Storage Solutions for our OUT-OF-CONTROL iTunes Libraries

[fivepoint]

The other concern I could see with only using a Drobo is the lack of accidental deletion protection. If you accidentally delete a bunch of files, there's no Time Machine to save you. It's just gone. And since you're not doing periodic (weekly?) backups to another drive, you don't have that week to discover such problems before you perform the next backup.

I'd love to hear people's ways around this, and how they improve the protection their Drobo offers.

 

[ascender]

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?

At the moment I've not backed the Drobo up to anything else and its just sitting on a surge-protected socket.

The problem is the sheer amount of data on there to be backed up, although at the moment its just housing my iTunes library. All my actual data, pictures etc are stored on my iMac and backed up with Time Machine. So while the loss of more than one drive in the Drobo at one time would be a pain in the backside, it wouldn't be the end of the world.

I'm not sure what the options are, but as I rip more and more of my library to it, particularly movies, I'll want to back the whole thing up. Is there tape technology out there? Or would an external Blu Ray burner be the best way forward I wonder? The contents on my Drobo won't be changing much once I've ripped everything, so even doing a full backup and then just a monthly incremental one would suit me.

 

[johndawg1973]

how do you like the Drobo?

I just ordered a drobo and two 1tb drives so that should give me loads of fault tolerant storage which is easily expandable. Was expensive but hopefully will be worth it.

Hey Mark... Which Drobo did you get and do you like it? I am thinking about getting one.

 

[eleven59]

nice!

I am glad you guys are talking asbout this!! I dont have an tv yet, waiting to see what apple decides to do.. and i dont have a mac yet either... again waiting... but I have started to back up all my dics to my hd...

is it as easy as to just drag n drop the folders/files to a new bigger hd such as time capsule???

easy to transfer windows files? or should i just stop wasting my time now? i know apple says they can transfer all your files if your switching over at the store...


anyways.. i like reading about all the different ways! thanks!

 

[hualon]

Hey Mark... Which Drobo did you get and do you like it? I am thinking about getting one.

Well my Drobo experience has been pretty lame. I bought a V2 and four 1.5TV Seagate drives last week. The stupid thing keeps rebooting every few minutes. Completely useless. Tech support hasn't called or e-mailed back. The support forum is helpful but nobody really knows what's going on.

 

[johndawg1973]

replacement?

Well my Drobo experience has been pretty lame. I bought a V2 and four 1.5TV Seagate drives last week. The stupid thing keeps rebooting every few minutes. Completely useless. Tech support hasn't called or e-mailed back. The support forum is helpful but nobody really knows what's going on.

Will they try to replace it for you?

 

[MrCatMan]

Thanks to this thread I am now starting to make some progress.

I have 3 macs; one 80gig PowerBook, one 100 gig MacBook and an 80gig iMac G4.

I then bought an TV and was getting frustrated at having my iTunes on one machine, my documents on another, my photo's on another and no room for my 700 or so films.

Thanks to this thread I have invested in a Drobo + 2 1 tB drives and am really pleased with it so far.

I had some problems consolidating iTunes but everything is now copied and backed up.

I am now starting the long process of converting the DVD's using mac the ripper & handbrake. (is there anything out there that does it in 1 go?)

The only thing that I seem to have lost in the process is my iTunes playlist so I am having to re-create those manually.

Thanks to everyone for their contributions; reading through this thread helped me massively.

Thinking about offsite back up now - anyone use mozy or can recommend anything else?

Thanks

Mr CatMan

 

[fivepoint]

I had some problems consolidating iTunes but everything is now copied and backed up.

I am now starting the long process of converting the DVD's using mac the ripper & handbrake. (is there anything out there that does it in 1 go?)

The only thing that I seem to have lost in the process is my iTunes playlist so I am having to re-create those manually.

For you and anyone struggling with consolidating iTunes libraries to a new source, I suggest you check out the first post in this thread. I updated it with a link from iLounge and Apple which give you detailed instructions on how to transfer files without losing things like playlists and the like.

