Where do you keep your movie files?

[visual]

You can add disks or volumes as log in items if you go to user preferences. The Mac Mini also supports wake on demand over the network (wireless as well if you're using a Time Capsule, Airport router etc). All you have to do to make shares compatible with windows based machines over the network is check SMB in the sharing preferences panel (Click on options once in the Sharing section of system preferences).

I have a similar set up at home but my main server is my macbook pro (PLEX > ATV2) so it needs to be plugged in with the display opened to support Wake On Demand. A Mac Mini would work wonders though. It also works wirelessly for me since I'm using an Apple router (2TB Time Capsule with movies and TV Shows stored on it). I can also see my shares on our old XP desktop usually with minimal fuss. Seems to work better on Vista or 7 though.

Thanks for the quick reply.

I want to do it the other way round tho' with a windows share mapped, and always available, on a mac. I assume I don't need to enable SMB sharing on the mac to be a client?

 

[lowonthe456]

I use a 1TB time capsule as my main media server but I use a 1TB external HDD to backup every few months that I give to my dad to store in his gun safe.

Going to have to upgrade both soon as I am almost out of space......

I asked about doing this and people warned its not a good solution. How do you get this running so that the ATV2 always sees it? I have a 13" MBP and don't want to have drives tethered to it. I deleted all my music of my MBP and keep it in icloud but I have 200gb of movies I want to get either in the cloud or somewhere where its always available to my ATV2

 

[Paratel]

I've got a MacPro so I have a dedicated 2 TB seagate HDD in one of my bays. I have approximately 500 movies at the tune of about a 900MB. I also use Airvideo on my iphone to stream all of these movies to my phone over 3G or wiFi. I have also set up a symbolic link to my movies folder so my friends can have access to them via download or streaming.

 

[cjb287]

Thanks for the quick reply.

I want to do it the other way round tho' with a windows share mapped, and always available, on a mac. I assume I don't need to enable SMB sharing on the mac to be a client?

I can certainly see windows shares on my mac as well yes. I'm not sure if that is made possible because of SMB. Try without and if no luck then just turn SMB on. Also, for my windows machine to work properly with the Time Capsule and access the files stored on it I had to install the windows Airport Utility. I don't think you'll necessarily require this just for sharing though.

 

[sulliweb]

I can certainly see windows shares on my mac as well yes. I'm not sure if that is made possible because of SMB. Try without and if no luck then just turn SMB on.

I'm pretty sure SMB is required...

The real problem you're going to hit with this kind of setup is file format. If you have any HD movies, it's a safe bet that your disk is formatted using NTFS (MS's creation). That's fine for Windows, and Macs can read it, but unless something changed, Macs can't write back to that disk format. That's a fair amount of the reason why I didn't switch to a Mac Mini for a media server.

I would just make sure I did a lot of research before I went down that road. I may be wrong that it's a problem currently, but I know it was a problem in the past.

 

[sampdoria]

I asked about doing this and people warned its not a good solution.

Why?

iTunes media stored in TC disk, with our various Mac & PC iTunes Libraries and ATV2 (with iTunes running on one of our computers) access it through wifi with no problems. Of course having a good wifi signal helps.

In our house, we are hardly playing any iTunes media directly on our computers anyway. Instead we are streaming it to ATV2 and/or speakers connected to Airport Express from iOS devices (iPhones and iPads with Airplay). The computers are used simply to organize iTunes Libraries and media.

Big fan of Airplay btw!

Looking forward to upgrading to a Mac Mini (headless & always on) iTunes server down the road...

 

[convergent]

All my movies, home videos, and images are kept on a 6 bay QNAP TS659 NAS. I backup each share nightly to a ReadyNAS NV+ that is running non-redundant disks. I access the movies and videos via ATV2 with ATV Flash Black's built in Media Player. Works great and is easy to setup and maintain and is wife friendly for viewing.

For those that are storing their media on a single device and calling RAID their backup, that's not a good backup plan. A RAID array can fail and then you'd lose everything. It happens. RAID protects you from a drive failure only. That said, offsite backup is an exposure in my current setup. I can't afford any cloud based backup solution, and its not very convenient to rotate offsite because the amount of content doesn't easily fit on anything portable. I've been thinking about relocating my one NAS to either the other end of my house, or into our detached garage. I would need to do some cabling changes to accomplish this.

 

[lowonthe456]

Why?

iTunes media stored in TC disk, with our various Mac & PC iTunes Libraries and ATV2 (with iTunes running on one of our computers) access it through wifi with no problems. Of course having a good wifi signal helps.

In our house, we are hardly playing any iTunes media directly on our computers anyway. Instead we are streaming it to ATV2 and/or speakers connected to Airport Express from iOS devices (iPhones and iPads with Airplay). The computers are used simply to organize iTunes Libraries and media.

Big fan of Airplay btw!

Looking forward to upgrading to a Mac Mini (headless & always on) iTunes server down the road...

It seems from what I am reading that its due to the TC to die after a certain amount of time. My thought was to buy one, get applecare on it and pick up a USB external to run a back up once a month on the TC. This way I'm covered. 75% of the movies I have are from iTunes, so I was hoping they'd implement something like they did with TV shows, storing them on Apple's cloud and streaming them. I figure its coming but who knows when (I know its the studios and agreements and all that).

Adding to this: IF/when Apple does get the cloud for movies running, I'd just switch the TC over to TM backups. I'm still interested in the Synology NAS products, but honestly, I want a set-it-and-forget-it solution.

 

[sampdoria]

It seems from what I am reading that its due to the TC to die after a certain amount of time. My thought was to buy one, get applecare on it and pick up a USB external to run a back up once a month on the TC. This way I'm covered. 75% of the movies I have are from iTunes, so I was hoping they'd implement something like they did with TV shows, storing them on Apple's cloud and streaming them. I figure its coming but who knows when (I know its the studios and agreements and all that).

Adding to this: IF/when Apple does get the cloud for movies running, I'd just switch the TC over to TM backups. I'm still interested in the Synology NAS products, but honestly, I want a set-it-and-forget-it solution.

I have been very happy with my TC and yes I back it up every couple of weeks or so with an external hd. I've been operating this way since 2009 with no problems. But also, it's not a matter of if but when it will die. That's why I'm looking (soon) to move my media from the TC to an external hd and run it off a Mac Mini as an iTunes and NAS server to my home network.

I actually don't like TC as TM back-ups at all, just because the TC is plugged in 24/7 (one power surge can fry it at any time and/or theft). I prefer an off-site back-up solution either via cloud or external hd.