Comments on: G4 NAS Drive part 1

By: G4 NAS drive MK3 :: Know Tech

G4 NAS drive MK3 :: Know Tech — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 16:10:45 +0000

[...] Mark Three is the last of version of the G4 NAS Drive project. the idea started back in the day when the readyNAS hit the scene. it was the first of the [...]

By: Flocon d'Avoine

Flocon d'Avoine — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 17:28:57 +0000

Wow, it is what I was looking for! I just purchased a SATA card and 2 1TB HD. I am waiting for everything now. This page seems to be very good. Hope it will be very helpfull for me. I will follow up.

By: Using an Old Power Mac as a File Server : Stephen’s Personal Blog

Using an Old Power Mac as a File Server : Stephen’s Personal Blog — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 01:43:14 +0000

[...] G4 NAS Drive [...]

By: Damon McMahon

Damon McMahon — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 09:24:32 +0000

Great show, and this is precisely what I’ve done on the Digital Audio G4 serving our small business network.

Note that one can create a $0 solution for regular monitoring of your software RAID on MacOS X 10.4 Server using ‘diskutil checkraid’ in your daily maintenance script. Provided you have configured periodic(8) to direct the output of your maintenance scripts to email you will receive a daily report on your RAID status in your inbox.

Not quite real-time monitoring but adequate for most ‘G4 NAS’ applications I would think.

By: There are geeks, then there are Geeks

There are geeks, then there are Geeks — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 15:24:04 +0000

[...] 25 per show, and the geekier the show, the more comments! Take, for instance, the show where they turned an old G4 Power Mac into a NAS drive (a long standing request of mine). How geeky is that? It got 25 comments! You have to be a hardcore [...]

By: Frederik

Frederik — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 00:44:19 +0000

I have a comment and a question:

Comment: I’ve been using SoftRAID (softraid.com) for a few years now, and it’s really nice. It lets you create software RAIDs out of standard volumes without having to re-format (though backing up is always recommended), lets you create a RAID with different-sized drives (and use the leftover space on the larger drive for another non-RAID volume, or even a RAID volume paired with another drive), and even lets you RAID your startup volume. I was also pleased to see that the driver is built in to Leopard (though without the app, you can’t create new RAIDs). It also pops up error dialogs whenever any errors occur on any RAID volumes. Definitely something to consider.

Question: Somewhat in line with Duncan’s comment, I was wondering if you had any notion of which would consume less power: a G4 box with all internal drives (like you built), or a Mac Mini with a pair of external FireWire drives. I was thinking of retiring my old B&W G3 (upgraded long ago to a 500MHz G4) in favor of the Mini, since the G3 box undoubtedly draws more power than the Mini. But I’m wondering if the 2 power supplies for the external drives will end up drawing more power overall.

Thanks in advance for your feedback.

By: Marius

Marius — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 21:18:38 +0000

BTW: Software RAID also works under Mac OS X 10.3. I have a Quicksilver that has had a pair of 120GB PATA drives on a PCI ATA 133 card configured as RAID 1 since day one. The machine is no longer providing my backup service, since the drives are nearly stuffed (I now use a 750GB RAID 1 setup in my Mac Pro…), but the machine still runs as my 10.3 compile box. The interesting thing is that the RAID drives spin up too slowly for the OS, which gives me an alert asking me to either eject, format or ignore the logical drive. If I choose ignore everything mounts and works correctly…

One tech note: Be careful to update your computer to the highest version of Mac OS X possible before setting up the Software RAID. A RAID formated under 10.3 will not mount under 10.4. Likewise a RAID formated under 10.4 will not mount under 10.5. My Quicksilver is frozen into 10.3, as my Mac Pro is on 10.4. Obviously, you can back up the contents of the RAID, upgrade the OS, reformat the RAID, and then restore the data from the external back-up.

By: JimFelder

JimFelder — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 19:45:12 +0000

going to connect the G4 via the VGA on my current monitor. Then I just have to switch the source on the monitor. Also have my Xbox 360 Elite connected to it.

By: JimFelder

JimFelder — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 19:43:51 +0000

I have an old G4 that I am pondering this idea.
What benefits are there to setting this up as a file server other than just buying another external hard drive. Would there be other things I could use it for if I just use OSX Tiger?

Thanks, great episode.

By: macbreaktech

macbreaktech — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 02:37:26 +0000

a G3 running Tiger will do this job. it will work using the steps outlined during out talk. the difference will be that the space for drives is slightly different. also, you may want to consider larger drives. 200GB isn’t that big a drive when it’s filled with media. remember that I picked a G4 because I had one that was retired and that it had Gigabit Ethernet in it. You can always add a GigE card for cheap.