Can I use an older Mac Pro as a NAS machine?

[DeltaTaco]

So I am on a high school robotics team, and we have an old Mac Pro (the huge aluminum tower ones, not the little trash can shaped ones) just laying around. My question is, is it possible to configure this Mac to be used as a NAS computer for our other computers in the lab to access for files? I would like to install Windows on it as well, as that is what I've always worked with but as I'm not quite so familiar with Apple computers I'm not sure if that is possible. The Mac has 2 WD Black 1TB drives, so that is why we chose this particular PC, just for the much greater storage. Is this possible?

 

[Solandri]

Can you? Sure. OS X supports Samba for file sharing with Windows, Mac, and Unix systems.

Should you? Probably not. Based on what I'm finding on everymac, the last tower Mac Pro used a Westmere CPU, the generation prior to Sandy Bridge. Sandy Bridge is when Intel began to take power consumption seriously. So based on the CPU having a 95 Watt TDP best-case, your Mac Pro is probably going to burn 100-200 Watts idle.

At a U.S. average electricity price of 12 cents/kWh, that translates into $100-$200 of electricity per year if you leave the NAS on 24/7. In 1-2 years, you'll have paid as much in electricity as the price for a low-end dedicated NAS by Synology or QNAP that uses only 5-15 Watts. Just pull the two drives from the Mac and put them in the NAS.

 

[jsmithepa]

If it has an Intel processor, you should be able to run Windows. U may not even have to, OSX runs samba (a very standard file sharing protocol used everywhere), I think it can share to Windows PC just fine. Google to be sure.