE drive.

Here is a list of Windows/"PC"-cards that work in Macs: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1650568/ (scroll down)


transfer speeds:
ATA in MDD is ATA-100 which will give you about 40-60MB/s on an IDE drive.
ATA in older PowerMac G4s is ATA66, which gives you about 35MB/s.
SATA-PCI 32bit (with short gold edge and two cuts) gives you max. of 30-35MB/s
SATA-PCI with 64bit (longer golden edge with three cuts) gives you up to 62MB/s. (If you have 1 2TB drive and put one file at the beginning and one at the end of the drive, because the rest is full, this file will be transferred at about 30MB/s or even only 16MB/s.

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I posted the power consumption, because that is what you will want to look into, when you have it running all day. The MDD Dual 1,25GHz consumes the most of all PowerMac G4s, and it is freaking loud as and you might not want to have that as a fileserver in your room, when you sleep next to it.

For quietness and power consumption a ibook (or macmini) is still a very good idea! If you it must not be fast, but then on the other hand. The ibook's Firewire port gives you 35MB/s and the USB2 gives you 15-20MB/s, so you are close to the solutions above.

What other G4s are there and what are the differences, see post #12 (and read on) https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1215490/
Also you claimed, there were two MDD models, no there are more. See all PowerMac G4s that were available here:
http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/powermac_g4/index-powermac-g4.html (expand the details for more infos)

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If you do not want to connect via ethernet cable to your wifi base station you can add a Wifi dongle, which will be slower. All G4s had USB1 (max. of arround 10MB/s).
You can add any PC-Card with USB2 that has a NEC chip on it (the black squares on the green, red, yellow or blue plastic board. It will say "NEC" or "VIA" or something different) and then put a wifi dongle in it.
But cable is preferred.

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Also the MDD and a few Quicksilver models don't have a hard drive limitation of 128GB on the IDE-connector on the board itself (every PCI card has no limit!). Small SATA drives are usually cheap, so you can buy an adapter from SATA to IDE and connect that to the second IDE connector. But SATA-Hard Drive plus adapter will end up the same price as an IDE drive some times. Well at least you can save heat with the smaller SATA dirves, which means less cooling needed, which means a more quiet PowerMac.

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Use a max of 2TB for every single Drive (connected to SATA-PCI) and for the IDE BUS I would not go above 1TB (actually even only 500GB to be save). 3TB drives work sometimes, but are peachy, you can loose your data.

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Drive Choice
I tested a lot of drives and Seagate drives have the most problems talking to the IDE BUS at least in a PowerMac G4 AGP and they work peachy on the IDE-Port of a IDE-PCI card) - they get header problems, which may end up in loosing the data. (If you use Seagate drives, move some data from one drive to another for 2-3 days and then open Disk utility and check the drive. I mean disk utility is not really good in finding things, but here it finds it.
I have one very fast (but hot Seagate IDE 160GB that works without issues in an external case, and a 320GB IDE that works without issue in an external case, but when I connect them internally I get errors on the drive's structure.

----------------------------------------------------
just to be save keep away from green (WD) or LP (Seagate) drives, these are the ones with 5400rpm and 5900rpm, there are reports they have problems awaking from sleep (you have to restart your Mac everytime). For very new WD drives do not forget to adjust the Pins from SATA III to SATA II.

