Does a home-made network attached storage device work with Mac OSX?

Question

I have an old PC I want to turn into a network storage device.

The reason I want to do this is because I have lots of hds, both external and internal. On my OSX laptop my USB ports start to complain (overheat) if I plug too many devices in and this has let to lots of data loss.

Can I keep all my data together in a NAS, but still have Mac able to access everything like iTunes library . Time Machine Backups etc..?

Answer 1

I would suggest you use LINUX and something like FreeNAS

http://www.freenas.org/



That will allow ANY Mac or Windows or Linux machine to access the drive. Even can set your restrictions for users if needed. Great way to setup a very quick NAS with very small OS!

Answer 2

No. It's a file server. With frequent backups. But what's in a name? Does it do what you want at a price you're happy with? Then it's probably a good solution. (Though I think the constant backups may kill performance. I probably wouldn't do backup more often than every 5 minutes or so).

Answer 3

Yes you can but it depends on a whether the NAS supports file system format that the MAC understands. NTFS can be read by the MAC but you can't write to it, and the FAT32 can be used but I have seen problems with using it with MACs. Make sure the PC is formatted with FAT32 if you want the MAC to read and write to it.

Answer 4

yes it will work, your'e going the right way about it^^ beat me to it