Mac Mini 2011 + Drobo best media center setup?

[utekineir]

For my media center setup I'm using the high end 2011 Mac Mini and a regular Drobo that I purchased around Christmas of 2010. My Drobo is connected to my Mini via Firewire 800, and it works great! I never experience any lag or delay. I also downloaded the Plex media server, so that all the computers on my network have access to stream any movie I have stored on the Drobo. As of now, my Mini and Drobo are connected to two 24 inch monitors, but once I get a nice new tv in my room, I plan on connecting the Mini to the TV. Depending on if I get a Mac Pro or MacBook Pro to replace the mini as my main desktop, I'll most likely keep the Drobo hooked up to that new computer.

I really love my Drobo. I know they're a bit overpriced, but it feels good to not have to worry about running out of space. I have it setup to expand up to 16TB's, and I also have it partitioned to do all my Time Machine backups too. One day I may upgrade to the Drobo with Thunderbolt support..but that'll be no earlier than 3-4 years from now I assume.

If your mini is running as the home server with storage based on the drobo better off keeping it set up that way. Just keep it on a gigabit wired network and share its volumes.

a) You probably don't want your shared storage connected to a portable machine. Kinda defeats the purpose of a laptop when it needs to stay tethered to maintain access to a storage volume for other computers.

b) If you pay your own electric theres a huge difference in power consumption between an idling mac pro and an idling mini. My 3.1 mp idled at 180 ish watts, my ivy i7 mini idles around 14. Here, thats about a $200 difference a year in power.