WD and Hitachi are the most compatible drives, if you look into the xlr8yourmac.com hard drive database with reviews. (I have a 3,5" Toshiba, too and am happy with it and I found LAptop Toshiba drives form the time of 2005 around are longliving, too).
BUT! actually you can not say that about a manufacturer in general. On the other hand there is the problem that all newer Seagate drives come with flash ability, becaus ethe firmware is so crappy, that Seagate decided to allow users to again and again update the latest firmware themselves and they even have a support forum for that. Also Seagate sold refurbished drives as completely new 10 years ago (that was found out by a german PC-newspaper. Seagate was so stupid they had not zeroed the SMART data that collected the running time.)
Then there is a french salesman who has kept record of the drives he sells and what he gets back as defective. Hitachi had a chance of 0,003% of crapping out per user, while WD, Samsung and Seagate were in the 0,001-0,0015% range. But this is still very few per user and Hitachis aeem to be the most Mac compatible drives after WDs drives, before advanced format and SATA-III started (according to xlr8yourmac). Google has a study too, but I can't find it now (they keep record of their server farms HDD failing rates).
Also where I live (Germany) Seagate is known as the hughest supplier for HDDs in discounter PCs (Aldi with its fake brand medion) and cheap harddrive cases, home-hdd-recorders, that needs a hard drive to be sold better.

If you want to save further costs and heat, you can also buy 2,5" instead of 3,5" drives (SAT have the same connector, while IDE 2,5" have another connector and you will need an adaptor to 3,5" IDE, costs 3-10EUR.

----------------------------------------------------
You also do not need a fancy graphics card in a server, so stick with the one you have unless it has a fan. Then you can swap it for one that is passively cooled (no fan).

----------------
I am sure there are things I have forgotten.

Btw. I tested the power consumption, this is why I say this.

----------------------------
PS: SuperDuper is ok for bootable backups, too, do not know, if someone mentioned.

I also think it will not be very funny to watch bigger h.264 movies via ethernet from you PowerMac to your HD-TV. But I do not do this. I have a satellite receiver for 50,-EUR were I can connect an external USB Hard Drive and watch movies from, the CPU in that receiver is more capable for h.264-HD than a Mac CPU and it is not even an expensive one. (I can even copy DVDs to the dirve and it will play the movies of the DVD without altering them).

Also you will not have the server running all the time and consume Watts, just for Dirves that sit arround waiting til you want to watch movies.

If you want to save energy costs:
get yourself a couple of external drives.
One for bootable OS backups (If you want to have several backups sitting on the same disk you either need to partition it before use or make several folders). - and a second for movies, which you keep in your living room, e.g.. Maybe a third for music. Then you can power them up everytime you need something. (oh and a third for file backups, which are not the OS itself, like software you want to keep).

You may want to do the math of energy costs, but if you are a PowerPC-o-phile then the hobby is maybe more value than your electricity bill. 🙂

 

[SharkGirl]

Moved this to a new thread...hope you don't get airsick

Felt like we're getting off topic in this thread, but I still want to discuss this option. Started a new thread and moved this non-Power Mac discussion over. It's located here:
https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=18650004#post18650004

Thanks!

No, not really any worse than using an old PC tower, but I wouldn't really recommend that for this either.



Of course! By far the best way of doing this is using Plex Media Server. This would run on your FreeNAS server as a plugin:
http://www.freenas.org/whats-new/2013/09/plex-on-freenas.html

Then you would install the client software on each iOS device:
https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/plex/id383457673?mt=8

There are also Plex clients for Android and other operating systems.

For OS X, you would simply create an SMB share on the FreeNAS server, connect to it from your Mac and the share would appear as a network drive in Finder. From there you would simply play the file in Quicktime or MPlayerX or Plex for Mac if you like.



Ok, forget Windows 😀 I was just pointing out that you could run any x86 software if you want to repurpose your server at a later date. You could not do this on PPC.

Linux developers have reverse engineered network file protocols used by companies like Microsoft (SMB) and Apple (AFP). They have then used this knowledge to code compatible opensource servers. Samba is the Linux implementation of Windows file sharing and OS X actually includes this software in order to connect to Windows machines.

You do not really need to know anything about Unix/Linux in order to use FreeNAS. The installer is text based but fairly easy and then once that is done, all configuration is done through a very easy to use browser interface.

Eg:

No need for a wireless card in the freeNAS server - Simply plug it directly into your router.



You would learn a lot doing a project like this and if you have geeky inclinations you should enjoy it. It is satisfying when everything works.



