How best to store data on a mixed (Mac/PC) network?

Factual Questions
1

I currently run a small network in my office - one cable connection into a Netgear router, with an XP box and a OS X 10.3 machine.

I do quite a bit of audio editing work (mostly on the Mac) and I am starting to do more video as well. I have finally reached the saturation level on all my hard disks and I am looking for ways to store data that doesn’t require installing another disk in either workflow computer.

I currently maintain data backups with a DVD burner on the Mac. I would like to continue to do this but also have the files available on the network as needed in a separate machine, as it’s a pain in the ass to hunt through all the backups.

My initial thoughts are to set up a PC box with a couple of 160 GB hard drives. What is the minimum recommended system requirements to set this up? Can I get by with 98? What minimum processor speed? RAM?

I am also considering setting up a Linux box for this, but I haven’t worked with any flavor of Linux since Red Hat 8. Would Free BSD be a better option because of the Mac? I am assuming I would have to be running Samba. Are there any tricks to making Samba (or Linux in general) interface with mulitple platforms at once.

And last, could that box, in whichever platform, also serve as a print server/peripheral connection point (scanner etc.) ?

thanks for the help!

Mods - this could easily turn into an IMHO type thread. If so, my apologies and please move as needed.

P

2

According to this, Win98 was not originally built to work with hard drives larger than 64 GB. That page has some listed work-arounds, so you could probaby do it. But to avoid the hassle, I’d say that your best bet is to go with Win2000 or newer if you want a Windows machine.

My personal setup is pretty similar to yours. I have a Red Hat 9 box in my apartment that’s acting as a fileserver for my Win XP box and my iBook. It was incredibly easy to setup samba on RH9, but I have yet to get my iBook to successfully connect with write privs. I assume that it’s possible, but so far it hasn’t been enough of an issue for me to figure out. YMMV. Another option is to share the files with NFS.

You should be able to use the computer to share a printer/scanner, etc, as well (regardless of OS). However, if you go with a *nix option, make sure that appropriate drivers exist for your hardware. Lots of hardware only has official Windows drivers, and for some there aren’t even reverse-engineered or open specs from which to make a *nix driver.

If you just want this to be a fileserver, you don’t need much in the way of RAM or proc. My RH9 box is (IIRC) a 650 PIII with 256 MB and I’ve never had a problem streaming video off of it.