As far as your question... Handbrake should be able to do about 90% of movies in "1 go." There is hardly ever any reason to use MTR AND Handbrake unless you're ripping many DVDS in one night with MTR and encoding them while you sleep with Handbrake.

For mostt people, Handbrake is all you'll ever need.

 

[ascender]

With these NAS devices which are iTunes servers, do they allow you to synch iPods with the shared library?

 

[starcat]

A Mac Mini running Frontrow will play a VIDEO_TS folder directly without having to encode it to something else and put into iTunes. VIDEO_TS will take up more space though but will contain all features, etc. AppleTV doesn't play a VIDEO_TS nor DTS sound through the digital out (nor does this FrontRow but you can run VLC on the Mini). Just for info...

For you and anyone struggling with consolidating iTunes libraries to a new source, I suggest you check out the first post in this thread. I updated it with a link from iLounge and Apple which give you detailed instructions on how to transfer files without losing things like playlists and the like.

As far as your question... Handbrake should be able to do about 90% of movies in "1 go." There is hardly ever any reason to use MTR AND Handbrake unless you're ripping many DVDS in one night with MTR and encoding them while you sleep with Handbrake.

For mostt people, Handbrake is all you'll ever need.

 

[starcat]

The only thing that I seem to have lost in the process is my iTunes playlist so I am having to re-create those manually.

You can export a playlist in an xml file and make a backup of it which you can later just load again (even on multiple computers) after all media files are inported into iTunes.

 

[starcat]

Has anyone tried a Drobo connected to a Mini for all media files and a second Drobo connected to the same mini and defined as TimeMachine drive? The Mini exports the media files of the first Drobo over gigabit and makes them accessible to all clients. Time Machine makes on the fly backups (preventing also logical errors and deleted files) to the second Drobo.

 

[hualon]

Will they try to replace it for you?

They're going to replace it but not without a lot of waiting and frustration.

 

[ecoons]

Mozy

Mozy seems almost too good to be true. $5 a month for unlimited backups, what is the catch. My biggest concern is this... I pay $5 a month, get all my 400GB of information up into Mozy, and then they want to up the price. Couldn't you theoretically get really screwed by this? What is everyone's take, or am I the only one worried about this?

 

[VoR]

What sort of transfer speeds are you getting to/from your drobo with 2x1tb drives?

 

[MrCatMan]

For you and anyone struggling with consolidating iTunes libraries to a new source, I suggest you check out the first post in this thread. I updated it with a link from iLounge and Apple which give you detailed instructions on how to transfer files without losing things like playlists and the like.

As far as your question... Handbrake should be able to do about 90% of movies in "1 go." There is hardly ever any reason to use MTR AND Handbrake unless you're ripping many DVDS in one night with MTR and encoding them while you sleep with Handbrake.

For mostt people, Handbrake is all you'll ever need.

Like most blokes I tried to crack it with out reading the instructions and failed. After deleting all my files it took me 3 days to recover them. I then sat down read the first post as suggested and hey presto I was back in business.

 

[MrCatMan]

You can export a playlist in an xml file and make a backup of it which you can later just load again (even on multiple computers) after all media files are inported into iTunes.

Thanks... I'll give that a try.. As the files now reside in a different location will it understand the change in file location.

 

[MrCatMan]

What sort of transfer speeds are you getting to/from your drobo with 2x1tb drives?

To be honest I am not at all technical and have not noticed a change.. A bit noisier maybe but I have locked the Drobo and MacBook away in a back bedroom and use my Home Cinema and Apple TV to access to content now. It seems to good to be true. Have not yet synched my iPhone (and won't do so until I have recreated my Playlists) to the new system yet so fingers crossed.

 

[fivepoint]

Like most blokes I tried to crack it with out reading the instructions and failed. After deleting all my files it took me 3 days to recover them. I then sat down read the first post as suggested and hey presto I was back in business.

Glad I could help! That happened to me once too, like 5 years ago... I swore I would never do it again and would take every precaution to make sure. What a pain that was!