2GB
http://doc.freenas.org/index.php/Hardware_Recommendations#Compact_or_USB_Flash



If you can afford to use RAID, you should. It's not a backup solution but it adds hardware redundancy (except RAID 0). Say I have 3 x 2GB drives in RAID5. This will give me 4GB of usable space, will perform better than standalone disks and is tolerant for one disk failure. If a drive failed, you would replace it, sync the RAID array and no one would ever known there was an issue.

Of course, you don't have to use it if you don't want to.

 

[SharkGirl]

Hmmm...

You do the flashing, only for the purpose, that you can use a Windows-PCI-Card as a Card from which you can boot/start into the Operation System. You do not need this for just transfering files.
You have an IDE-Drive that is perfectly fine for the OS!

Are you saying I do not need to flash the card? The problem with flashing is that I do not have access to a Windows machine. If it came down to it, a friend of mine could do it for me, but he would then have to ship the card to me. He lives 8 hours away by car.

I posted the power consumption, because that is what you will want to look into, when you have it running all day. The MDD Dual 1,25GHz consumes the most of all PowerMac G4s, and it is freaking loud as and you might not want to have that as a fileserver in your room, when you sleep next to it.

Yes, the power consumption concerns me. Though the server will be in the other room, it will be on the other side of the wall from my bed. My apartment is small and the walls are not very thick.

If you do not want to connect via ethernet cable to your wifi base station you can add a Wifi dongle, which will be slower. All G4s had USB1 (max. of arround 10MB/s).
You can add any PC-Card with USB2 that has a NEC chip on it (the black squares on the green, red, yellow or blue plastic board. It will say "NEC" or "VIA" or something different) and then put a wifi dongle in it.
But cable is preferred.

I want to connect my "NAS" to the WiFi router via ethernet. I just don't want anything else to have to be wired.

Use a max of 2TB for every single Drive (connected to SATA-PCI) and for the IDE BUS I would not go above 1TB (actually even only 500GB to be save). 3TB drives work sometimes, but are peachy, you can loose your data.

I don't think I can even find an IDE drive that large. I looked the other day and they were all pretty small.

just to be save keep away from green (WD) or LP (Seagate) drives, these are the ones with 5400rpm and 5900rpm, there are reports they have problems awaking from sleep (you have to restart your Mac everytime). For very new WD drives do not forget to adjust the Pins from SATA III to SATA II.

Is this due an incompatibility with Mac because a Windows friend primarily uses green WD drives in all his machines, including his RAID, and just recommended them.

This sounding trickier and trickier.

Also where I live (Germany) Seagate is known as the hughest supplier for HDDs in discounter PCs (Aldi with its fake brand medion) and cheap harddrive cases, home-hdd-recorders, that needs a hard drive to be sold better.

Interesting. Do you know if Seagate make different drives for the US vs the EU? I know that with some food products different versions are distributed in the US and the EU. Though the EU usually gets the better quality, but people in Europe tend to be more educated, concerned, and aware of what's their viid than Americans. My best friend is German. 🙂

You also do not need a fancy graphics card in a server, so stick with the one you have unless it has a fan. Then you can swap it for one that is passively cooled (no fan).

I was thinking I might even be able to pull it out because I want to run the NAS headless. I don't have a standalone monitor.

Btw. I tested the power consumption, this is why I say this.

Do you know if power consumption would be similar if using PC components rather than a G4 MDD?

----------------------------

PS: SuperDuper is ok for bootable backups, too, do not know, if someone mentioned.

I actually may have it on my older MBP because I know I have used it before. When I recently did some research comparing it to CCC, more people recommended CCC, so that's why I was thinking I'd go that direction.

I also think it will not be very funny to watch bigger h.264 movies via ethernet from you PowerMac to your HD-TV. But I do not do this.

