Mac MIni as external hard drive?

Can a mac mini be used as a network hard rive and a usable computer at the same time? Every article i read about using one as an external requires booting it up special.

My goal would be to hook a Mac mini via FireWire to my airport extreme and to my tv in the living room. Using it as media center in the living room, as well as a media resource for our other macs in the house. We'd like to be able to store stuff and access stuff over the network.

Any advice on this would be great. Thanks

I'm fairly certain that none of Apple's Airport routers have a Firewire port. Why not just enable file sharing on the Mac mini? That would effectively make it a networked hard drive.
Mac 101: File Sharing

Thanks for that. Question with file sharing... Can I then dump files from all my other computers onto the Mac mini as well as just access the shared files? The goal would ultimately be to download files from the 2 Mac book pros and iMac and save them all to one central location accessible by all and most importantly playable on the TV.

lifeisabeach said:

I'm fairly certain that none of Apple's Airport routers have a Firewire port. Why not just enable file sharing on the Mac mini? That would effectively make it a networked hard drive.
Mac 101: File Sharing

Click to expand...

xmoewex said:

Thanks for that. Question with file sharing... Can I then dump files from all my other computers onto the Mac mini as well as just access the shared files? The goal would ultimately be to download files from the 2 Mac book pros and iMac and save them all to one central location accessible by all and most importantly playable on the TV.

Click to expand...

Yes. Just enable the file sharing option to use AFP and the mount point will automatically show up in the Finder's sidebar on all Macs on your network.