Storage Options

[davidjearly]

Hi,

I'm looking to put my iTunes library (and all of its contents) on an external FW 800 drive (~1TB) connected to my iMac, which will then stream content wirelessly to the Apple TV.

I don't sync Music/Video with the Apple TV, so everything streams over the network.

Do you have any suggestions about the external drives I could use? Should this work ok without too much delay?

I'd appreciate any suggestions. My budget is around £100.

David

 

[srl7741]

I do just that and use the LaCie 2D Extreme 1TB External Drive connected to my iMac via FW800. It works great. There are no delays or lag at all with my ATV.

Edit* The LaCie drive is over your budget however I'm sure any drive within your budget will work very well.

 

[Cave Man]

I'd buy Samsung's 1 TB drive and a fanless aluminum enclosure. Is there a particular reason why you want fw800 for such a drive? Your bottleneck will be your wireless or ethernet connection.

 

[davidjearly]

Thanks guys!

Cave Man: I already have an external enclosure which supports Firewire 400, so I could just pop an internal drive in there. However, whilst I realise that my wireless will be the bottleneck, I assumed that there would also be a possibility of lag/delay when the Apple TV tries to access the content that is stored on a USB2/Firewire 400 drive connected on my iMac.

Do you not think so? If so, any suggestions as to what internal drives I should consider for my external enclosure?

 

[Cave Man]

In practice, 802.11n is going to give you about 65 mbps. USB2 will give you about 250 mbps, fw400 about 400 mbps, and fw800 about 800 mbps. USB ought to have plenty of bandwidth such that any differences will be imperceptible.

 

[davidjearly]

In practice, 802.11n is going to give you about 65 mbps. USB2 will give you about 250 mbps, fw400 about 400 mbps, and fw800 about 800 mbps. USB ought to have plenty of bandwidth such that any differences will be imperceptible.

I see. Perhaps I'll set up a small library on an old 250GB drive I've got and see how it goes.

I'm on 802.11g though. Do you think that would affect things?

 

[Cave Man]

802.11g will give you about 30 mbps in practice. You will probably only notice problems when 2x or more ff/rew with standard def content. I also suspect you wouldn't be able to stream 720p/6mbps HD content without stuttering.

 

[davidjearly]

802.11g will give you about 30 mbps in practice. You will probably only notice problems when 2x or more ff/rew with standard def content. I also suspect you wouldn't be able to stream 720p/6mbps HD content without stuttering.

Ok, so in that case it might be my network that needs upgrading. However, at the moment I have HD content bought from iTunes on my iMac and it streams to the Apple TV fine. Do you think that moving this onto an external as you described above would change this?

 

[Cave Man]

Not sure about that, but probably unlikely. Most iTS HD video is at about 4mbps (I transcode mine at 6mbps), so it sounds like that is sufficient for 802.11g. How does 2x and 4x ff/rew work with that? Does it stall out? Pretty much any drive (USB2 and up) should have far more bandwidth than your wirelss connection, but YMMV.

 

[davidjearly]

Not sure about that, but probably unlikely. Most iTS HD video is at about 4mbps (I transcode mine at 6mbps), so it sounds like that is sufficient for 802.11g. How does 2x and 4x ff/rew work with that? Does it stall out? Pretty much any drive (USB2 and up) should have far more bandwidth than your wirelss connection, but YMMV.

Just thought I'd post back to say thanks for the advice. I decided on a Western Digital Elements 1TB USB drive and it works great.

 

[dmm219]

I use an Iomega 1TB drive, attached to a PC running itunes. I can stream everything with no problems. Just In case, I usually synch any HD content to the ATV. But I haven't had issues at all. The act of running a show or movie will be a little more sluggish to start...it will take a few seconds for the ATV to find, and start playing your selection, while it is immediate if the content is synced. But its not a distraction at all.

 

[sandman42]

Just to second the prevailing opinion: I have my iTunes library on an external 500Gb drive connected via Firewire 400 to my Mac Mini G4, and that communicates wirelessly to my TV via 802.11g. No streaming problems whatsoever. I don't notice any undue lag at the TV at all due to the library being on an external drive.