You think this won't work well? Too slow? What I do now is connect a portable drive to my MBP and use an app (PS3 Media Server) to access the media through my PS3 to watch on my HDTV. It's a little confusing.

I have a satellite receiver for 50,-EUR were I can connect an external USB Hard Drive and watch movies from, the CPU in that receiver is more capable for h.264-HD than a Mac CPU and it is not even an expensive one. (I can even copy DVDs to the dirve and it will play the movies of the DVD without altering them).

Also you will not have the server running all the time and consume Watts, just for Dirves that sit arround waiting til you want to watch movies.

Not for movies, no. I guess I hadn't really considered that. I just figured it would be on all the time like my computers. I do download large files overnight that would slow down my internet connection during the day when I'm sleeping, and those files would go on the RAID/JBOD or whatever it ends up being.

If you want to save energy costs:
get yourself a couple of external drives.
One for bootable OS backups (If you want to have several backups sitting on the same disk you either need to partition it before use or make several folders). - and a second for movies, which you keep in your living room, e.g.. Maybe a third for music. Then you can power them up everytime you need something. (oh and a third for file backups, which are not the OS itself, like software you want to keep).

This is more or less what I do now. The problem is that if I have to actually remember to attach a drive to backup, I don't do it frequently enough, which concerns me. I end up having a stack of portable hard drives and have to remember what is where. When it recently got to the point that I had filled up several 500 GB externals, and continue to need more space, I decided there had to be a better option.

You may want to do the math of energy costs, but if you are a PowerPC-o-phile then the hobby is maybe more value than your electricity bill. 🙂

OMG. I hate to fulfill the typical female stereotype but I SUCK at math and figuring those sorts of things out. I still haven't been able to make a real comparison of what my different NAS options would actually cost as opposed to just having a general idea.

At least, I'm pretty good with computers and other electronics so I'm not a total girl. 😛

I am not a PowerPC-o-phile at all. The first plan was to build a NAS using PC components until I determined the OS my friend recommended wasn't Mac-friendly. Then we hit upon the Power Mac idea. However, it seems like that may be way too expensive because components are more difficult to find and much more expensive than PC crap.

Don't get me wrong. I never want to go back to Windows, but I don't hate the PC components themselves. I also think FreeNAS looks like a very good OS option and it is Mac-compatible.

 

[Cox Orange]

Are you saying I do not need to flash the card? The problem with flashing is that I do not have access to a Windows machine. If it came down to it, a friend of mine could do it for me, but he would then have to ship the card to me. He lives 8 hours away by car.

You do not need to flash those SATA or IDE "PC"-cards that have the Silicone Image Chip 3124 (written on the card SIL3124) soldered to it. The list of cards that have this is under the link I provided above. So, yes, you do not have to flash them at all. Just install the drivers.
There is one shortcoming though: on my PowerMac G4 with a 100MHz FSB (a PowerMac G4 "AGP" Sawtooth), when I watch a movie in iMovie (for cutting it) or in QT it sometimes stutters, then looses sound and than plays in double speed. Also, if a video is playing smooth, and I click on the "speaker" symbol, to make it louder the "pop" sound sometimes gets delayed. I suspect it is because of the BUS. The Card I have is a 64bit card, so I have the full 62MB/s possible on PCI (in real life), maybe that is too much to handle. It is like there is to much data, that the hole (the 100MHz FSB) is to thin for to pass them at the right time. But it might be I have not already found the best driver for it. Just a wild guess, I am not pro on that subject.
If it is a 32bit card, you might not have the problems. There are other Silicon Image chips that work and Marvell chips. Just look through the list behind the link.

Yes, the power consumption concerns me. Though the server will be in the other room, it will be on the other side of the wall from my bed. My apartment is small and the walls are not very thick.

Then the MDD might be to loud (behind a thin wall) or you invest in cooling mods, but then again, this might cause you headache. 🙂 (they go from just using more modern and slower fans to modifying the case itself).

