Im wanting to hook up two G5s to a server of some sort to be able to access the same hardrives from both. I need something that is hot-swapable and can take multiple drives. Is this possible and does anyone have any suggestions on how?

Also, for right now I just want to buy one large hardrive to get started. It will only be hooked to one G5 for right now. I want to get something that could later be adpated into the server like setup I described above. ANy ideas out there?

Thanks alot everyone, Im not much on building computer stuff.

Mark Errante

1- What's your budget? And how much capacity do you want?

2- Not that this is what you asked for, but you can get a firewire drive you can move between the computers. This is likely your cheapest solution.

3- You could also share files over a network. You should be able to do DV this way (but not HDV intermediates or uncompressed, unless the network goes gigabit or faster).

4- You could also look into "network attached storage", which is more expensive.

Well I want to be able to expand into terabyte country in the near future so I want to make sure what I get will work in that kind of system. I got about 800 to drop right now on a hardrive/bay. Just want to know what other people use. Im editing a documentary with over 100 hours of footage and want to be able to capture alot of stuff in semi compressed preview form so hardive space is an neccesity.

thanks

I'm guessing you should probably just share the files over a network. It's simple and cheap. Essentially one of the G5s is a file server.
OS X should make this easy to configure.

Load one of the G5s with hard drives... there's various ways to do that.

Mark what you can do for one of your G5 is boot it in FWTDM (Firewire target disk mode) Connect both G5s together with 6pin FW cables and boot one of them up with the 'T' key held down until you see the firewire symbol on the screen. Then on your other G5 you'll see the hardrive fully accessible. Note: if you delete or move anything it will affect the other computer, but as far as working on the other computer's hardrive its fine.

Just to add another note, if you have 2 G5 man, utilize it! Get a FW external drive.

Thats what I want to know. WHat is the best way to link two computers to the same large hardrives and what do I need to get. I have two g5s and I want to be able to share video clips and data.