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Storage Solutions for our OUT-OF-CONTROL iTunes Libraries
- Thread starter fivepoint
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All you need is either samba or NFS sharing of the volumes where your files/media is located and this can do any computer including the HP media servers (official statement here: http://h71036.www7.hp.com/hho/cache/447351-0-0-225-121.html). Of course probably the best way for sharing is from a Linux box running rock solid software RAID5 and serving media via NFS over GigE. The problem with leopard and RAID5 is that there is no support for software RAID5 and you need a dedicated RAID5 card and I don't trust the firmware in cheap RAID5 cards. If there is ever a hitch, you loose your data. Software RAID5 is very stable (you can recreate the volume even on another computer) and its performance is enough for a home media solution.
Just had an idea for a nice and cheap solution to my problem:
I've got an old Toshiba laptop (1.7GHz P4m, 768MB RAM) sat doing nothing. Couldn't I just go and buy a 1TB NAS device and use the laptop to serve from it to the ATV? I'm not going to need any more space for a long time, so this sounds like a nice and cheap solution. The laptop shouldn't draw too much power either.
Thoughts?
I've got an old Toshiba laptop (1.7GHz P4m, 768MB RAM) sat doing nothing. Couldn't I just go and buy a 1TB NAS device and use the laptop to serve from it to the ATV? I'm not going to need any more space for a long time, so this sounds like a nice and cheap solution. The laptop shouldn't draw too much power either.
Thoughts?
I use a Synology NAS DS207+ at home. It has an integrated iTunes server, acts as an UPNP AV compatible server and does SMB and AFP. It succesfully streamed movies to my PS3 and served iTunes and Amarok over daap: with music. Unfortunately the 2 x 750 gig drives (Raid 1) are filled 99,9999999999999%
The PS3 is somewhat picky, it does not like all my encodes.
Add another one to the happy Drobo user camp. Just set up a 4 TB Drobo, copied over about 700 gigs of iTunes library, and can now commence ripping the rest of my movie collection.
To use the traditional line, it just works.
To use the traditional line, it just works.
Data Robotics should support this forum if they don't already. This thread made me buy one!
I just bought a FW800 Drobo and four of the new 1.5TB Seagate drives from Newegg! YAY! 4.1TB available for data according to the drobolator. Awesome!
I'm going to transfer over 200GB of TV, 385GB of Movies, 225GB of music, and 60GB of photos when I get it. YAY! I'll have a couple of megs left over. LOL.
I just bought a FW800 Drobo and four of the new 1.5TB Seagate drives from Newegg! YAY! 4.1TB available for data according to the drobolator. Awesome!
I'm going to transfer over 200GB of TV, 385GB of Movies, 225GB of music, and 60GB of photos when I get it. YAY! I'll have a couple of megs left over. LOL.
As the Drobo gets ever fuller, I'm starting to think about offsite data backup. I'm projecting a 3 TB library when all is said and done (and the 1.5 TB disks drop a bit in price). Are there any solutions that you guys highly recommend? My initial impulse is to steal a tape drive from the office and see if I can't find a way to get it working in OS X, but that would be a pain in the you know what, to say the least. A second Drobo would be simplest, but I don't want to pay for the redundancy that I wouldn't need offsite.
I use Mozy but I can't highly reccomend it. The mac client leaves a lot to be desired.
Backing up to hard drives that will sit on a shelf is illl advised. The drives will not last unless they're spun up every month or so.
For those of you with Drobos... are you backing up your data in any other way, or does your iTunes content simply/exclusively reside on the Drobo? If so, are you concerned at all about higher risk of failure due to electrical surges or the simple fact that all of the data (original and backup) are stored in the same physical device?
Don't have a Drobo (I use a Netgear ReadyNAS NV+), but I backup my iTunes purchased content in two other places: 1) an external USB hard drive attached to the ReadyNAS, and 2) mozy.com. The mozy.com backup took forever to finish initially and I had some issues with the beta client, but I've found it to work very well since they came out of beta and the initial upload finished.
The other backup for my non-iTunes purchased content is the physical CDs and DVDs the material came off of originally.
The other backup for my non-iTunes purchased content is the physical CDs and DVDs the material came off of originally.
Well, the drobo is behind a line conditioning UPS. Still don't feel comfortable though with all the data in one place, hence my previous question.
Regarding Mozy: Is it truly unlimited data backup for $5 a month? They have no problems with multi-terabyte backups (apart from the purely technical issue of backing up that much data over a relatively slow connection)?
Not sure about multi-terabyte backups, but I haven't heard any complaints with the 151GB of space I'm using so far.Well, the drobo is behind a line conditioning UPS. Still don't feel comfortable though with all the data in one place, hence my previous question.
Regarding Mozy: Is it truly unlimited data backup for $5 a month? They have no problems with multi-terabyte backups (apart from the purely technical issue of backing up that much data over a relatively slow connection)?
I back up my 2TB RAID5 to mozy. Its about 650gb so far uploaded. Works really well. I had a hard drive die and i did a 250gb restore. Best $5 a month i ever spend.
Any suggestions for me?
Hey all,
I've filled up all the hard drive bays in my mac pro, and all of those hard drives (1 TB each) are all almost completely filled with media. I'm really looking into finding a solution where I can move these hard drives into a separate tower. I don't want to spend gobs of money however on some crazy NAS device. I would really only need to connect the device to my computer. Any suggestions? Drobo is pretty expensive, although nice, but really I do not care much about RAID 5. I would use RAID 1 however, but I don't mind all the drives showing up as single drives.
Hey all,
I've filled up all the hard drive bays in my mac pro, and all of those hard drives (1 TB each) are all almost completely filled with media. I'm really looking into finding a solution where I can move these hard drives into a separate tower. I don't want to spend gobs of money however on some crazy NAS device. I would really only need to connect the device to my computer. Any suggestions? Drobo is pretty expensive, although nice, but really I do not care much about RAID 5. I would use RAID 1 however, but I don't mind all the drives showing up as single drives.
I also have a Mac Pro with 1 drive 500GB (original disc at purchase) and 3 x 1TB (WD Green). I have iTunes/Music/purchases on drive 2 (about half full), Drive 3 is for my ripped Movies (about half full) and Drive 4 has my TV showes (also about half full). My backups are on 4 x 500 external drives. I've run out of backup space. I also have all my CDs and DVDs. Purchased music and Video has been placed on DVDs but I don't do much purchasing onlne, I prefer having a CD/DVD if I really like the movie/music.
If you buy a "NAS" device then why would you need the notebook? The whole point of NAS is that it has it's own network interface. What you mean maybe is just a USB external 1TB disk, connect that to the notebook then export the drive.
That would mean that you are using the notebook as a file server. They make great low volume servers. You could run any of sever OSes on the notebook. BSD, Linux or Solaris are all reasonable and run well on low end hardware.
I believe they cap uploads at ~70kBps, at least with the Home package (that is about what I see). Downloads are supposed to be uncapped though if I remember correctly.
I get about 300kBps up and it's fairly annoying since I can't do anything ELSE online while that's happening. It's supposed to automatically curtail uploads if you're doing stuff online but it doesn't (for me).
fivepoint said:
Well, the drobo is behind a line conditioning UPS. Still don't feel comfortable though with all the data in one place, hence my previous question.
Anyone else?
Mine exists only on the Drobo. I'll begin the laborious Mozy backup procedure for the 900GB of media shortly.