Building A Mac File Server

[iancm]

Hey this might be a crazy question but I want to build a File server and I'm already a Mac fan (rip on me if you like but it's what I prefer) anyways I want to know if it would be possible (on the hardware side and on the software side) to put Macintosh Hard drives into a PC case or am I looking at a HUGE amount of extra work. If I am then can someone suggest something else. The reason I'm opposed to using a Mac case is that there's usually not a whole lot of room to add extra drives and I'm aiming to eventually have a 3 TB server.

 

[crispindogs4]

Well... Um... Mac hard drives.. They are the same ones as PC hard drives.......Just apple has put a little logo and their approval on it.. Just build a hackintosh!!!!! read about it here http://www.insanelymac.com/

If i get what you are trying to say is that you want a MAC but you need more space to put your hard drives?

Just put together a technically "PC" system from scratch on www.newegg.com and make sure the parts are compatible with OS X at insanelymac.

Put 4x1TB drives in it in RAID 1 mirroring and you have a Mac file server !

If you are wondering how to put OS X on a pc, just look up iAktos or iDeneb on google. It is fairly straight forward you just need to make sure your parts you get are compatible first.

 

[iancm]

Sorry I didn't explain myself very well. I have a Mac laptop I want to build a File server because I only have about 100 GB on the laptop. So my issue is this is it worth building the server with Macintosh hard drives so I don't run into issues down the road with compatibility.
I.E. when building a server to run with a macintosh laptop is it better to use actual mac hard drives or is that not going to make any real issues.
ALSO is a mac hard drive going to be physically compatible with a PC tower (I just want to use a PC tower because there's usually more ports to instal hard drives usually Macs only have to room for one hard drive)
Hopefully I've cleared up my question...?

 

[ssorrrell]

Mac and PC hard drives are formatted differently. There's only a pay NTFS driver to let the Mac write to the drive, but it can read it ok. PCs can't even read Mac (that I know of).

I use an old 2001 Mac G4 733 box running 10.3 with a Drobo through USB2 (added a card). Cost $200 plus $30 for the card. Works great, comes with 1 gigabit on the mobo. Not fast, but it's the backup server. You'll need a 10.4 or higher to maintain the Drobo.

 

[Turk128]

If you just need a file server why not simply use an external drive formatted in exFat of format it using the disk utility in mac if you are not planning on using it with a Win box. There are relatively inexpensive NAS that you can use also which will work with both platforms.