So, for Power consumption and noise an older Mac Laptop is still a good idea (maybe ibook, the Powerbooks are more consuming). You could still connect multiple dual-bay or 4bay HDD-cases (or - well, a NAS 😉) to the Firewire and USB ports.
I am talking about this NAS "Inxtron Hydra" http://www.inxtron.com/ there are a lot people that like these (in German Mac Forums) I had the older Hydra version, but wasn't happy with it due to limited support in Tiger. It can be had used for 100,-EUR (a MDD 2x1,25GHz costs 100,-EUR here, too and one has to get the SATA-cards, still). Did you look on Ebay or Craigslist for used mac-compatible NASes and what the prices are?

I don't think I can even find an IDE drive that large. I looked the other day and they were all pretty small.

Sorry, I was thinking of SATA to IDE adapters used. The biggest IDE drives ever available were 500GB and there was one 750GB IDE model that was produced by Seagate, they go for ridiculous high prices (used!), while you can have bigger SATA drives for the same price (at least here 😉).

What I was talking about, when I said on the IDE BUS stick to not more than 1TB, better 500GB, was: if you take a SATA HDD and use an adapter like this http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTsL7sh-4tnhd7jsTfYzPNQGayKSXYNpklH7Yqz7pdrkyXKrJ_-u2kCaEpt
and connect it to the IDE BUS, instead of using a IDE-HDD or a SATA-PCI-card.

Is this due an incompatibility with Mac because a Windows friend primarily uses green WD drives in all his machines, including his RAID, and just recommended them.

This sounding trickier and trickier.

Yes for PC-RAIDs (or as marketing says the WD red edition), though Green drives have a shorter life (because they get spinned up and down and parking heads so often), they are preferred by many PC-users (for energy saving reasons). Though the WD Caviar Blue is not much energy hungrier and almost as fast as a WD black, but they are more quiet.

In PowerPC Macs there are the problems, as I said, that these drives won't wake up from sleep (without restarting the whole machine) and that somehow takes away the advantage, because the green drives ar emade to often "sleep" (spin down and park heads, after a very short time of not accessing them) and just wake up, when needed. Why? I can only speculate. But you are save to avoid them, the same for SATA-III drives, though not all have problems (also some users have a good experience with green drives. It seems all Macs behave differently).

Interesting. Do you know if Seagate make different drives for the US vs the EU? I know that with some food products different versions are distributed in the US and the EU. Though the EU usually gets the better quality, but people in Europe tend to be more educated, concerned, and aware of what's their viid than Americans. My best friend is German. 🙂

I don't know, really, but I wouldn't think so. They just have the biggest margin, because the sell so much to OEM and so they can lower the price. (Also, these days they are saving on development costs, as I described above).
But as always, there are other people that are totally satisfied with these drives. A french seller kept record of failing rates of drives he sold and he found out, that WD, Samsung (when they were still around) and Seagate (Toshiba had only 2,5" drives at the time) had 0,01%-0,02% dying drives per user, while Hitachi had 0,03% per user. Statistically. That is not much. The problem here is not actually the failing rates, but the compatibility. It seems that Seagate drives are sometimes problematic in Macs, while Hitachi and older WDs are great. Was it this thread, where I talked about the xlr8yourmac HDD review database? I also have my own experiences with incompatible Seagate dirves in my G4 "AGP".

I was thinking I might even be able to pull it out because I want to run the NAS headless. I don't have a standalone monitor.

Ah, forgot. OK.

Do you know if power consumption would be similar if using PC components rather than a G4 MDD?

I do not know, but I guess, so.
Well at least it should be possible to built a HTPC with 50W max.
Also you could by these mATX CPUs like the Intell Atom, but these are more expensive (maybe you find a cheap used one).

Why not just male a list of parts, you need and compare the prices.

----------------------------

I actually may have it on my older MBP because I know I have used it before. When I recently did some research comparing it to CCC, more people recommended CCC, so that's why I was thinking I'd go that direction.

