NAS with a OSX and XP small office network

[Bibulous]

I have a need to share small files (>8mb) between a desktop running XP, a powerbook and an iMac, both 10.4.9. Currently I have a shared folder on the XP desktop that I connect to with Finder and it works well.

However I would like to use an extra 250GB SATA drive I have around as an external always on network drive. My network is cable modem -> 10/100 router -> desktop and an Airport Express. Then from the AE -> powerbook and iMac.

Can I add this external drive via ethernet to the router? Looking around there seems to be some options, by I am confused if they work with mixed networks? MacAlly makes one I think, but not sure if it will work with XP.

 

[Bibulous]

bump

nobody else using a NAS on a mixed network

 

[alFR]

Depends - does the drive have an ethernet port already? If not, you're going to have to buy some sort of device to link it to your network. If you aren't going to be transferring big files, a Linksys NSLU2 or equivalent might be just the ticket - you can plug the external drive into it via USB and it will serve it via SMB across your network. It formats the drive as ext3 or as NTFS depending on what you choose. For big files/lots of data the NSLU2 can be a bit slow though: it's not the fastest device in itself and it's only 100Mb ethernet. Cheap, low power and silent though and hackable.

 

[Sesshi]

The NSLU has pathetic throughput. Avoid.

The Thecus N2100 is not bad. Performance is decent for a low-end NAS, takes two drives and it has an interesting iTunes-sharing capability (it parses the music folder and presents it as an iTunes shared library). The QNAP TS-101 does have better performance than the NSLU and is silent (apart from the drive). I don't like it as much as the Thecus though, although the N2100 has a fan.