I'm thinking of picking up a used 1.25GHz G4 mini to use as a headless file server. I'd like to attach 2TB in external drives to it and serve via NFS to a WDTV media streamer. If it can handle it I'd also like to set it up with Connect360 to serve photos etc to my xbox360. I'll probably use it as a itunes and print server as well. I'd like to control it from my MBP with some sort of remote desktop.

Is there any reason that jumps out why this won't work?

I have been wondering this as well. I'd like to move the drive(s) that I'm storing my video on from my G5 to an always on network source.(According to my Kill-A-Watt, I'm paying about $20 a month just to run my G5!) I have looked at some NAS devices but I'm not sure they would be fast enough. Does anyone have advice on NAS vs a Mini with attached storage? Would they need to be FW 800/400 or USB? How old of a Mini is too old? Would there be disadvantages of PPC machine? It seems like this would be a topic worthy of suggesting minimum standards.

Thanks!

Brad

Files servers require very little CPU horsepower. I use a 1.42GHz G4 Mini as a MythTV backend + fileserver box. When I'm streaming HD content, while also recording 2 incoming HD streams, the CPU load is almost zero.

Years ago I used a G4 Cube as the NFS file server for a MyHD-based HTPC, and that clocked in at a whopping 450MHz. On the Mini, I'm running Ubuntu Linux.. On the old Cube I was running Mac OS X and neither had any performance issues.

My one knock on the G4 as a file server is the 100Mbps NIC. It would be nice to have gigabit when copying huge files between systems. But, in normal operations streaming HD content the 100Mbps is not an issue.

Another alternative, which I also use, is the VIA Artigo A2000 barebones NAS running FreeNAS software.

Thanks for the reply!

My G4 actually has GigE and I could get either internal or external SATA cards for it. I've also hacked leopard onto it along with installing 2 GB of ram. Running the Kill-A-Watt overnight showed a cost of $6 a month at idle. Maybe I should give it a try. Knowing that 10.5 is the last OS it can take, I wonder how long it will be before leopard gets long in the tooth. I wish there was a way to get eSATA on a Mini and that would probably be my solution.

I am interested in learning more about the VIA Artigo A2000 bare bones NAS though. Is FreeNAS easy to work with? -I'm only a pseudo-techie. And can you get GigE with it? I read in one of their forums that it was not supported with FreeNAS.

Thanks!

The A2000 has a Gig-E NIC. I think earlier versions of Linux/BSD only worked at 100Mbps. But, the current FreeNAS release supports gigabit on the A2000.

FreeNAS is not what I would call simple to work with, but it's also not terrible. There are enough "HowTo" documents to walk you through common uses. But, if you're looking for an easier option, one of the pre-built NAS's may be a better option.