Today CCC is not freeware anymore, I think. Though incremential backup-option costs on both. CCC is more known, I think. Also CCC copys all files, while Super Duper claims they "leave the files Apple recommends to omit". Super Duper also defragments while copying, I do not know if CCC does this. (Though people say, you should not do defragmentation on an Apple drive, because the OS does it itself and those files that keep spread are good so... Hm, I don't know).

You think this [HD-content on Mac] won't work well? Too slow? What I do now is connect a portable drive to my MBP and use an app (PS3 Media Server) to access the media through my PS3 to watch on my HDTV. It's a little confusing.

On PowerPC-Macs, because they are not good at h.264, but then again, if you are streaming them and maybe using XMBC it might not be that of a problem. I am not an expert here. You may pass that question on to someone more capable than me. (or is it than I?).

Not for movies, no. I guess I hadn't really considered that. I just figured it would be on all the time like my computers. I do download large files overnight that would slow down my internet connection during the day when I'm sleeping, and those files would go on the RAID/JBOD or whatever it ends up being.

Ah, OK.

This is more or less what I do now. The problem is that if I have to actually remember to attach a drive to backup, I don't do it frequently enough, which concerns me. I end up having a stack of portable hard drives and have to remember what is where. When it recently got to the point that I had filled up several 500 GB externals, and continue to need more space, I decided there had to be a better option.

Make labels/stickers on them, with purpose names? Also, you could still sell the 500GB drives and put bigger ones in the cases, as long as these cases are not bricked.

OMG. I hate to fulfill the typical female stereotype but I SUCK at math and figuring those sorts of things out. I still haven't been able to make a real comparison of what my different NAS options would actually cost as opposed to just having a general idea.

At least, I'm pretty good with computers and other electronics so I'm not a total girl. 😛

I am not good at math, at all, either! Cancelled my economy studies at university, because of this 😉

I am not a PowerPC-o-phile at all. The first plan was to build a NAS using PC components until I determined the OS my friend recommended wasn't Mac-friendly. Then we hit upon the Power Mac idea. However, it seems like that may be way too expensive because components are more difficult to find and much more expensive than PC crap.

Don't get me wrong. I never want to go back to Windows, but I don't hate the PC components themselves. I also think FreeNAS looks like a very good OS option and it is Mac-compatible.

Well, sad to say, but the PC-route may be the better way to go (maybe with Linux, if you want to have the Mac feel - there are some that look very similar to OS X now).- or, if you really want to go the PowerPC road, then, it's the ibook (during sleep, it only draws 2,5W).

I had the idea of putting an ibook mainboard into a box and use the external display-out (instead of the display), which would result in half of the size of a 12" ibook (14" ibook logic boards have the same size, but they are made incompatible, so one can't put them in a 12" ibook case. Oh you, Apple!), but then I thought, well this is actually a mac mini... I do not know, how much more mac minis to consume, though.

PS:

I have a satellite receiver for 50,-EUR were I can connect an external USB Hard Drive and watch movies from, the CPU in that receiver is more capable for h.264-HD than a Mac CPU and it is not even an expensive one. (I can even copy DVDs to the dirve and it will play the movies of the DVD without altering them).

- that should read "more capable than PowerPC-Mac CPUs"

 

[SharkGirl]

What do you think of this idea?

Did you look on Ebay or Craigslist for used mac-compatible NASes and what the prices are?

Not really because the only one I have found so far that seems to have positive reviews Is Synology, which is well out of my price range. Someone also recommended HO ProLiant but it's also expensive.

(also some users have a good experience with green drives. It seems all Macs behave differently).

Sometimes Apple can be very difficult. .

Well at least it should be possible to built a HTPC with 50W max.
Also you could by these mATX CPUs like the Intell Atom, but these are more expensive (maybe you find a cheap used one).

Why not just male a list of parts, you need and compare the prices.

----------------------------
HTPC?

