tray Posted February 8, 2007 Share Posted February 8, 2007 Fellow Mac users, I have an Intel iMac (late 2006 edition) 2.16C2D that comes with the standard 250GB HDD. Because I am using an iMac, the non user-upgradability forces one to resort to external drive solutions. In the past, when my storage requirements were lower, 1 or 2 enclosures each housing a single drive would suffice. However, I realized that as my storage needs grew, I could not continually add more drives via enclosures each housing an individual drive. I wondered, what if I got an old Mac tower with Gigabit ethernet. I checked that PowerMac G4s released since July 2000 come with Gigabit Ethernet! I would slot in the HDDs then connect it to my Mac via an ethernet cable. Correct me if I am wrong, but the transfer speeds would even be faster than FW800! However, this is different from a ‘pure’ external storage solution, I think. Currently, I am able to mount external drives connected from my Mac (formatted in HFS+) from other Macs via administrator privileges in the household wireless network with AFP. Can I still mount the drives from the old Mac tower connected to my iMac from another Mac in the household? I think they can’t because the Mac in the household and my iMac are connected via the wireless network but the iMac and the old Mac tower are connected via their own small LAN? Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
munky Posted February 8, 2007 Share Posted February 8, 2007 the bottleneck would be the interface the old mac uses to its hard disks. plus, gigE doesnt necessarily run at 1000mbps - thats just the theoretical peak performance level, just as 54mbps wifi doesnt actually give you 54mbps througput most of the time. then again, you could just buy a FW800 enclosure and be done with it Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sandmanfvrga Posted February 9, 2007 Share Posted February 9, 2007 Like he said, firewire. USB 2.0 is ok, but if you really use it alot, firewire. Don't need a big machine for storage. Plus save space. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
errandwolfe Posted February 9, 2007 Share Posted February 9, 2007 I have seen multi-drive enclosures for both Firewire and USB 2. There was one I saw a few weeks ago that would hold up to 10 3.5" drives. Most of the enclosures I have seen like this have a minimal linux on them that creates a RAID configuration so all drives are treated as a single volume. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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