Music studio NAS

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GJSNeptune

[H]F Junkie
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My brother works at a studio, and he wants to set up a file server over a network between his Mac and the owner's Windows machine. It'd basically be a scratch dive for uploading project files instead of burning discs to get the files to the other machine. He doesn't seem to want backups, as he's satisfied with keeping the original data on the individual machines. I can probably convince him to go with RAID 1, so I'm thinking a solution with two WD6400AAKS drives.

The question is, should I recommend a NAS solution (with or without disks), or build one myself? And which one would you recommend? Buffalo or Hammer?
 
I don't see why you would have to build a NAS.

Just share the folder you're going to be uploading from/to:
Select the "Apple" menu (the icon at the top left of screen) and click the "System Preferences" menu item.
When the system preferences window appears, select the "view" menu at the top of the screen and select "Sharing".
In the "Services" tab of the "Sharing" window select the option "Windows File Sharing".

or NFS.
 
I want to convince him that he needs to backup the data. He has a Mac G4. It's pretty old. Actually both machines are dated. I really think a RAID 1 NAS would be a good idea for the studio.

Do NAS solutions come with automatic backup functionality, or would it need something like WHS? Does WHS support automatic backups for Macs?
 
have the windows machine share a folder, on the mac finder > cmd & k > smb://windowsmachine/share
 
I think you need two separate things going on here.
First, you need to set up folder sharing on one or both machines, so that your brother can transfer files as he's requested. Share a folder on the windows machine, he should be able to drag and drop from the Mac with no problems.

Secondly, if he's doing this as his business, he should definitely have a backup, probably more than one. Easiest way is getting a pair of external drives and backing up each machine to them. Even better is getting an extra set to keep off site (owner's house or wherever). Rotate each week. If he doesn't think he needs backups, ask him how much time and money he's lose if one of the machines had a hard drive failure.

When you can get 1TB drives for $140, there's no reason to not have a solid backup solution, particularly for data that's important to his business.
 
The studio doesn't currently have an Internet connection, and the machines are in separate rooms. I suppose some long crossover cables would suffice, but I doubt they'd want cables running through the hallway and rooms. I'm going to push the NAS hard.
 
The Hunter said:
I think you need two separate things going on here.
First, you need to set up folder sharing on one or both machines, so that your brother can transfer files as he's requested. Share a folder on the windows machine, he should be able to drag and drop from the Mac with no problems.

Secondly, if he's doing this as his business, he should definitely have a backup, probably more than one. Easiest way is getting a pair of external drives and backing up each machine to them. Even better is getting an extra set to keep off site (owner's house or wherever). Rotate each week. If he doesn't think he needs backups, ask him how much time and money he's lose if one of the machines had a hard drive failure.

When you can get 1TB drives for $140, there's no reason to not have a solid backup solution, particularly for data that's important to his business.
Click to expand...
Horrible advice. An external HARD DRIVE is probably the most likely device to fail. I agree, backups should not even be questioned, but backing up to another hard drive (and an external one at that) is a bad idea.
 
Well the studio isn't even wired for Internet. It has wireless Internet for the non-studio machines, so my brother wants to wire Cat5 to the machines to create a network. He wants to set up his G4 so that its hard drive automatically shows up in all of the other machines (owner's Windows computer, brother's G5). I have little experience with Macs, so is it plug-n-play and/or a matter of sharing settings and permissions?

Basically he wants the file server to show up as another system drive, like in the list of drives under My Computer in Windows.
 
Here's an update. He wants to use his G4 as the scratch drive. He doesn't want a backup solution via a NAS machine, so the network will be a G4, a G5, and a Windows machine connected to a router, with the G4 being in the "middle" as the file server. He wants the G4 to automatically show up as a hard drive in both other computers without having to press any keys or anything like that.

My question is, how would one configure the G4 to both connect to the other computers, and automatically show up as a system drive?
 
I have never worked w/ mac's so I don't know exactly how to share the drive in OS X but once you have the drive shared on the Mac, add that share as a mapped network drive in windows and you should be fine.

Edit:
Here's some info on how to make shares available for windows on a mac:
http://www.mac-connect.com/win_mac_samba1.php
 
supergper said:
Horrible advice. An external HARD DRIVE is probably the most likely device to fail. I agree, backups should not even be questioned, but backing up to another hard drive (and an external one at that) is a bad idea.
Click to expand...

You say that but do not offer an alternative...

Backing up to hard drive it is one of the only cost effective ways to back up a modern large HD. I trust a hard drive much more than optical media.

You must have multiple copies of the backup on different physical hard drives to have this be safe. It is expensive, but not as bad as a huge tape drive.

If at all possible, use standard hard disks in hot swap caddies instead of crappy usb disks.
 
supergper said:
Horrible advice. An external HARD DRIVE is probably the most likely device to fail. I agree, backups should not even be questioned, but backing up to another hard drive (and an external one at that) is a bad idea.
Click to expand...

An external hard drive, while not ideal, is certainly better than no backup at all. Not to mention, if you have a full server as your backup device, you introduce a whole other scenario of problems. Mainly and most importantly, more parts can break. There's the PSU, the mobo, a hard drive failure. All of those things can and at some point will happen. And don't forget the added cost of another server, from power consumption to a "support plan." Whether that service be from our OP for the servers manufacturer, it will still cost him more money.

In a situation like this, an external HDD is not a bad option. Again, not the best solution, but definitely not the worst.
 
I tried to convince him to go with a RAID 1 file server, but he wants to do this as cheaply as possible. He said he uses about 300GB per month, which is then given to clients as necessary and usually deleted (mainly because the rights belong to the artists).
 
The cheapest and easiest way has been pointed out multiple times in this thead already.

You say your going to buy a router and connect the 3 machines together with cat5. That is all that is needed for file sharing. If you dont know how to set up file sharing go to the link Howie showed you.

I do this the other way around (my file server is just windows xp pro with simple file sharing) and my roomates mac has no problem getting to the files.

I suggest that he does not share his entire hard drive but just a certain folder that he puts all the stuff in he wants people to have access to. Map that folder to a network drive and your done.
 
The G4 won't be used for anything but the scratch drive.

Do the file permissions options differ with a Mac involved? Obviously at least one of the machines will need full access in order to delete files. I'm not sure what he wants to do with permissions, but can one machine be set up to view the G4 as read-only, but still have permission to write files to it (just not delete or alter existing files)?
 
if he wants to go cheap, he may find out cheap is not good when your want to protect your data, at least convince him to do weekly backups to DVD or something!!!!
 
He can't be convinced. I've tried multiple times. I think this is one of those cases where catastrophe has to occur for him to go with a better solution, as unfortunate as it is. Since he only needs data on a monthly basis, a RAID 1 solution would be perfect, and he wouldn't need to take out a loan for a hard drive farm. He'd only need two large-capacity drives and a way to make a third backup in another location.
 
GJSNeptune said:
He can't be convinced. I've tried multiple times. I think this is one of those cases where catastrophe has to occur for him to go with a better solution, as unfortunate as it is. Since he only needs data on a monthly basis, a RAID 1 solution would be perfect, and he wouldn't need to take out a loan for a hard drive farm. He'd only need two large-capacity drives and a way to make a third backup in another location.
Click to expand...

So go in and pull a HD... show him an (albeit) controlled catastrophe...
 
he could spend $500 or less and have a decent back up situation

as you said, just wait until some massive project he is working on goes BU-BYE because some power spike takes out his drives and network.
 
I suppose I'll help him with what he wants to do now, and I'll continue to push a backup NAS.
 
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