My Windows friend keeps pushing for me to but an old PC for less than $50 US, add a SATA card if there aren't enough ports on the motherboard, slap in some WD Green drives and call it a day. He also votes for RAID, via FreeNAS because the app he uses isn't Mac-friendly, but I'm still uncertain. I'm cool with FreeNAS but not sure yet about RAID.

Today CCC is not freeware anymore, I think. Though incremential backup-option costs on both. CCC is more known, I think. Also CCC copys all files, while Super Duper claims they "leave the files Apple recommends to omit". Super Duper also defragments while copying, I do not know if CCC does this. (Though people say, you should not do defragmentation on an Apple drive, because the OS does it itself and those files that keep spread are good so... Hm, I don't know).

CCC is no longer freeware but I have an older version that may or may not be compatible. Haven't tried it with Mavericks yet. Interesting. It took me a long time to get used to not having to defrag my hard drive regularly when I switched to Mac.

On PowerPC-Macs, because they are not good at h.264, but then again, if you are streaming them and maybe using XMBC it might not be that of a problem. I am not an expert here. You may pass that question on to someone more capable than me. (or is it than I?).

Coming to the conclusion that Power Macs don't have what I need to do what I want. You are correct. It is "than me". 🙂

Make labels/stickers on them, with purpose names? Also, you could still sell the 500GB drives and put bigger ones in the cases, as long as these cases are not bricked.

Yes, they are all labeled. I am very organized when it comes to my computers. It's just that some have backups of backups. I keep two copies of very important, irreplaceable files, like photos. The only way to easily keep track of where certain things are would be by making a list/spreadsheet. Which I would do on the computer and then have to backup to one of the drives. 😛

I'm not sure I can swap out the drives because they are portables, but I can look into it.

Well, sad to say, but the PC-route may be the better way to go (maybe with Linux, if you want to have the Mac feel - there are some that look very similar to OS X now).- or, if you really want to go the PowerPC road, then, it's the ibook (during sleep, it only draws 2,5W).

For some reason it's almost painful to admit that a PC might be better than a Mac. If I go this route I definitely need to run FreeNAS because its Mac compatible and looks easier to learn than Linux.

What about this?
My building manager has built several machines using Mac Pros. They have the power and space for a lot of drives. They are already SATA, which makes that part easy. Then I can run either OS X or FreeNAS. The issue is that it must be intel-based, not a Mac Pro G5, and it looks like finding a cheap one with a working motherboard is going to be tough.

 

[Cox Orange]

Answers following "--->...<---"

Not really because the only one I have found so far that seems to have positive reviews Is Synology, which is well out of my price range. Someone also recommended HO ProLiant but it's also expensive.
---> Yes, Synology has a very good standing, but still expensive for someone searching for normal home-use. I do not know how low prices can go on used ones in the US.
Try, if the fellow Americans here can point you to cheap Mac-compatible one, that can be had used for a small price. If not, than maybe scrap that idea and built your own PC-NAS.<---


Sometimes Apple can be very difficult. .
--->sometimes, within the same model, when Apple had rest supplies of chips from the older series they used them for the newer ones, for a short time, which results in different behaviour for the same named model (example Quicksilver 2002 model, one can access up to 128GB on IDE natively, the other can do over 128GB. You can only devide them by looking inside them and look what partnumber one finds on the logic board.<---


HTPC?
---> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTPC <---

My Windows friend keeps pushing for me to but an old PC for less than $50 US, add a SATA card if there aren't enough ports on the motherboard, slap in some WD Green drives and call it a day. He also votes for RAID, via FreeNAS because the app he uses isn't Mac-friendly, but I'm still uncertain. I'm cool with FreeNAS but not sure yet about RAID.
---> I am a bit angsty on RAID, because I fear loosing data still, even, if I set them to redundancy. Which is why I have two seperate HDD-cases with one drive each. Everytime I alter something, I do that to the other, too.
To save time, I collect some things on my Mac in a folder and then from time to time copy that folder to the two external drives. Well, it is actually a bit annoying, if I think about it. 😱 <---



