11-25-2011, 10:07 PM

The title says it all. I am looking into buying a Mac Mini to use as a home theater PC, as well as an external storage server for wireless time machine backups of my 15" MBP and my wife's 13"MPB.

Essentially, I want Time Capsule functionality with the added benefit of having a Mac hooked up to my home theater.

When I ran my scheme past the sales person at my local Mac reseller, he told me that to share external storage over a wireless network I would need Lion or Snowleopard server.

Is this true? I thought I would be able to do it with a standard copy of Lion, but don't really have any experience to back that up.

Any help or advice on the subject would be must appreciated.

11-25-2011, 11:15 PM

Macs have historically served up to 5 clients at the same time with regular OS X. I haven't found this stated anywhere for Lion yet.

11-25-2011, 11:37 PM

I have had no problem accessing my Western Digital Drive over my network with my Mini running Lion.

11-26-2011, 03:18 AM

Thanks, guys. I know I could just set up a test, and try to serve an external from one of my MBPs to the other, but I thought there might be more insightful information found here. I would like to know for sure before dropping $600 on a Mini.

11-26-2011, 02:52 PM

The answer is yes. You can share an external HD using the client OS X.

Time Machine functionality, No.

OS X server has Time Machine capabilities which is what I use for backing up all my Macs wirelessly.

There are some ghetto Time Machine solutions out there but if you really want a legitimate backup that works like you'd expect, pony up the $49 bucks for Lion Server and install it on your Mac Mini.

You don't have to buy the Lion Server model mini, that simply has a better CPU and more internal storage. Installing the Server app over the base mini will suffice.

11-26-2011, 04:47 PM

Right on. Thanks MacsWork. I really appreciate the insight. I guess I wasn't considering the option of installing Lion Server over a basic Mini. That will save me some dough.