MAC: networked external harddrive as server ?

We have a simple network in our office of 4 imacs. At the moment one of the imac's (which also operates as a workstation) has all the files on it that are accessed by other users over the network. Sometimes this can lead to file ownership issues as we don't have mac os server software,

Would it be possible to use an ethernet external harddrive connected to the network hub as the main location for all files as the imac is starting to have limited storage capacity?

or should we consider buying a new imac with server software ?

If your network hub has such a feature then why invest in another iMac. Another option would be to buy an Apple Airport Basestation and connect a harddrive to it. Should work out a good bit cheaper than an iMac with server licence.

What you are looking for is a 'NAS box'. There are lots of types/makes, a basic one will do the job and is basicly a hard disk in a box with a cutdown version of linux (easy web based user interface) or the like, handeling the networking. They are basicly plug in and go. The cheap versions are not that fast, if that is an issue.

Here is a list of Komplett's (no connections etc etc.) offerings : [broken link removed]

BTW. No matter what you go for you are still going to 'ownership' (locking) issues, if two of more people try to access the same files at the same time. In Very simple terms, this is more a function of the software accessing the files to handle multi users and the network (iMac, server, NAS) to just lock the files, as requested by the client software. .