Yes, they are all labeled. I am very organized when it comes to my computers. It's just that some have backups of backups. I keep two copies of very important, irreplaceable files, like photos. The only way to easily keep track of where certain things are would be by making a list/spreadsheet. Which I would do on the computer and then have to backup to one of the drives. 😛
---> I also have folders on some drives that have the name of the other drive's serialnumber (for similar drives, if I have a WD drive with a folder that keeps the content I have on another drive that is itself a Samsung one, the folder is called "Samsung 2TB"). So I know, on what other drive the content in this folder can be found. But that's still not very comfortable solution, as you say, too. <----



For some reason it's almost painful to admit that a PC might be better than a Mac. If I go this route I definitely need to run FreeNAS because its Mac compatible and looks easier to learn than Linux.
---> why not ask in a PC forum, if they have recommendations for good parts, that you can throw together to built your own NAS/HTPC with the aim of low power consumption. (I guess there will be people who do these types of builds very often) <---

What about this?
My building manager has built several machines using Mac Pros. They have the power and space for a lot of drives. They are already SATA, which makes that part easy. Then I can run either OS X or FreeNAS. The issue is that it must be intel-based, not a Mac Pro G5, and it looks like finding a cheap one with a working motherboard is going to be tough.

---> MacPro = power hungry. I mean, it's a workstation. <---

 

[SharkGirl]

Still looking but it seems even used Synology pre-built NAS are very expensive and I'm not sure it's worth the cost. Then again, building a PC NAS could end up being trickier than it sounds. Still seems I may be heading in that direction due to cost.

I've read SO many negative things about RAID and people say over and over "it is NOT a backup solution". My #1 need is backup, #2 is storage, and #3 is an informal HTPC. (I actually had the brilliant idea of looking that up after stupidly asking the question. They look great but not enough on their own, I think.)

Again, my Windows friend looooves RAID. Except that he uses an OS called unRAID that allows him flexibility a typical RAID array does not. It is not Mac-compatible. The closest thing is FreeNAS or NAS4Free, which are both based on FreeBSD, which is ZFS. Still not totally clear on ZFS, but I'm not sure how much I need to understand beyond learning a Mac-compatible ZFS system. It's not like I understand HFS or AFP either. I just know those are formats Apple uses.

I like the features FreeNAS offers and it seems to suit my needs. I also love freeware. 😉 It may have a redundant non-RAID option like unRAID does. I read somewhere that the structure of ZFS actually makes files more stable and less likely to be corrupted than RAID. There was an explanation for why...

Ah, it's here:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1690327/

---Quote (Originally by jdechko)---
However, RAID isn't a cure-all. *Data corruption can get duplicated across multiple hard drives*, and by itself RAID does nothing to prevent data loss when the user intentionally deletes a file. Simply "having a RAID array" isn't magic.

---End Quote---

This is one of the strong points of the ZFS filesystem, is that it tracks all data consistency with a hierarchy of checksums. When used with ECC memory like in the Mac Pro, this can even help protect your data from cosmic radiation. While I did like performance of the RAID system it offered, keeping my bits in order was a big selling point for me.

Even my music which is on a single dedicated SSD still uses ZFS because of the inherent data corruption protection of the system.

I am reading up on NAS/HTPC and how people have built them. Eventually I will run into a good PC forum where I can ask questions. It's very weird to read some of these dissuasions. It has been so long since I have used PC and even longer since having used a desktop that I constantly have too look things up. It's almost like reading a different language. 😛

MacPro = power hungry. I mean, it's a workstation.

Excellent point. Though the cases are beautiful and it seems to be an easy solution, a Mac Pro offers far more power than I need. I love the expandability and long life they have, I'm not sure I can find an affordable Intel-based Mac Pro.