 

[jb60606]

just picked up one of these to replace my dead USB DROBO -- for nearly half the price of the DROBO too. I'm using an internal SATA port converted to eSATA with this, in my 2008 Mac Pro.

No word on 1.5TB drive support yet (just emailed their support), but it's going to take me at least a couple years before I need more than what this model offers. Who knows... maybe I'll buy a second one.

SANS Digital 5-Bay eSATA tower. JBOD & supports RAID0,1,10 & 5

 

[Flyinace2000]

Mozy seems almost too good to be true. $5 a month for unlimited backups, what is the catch. My biggest concern is this... I pay $5 a month, get all my 400GB of information up into Mozy, and then they want to up the price. Couldn't you theoretically get really screwed by this? What is everyone's take, or am I the only one worried about this?

I have been using them for about a year or so now. Saved my butt when i had a drive fail in my server. Took a few days to download all 300+ gigs, but it worked. Now that i have my RocketRaid up and running mozzy is backing that up too. 2TB with offsite...yummy

 

[rotarypower101]

just picked up one of these to replace my dead USB DROBO -- for nearly half the price of the DROBO too. I'm using an internal SATA port converted to eSATA with this, in my 2008 Mac Pro.

No word on 1.5TB drive support yet (just emailed their support), but it's going to take me at least a couple years before I need more than what this model offers. Who knows... maybe I'll buy a second one.

SANS Digital 5-Bay eSATA tower. JBOD & supports RAID0,1,10 & 5

Can you tell us a little more about how this is working for you?

How is the speed of transfer, are you reaching near native sata speed (compared to your native drives) through the boxes controller? How are access speeds through the interface, any initial lag to speak of when accessing files?
How does it manage the drives from the front end? As one drive or many?

This sounds like a much better solution to me than a drobo, and would fall right in line with my macpro server desire.

Also can you please keep us updated as to the 1.5 TB drive support?

 

[ManhattanPrjct]

external hard drive + itunes

this may be a silly question, but if you set up your itunes playlist on an external hard drive that is always connected to your AEBS (and not directly connected to your computer), would your computer and itunes always have to be on to watch content on your Apple TV? or can the Apple TV stream from the external HD while itunes isn't running?

thanks.

 

[rotarypower101]

this may be a silly question, but if you set up your itunes playlist on an external hard drive that is always connected to your AEBS (and not directly connected to your computer), would your computer and itunes always have to be on to watch content on your Apple TV? or can the Apple TV stream from the external HD while itunes isn't running?

thanks.

No, and this is compounded by the fact that it takes double the bandwidth to accomplish the task.
One stream from the TC/NAS external to the iTunes computer, one stream back to TC/AEBS/router, and then either one stream to the TV via ethernet/wireless. Unfortunately this causes parallel streams of the same file, which seems to slow the system further.
And this is an elegant path, many of us have switches, and other accessory’s that can convolute the process further. Each step adds lag and unnecessary bandwidth to the EQ that hypothetically could be streamlined if it did not require iTunes to be in the mix (which just wont happen ), or more NAS devices could serve as a iTunes hub.(lets hope this gets sorted soon)
It has been a wish that  would release a iTunes server so users could turn there machines off while still maintaining the required connection to iTunes with their media for other devices.


My theory is to centralize all content on one computer with native drive support , and serve to all devices. I have tried to integrate multiple devices over the network, but it just doesn’t seem to work even over cat6. There is just too much going on and too many little issues to get a ~100% working all the time system IMO
I centralize as much as possible, but in the end any content that is not directly on the iTunes machine invariably has an issue whether it be lag, not returning to the last place video was stopped at, files dropping off the network, “this file type is not supported” errors, (which when you click back into the .mp4/.m4v they work fine), the TV dropping off iTunes, TV stalling out waiting for other machines to serve ect,ect,ect

The best luck I have had so far is to just run the TV just plain vanilla.

 

[ascender]

Just an update. My Drobo v2 experience is getting worse by the hour at the moment and the more research I'm doing on the unit is just making me think the v2 has numerous problems associated with it and shouldn't be considered at the moment.