For many years I have used Linux and SAMBA to share files across my home network. I had this beast of an old AMD Athlon CPU machine with a 650W power supply droning away in my basement with 6 hard drives giving me a bout 400GB of nearly worry free storage. Back then, my network consisted of one Apple iMac and three Windows XP boxes all tied together and sharing files via SAMBA. Everything was pretty great, then we started buying more Apple computers, and eventually had two Mac Minis and a 15″ MacBook Pro. We gave away our old iMac and all the old Windows boxes except for one XP box. We held on to the Linux server until the MacBook Pro arrived.
Issues started to rise when the new MacBook Pro came that came with Leopard (OSX 10.5.6) installed did not readily work with SAMBA and since we decided to upgrade the Mac Minis Leopard, the end result was a bipolar network again where Windows saw the share easily to our old Linux server and the Apple Leopard systems did not. I really wanted everything to work easily and together again, so I thought it was time to ditch the Linux box and use the oldest Mac Mini as the file server. This was not my first option, before I tried out the mini, Apple marketing drew me into the latest and greatest Airport Extreme saying I could attach a USB drive to it and share files. That was a flop. They wanted me to add more software to my Windows box (Bonjour) and then it would see the USB drive on the Airport long with all the Macs in the house. This option was miserable half the time no computer, Mac or Windows, could see the Airport USB share. Fool me once Apple… OK fool me alot besuae I am still buying your stuff.
The only benefit to this Airport Extreme mistake was that I had a nice new Western Digital MyBook with 500GB of storage and a very quite basement with the old Linux server turned off. This got me thinking, I like quite. I was not using the oldest Mac Mini much any more so lets stick the USB drive on the Mac Mini and share it via SAMBA again. That ended up being a flop. I wanted easy. Instead, I got all the data on the Mac Mini being visible to everyone on the network I did not want that. I also did not want to hassle with the smb.conf file. So I eased back into whatever the default sharing for Apple wanted. (System Preferences > Sharing > File Sharing) I then loaded Bonjuor (Grumble grumble…) to the Windows XP machine. I am pretty OK with how things on the network work now.
The green part is that I use a Mac Mini that is ON all the time at ~75W instead of 650W. It has an old LCD monitor which is off all the time. I have two Western Digital 500GB MyBooks, one fire wire eSATA USB and one just USB. The MyBook with all the extra ports is also our digital photo storage since it has enough different ways to connect in case USB and Fire Wire are not available in the future. Anyway, I also added a 1TB Mybook to use with Time Machine. It backs up the mini (80GB) and all the USB drives attached we only have 400GB total I just spread it out across the two drives. All those MyBook USB Drives go to sleep when they are not being used., which also lowers power consumption a bit. I know, Apple recommends the Mac Mini not be left ON all the time, because it uses a laptop hard drive. If the Mac Mini pukes out, it is only $600 and some change, to quickly replace the it at the local Best Buy, or a hundred bucks and some change for some putty knives and a new hard drive to slowly fix it. With Time Machine, I no longer fear the loss of the server anymore. The whole thing is pretty simple to manage inside OX 10.5.6, I access the server via built in VNC, on those days that I have to check for updates or mess around. The file sharing is not fast, but is very stable. The weakness of OS 10.5 is the wireless, it seems to shut off even if the machine is on all the time, my solution was to connect the Mac Mini directly to the Air Port Extreme with an RJ45 connector (network cabling CAT5e) and now the system shares are always available. I am very happy with this setup.
My old Linux box has been unplugged and is about to be donated. I feel a bit greener too.
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