mac mini as server or time capsule?

[McDLT]

i work in 2 different locations on a few different machines. i would love to have everything backed up and available to me regardless of where i am. i am considering setting up a mac mini as a server (is this difficult?), but i am wondering if that is the best solution. please advise.

 

[macgrl]

If you want to access you files from any location you can do this with the new timecapsule I think. If you back up to it you can then access those files anywhere with an internet connection. I think that you need mobileme as well though.

 

[ChrisA]

i work in 2 different locations on a few different machines. i would love to have everything backed up and available to me regardless of where i am. i am considering setting up a mac mini as a server (is this difficult?), but i am wondering if that is the best solution. please advise.

Yes it will work. The trouble is the very low performance of the Mini's internal disk drive. You may want to buy a fast firewire disk system and maybe even RAID. Then you will see a bottleneck in the network. This performance bottleneck will be harder to address but is also a problem with all NAS including Apple's Time Capsule.

Back in the 80's people who used UNIX were able to have their entire "world" follow their log in. I could use any computer in the office and have all my files right there. I don't know why PC and Mac users have not demanded this kind of feature as standard. It has been technicallt possible for 20+ years. Macs all ship with Automount installed so it's not hard

 

[stukdog]

i work in 2 different locations on a few different machines. i would love to have everything backed up and available to me regardless of where i am. i am considering setting up a mac mini as a server (is this difficult?), but i am wondering if that is the best solution. please advise.

If all you're looking for is a drive to access from both places, the Time Capsule would work. You're limited to an AFP connection only since the Time Capsule doesn't support FTP.

You asked about difficulty, either machine is fairly simple to setup for file sharing.

Yes it will work. The trouble is the very low performance of the Mini's internal disk drive.

This is less of a problem then you'd think, especially if you're only using it for file sharing.

 

[McDLT]

thanks for the responses. so time capsule will work, but mobileme is required? any way around that?