IF you lose one drive in a RAID 0 you will lose it all. There is no backup or way to restore.
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Storage Solutions for our OUT-OF-CONTROL iTunes Libraries
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IF you lose one drive in a RAID 0 you will lose it all. There is no backup or way to restore.
pro, thanks for sharing your setup. i think this is a great thread. i'm in the midst of trying to figure out what i want to do.
the biggest challenge for me is movies, but not hollywood - my own. i would like to transfer all of our home movies in ntsc quicktime format (about 85 hours right now), keep them in that format as a massive digital backup to the tapes and handbrake those for ease of use within frontrow for a future appletv. I'm thinking i may need a separate 4 TBs just for the home movies so i can raid them.
Handbraking 'hollywood' movies would be great, as well as having my aperture and itunes libraries easily accessible.
the idea behind the home movies came about after looking at how many memories are catalogued in aperture - i should be able to do something similar with the home movies. Would be neat to instantly flash back to one of the boys' births or something.
For now, I have a few 1 TB externals backing libraries. I keep finding awesome threads such as this to help my decision process, plus, the costs keep coming down.
i almost need a home file server...maybe an xraid. who knows.
i have an older G4 dually 1.25 which would be great as a server except I can hear it downstairs while upstairs due to the roaring engine sound (and the fact I sometimes use it for work too).
decisions....decisions....decisions...
an exciting time!
cheers,
Keebler
Not a problem. Just hope that my setup might give some insight and pointers in the right direction for other people.
I def. enjoyed putting mine together and everything went fairly well. I had a few hiccups along the way but they seem to be worked out. the board i chose was a referb from newegg and it seems there is a problem with LAN1. This was causing some slow connections and even lose of connection while transferring data. So I went into the BIOS and disabled LAN1 completely and ma running off of LAN2. I transferred the majority of my files last night without the connection crapping out on me so hopefully that fixed the problem.
The only downside with this board is that i have not been able to find a way to run it completely headless (i.e. without a video card). So i had to go buy the cheapest on i could find. I basically set the box up with it and then disconnected the monitor entirely.
If anyone is really looking to build a home media server and wants to read more i suggest heading over to the HTPC section of avs forum. Just do some searching and reading over there and you should be able to pick up some useful information.
iTunes library is stored on a 750GB Seagate FreeAgent Pro (FireWire), backed up to a 500GB Time Capsule (the library is only about 200GB, I don't backup everything on the Seagate). Music and TV Shows are synced to a 160GB AppleTV, but movies are only streamed to the AppleTV.
Currently contemplating popping open the AppleTV to swap in a 250GB drive, or upgrading the internal drive of my MacBook to something big enough to handle the full iTunes library so I can use the Seagate as a secondary backup location and the Time Capsule as the primary backup location.
Currently contemplating popping open the AppleTV to swap in a 250GB drive, or upgrading the internal drive of my MacBook to something big enough to handle the full iTunes library so I can use the Seagate as a secondary backup location and the Time Capsule as the primary backup location.
It gets sort of complex once you start having to have multiple externals and multiple backups of your computer, externals, etc. huh!?!
The more and more I think about it, the more I think expandability is the key... but you really pay out the nose for theat expandability and really... how long can you expand it? You can add new drives for the next few years as they go down in price, but after 4-5 years will that core technology still be good? Or will the RAID hardware itself (not jsut the amount of storage) be outdated?
I have stopped for now my expansion project at 4TB total. I'm going to wait until flash drives become a true alternative to the spinning disk. Less power, no moving parts, little heat and compact.
Are there any other unique approaches out there? Do you think it is safe enough just to keep your iTunes library on one RAID 1 device, or is having the backup content in multiple enclosures, in different rooms, hooked up to different outlets a better idea? Obviously off-site storage would be the safest...
Here is a helpful link I found which gives you detailed information on all of the types of RAID.
http://www.acnc.com/04_01_00.html
http://www.acnc.com/04_01_00.html
I'll try to keep this brief. *deep breath*
I have 2 drives currently connected to my AEBS by USB hub, and soon to be a 3rd. Drive #1 is 1TB and holds all TV shows (2500+ episodes) and movies (150+) currently. Drive #2 is time machine, but currently disabled since stupid AEBS likes to find humor in dropping my wireless connection once the initial backup is about 90% done, effectively never allowing me to utilize this drive; it's pretty much just sitting there taunting me with possibilities. (Pending) Drive #3 will hold all the movies currently residing on Drive #1 as well as the rest of my DVD collection.
Brief sidestory... I just finished a month long journey of ripping over 150 movies in Handbrake and had tagged about 50 of them to be transferred to one of the AEBS drives. That is, until my 16 year old brother came over and ignored all my warnings to stay away from it. In the middle of a tagging session he knocked it onto the floor and killed it. All my movies and tagging efforts of the past month - gone. I literally had to leave the apartment because I almost killed him. So I made him buy me a replacement drive (Mom didn't like that much) and now I'm back ripping all my movies again. *sigh*
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.
iTunes library bloat
I yanked the Seagate 750 GB drives out of my Mac Pro and loaded three of them into a Drobo. I replaced them in the Mac with Seagate ES.2 1 TB server drives (slightly more expensive, but I'm hoping a little bit sturdier). One of those is dedicated to iTunes library. I have the Drobo set up as my Time Machine disk. Hopefully the theory will work out that I could lose the server drive or any drive in the Drobo and still not lose any content. We'll see.
I yanked the Seagate 750 GB drives out of my Mac Pro and loaded three of them into a Drobo. I replaced them in the Mac with Seagate ES.2 1 TB server drives (slightly more expensive, but I'm hoping a little bit sturdier). One of those is dedicated to iTunes library. I have the Drobo set up as my Time Machine disk. Hopefully the theory will work out that I could lose the server drive or any drive in the Drobo and still not lose any content. We'll see.
I have one 1 TB Seagate (for movies) and one 500 gig Seagate (for music) in my Mac Pro. I have backups of both disks on the same size external drives that I keep powered off and disconnected from my Mac Pro to avoid any power surges that might take out everything. It's a bit of a pain to plug in and unplug whenever I add a new movie or album to my collection but it's safe (unless of course, my house burns down!). If I was really paranoid, I'd take them offsite.
Our Solution
Apologies if this had been posted. I've quickly read through the posts and they all seem to be over complicating things. (And needlessly pricey)
Our solution works brilliantly and provides full redundancy.
Step 1. Find an old G4 or G5. ebay, cupboard, shed, etc.
Step 2. Throw a couple of SATA or PATA drives in it. These are cheap as chips these days. Throw in two so you can mirror the data.
Step 3. Find a copy of OS X. Install and share a folder called. "iTunes" The version isn't important.
Step 4. On the client machine, access the itunes folder on this "server" and set it to automatically open at login.
Step 5. Open your iTunes preferences and change the location of your iTunes library. Then import your media files into iTunes on the client.
You can also connect a external HD or Tape drive for even more redundancy. Best this is it's all Apple (hardware & software) and it's cheap as chips. We recently upgraded ours to a G5 but the G4 worked flawlessly. Only reason we upgraded was I wanted to install 10.5 server.
Have has this system for years and works great. Hope this helps.
Apologies if this had been posted. I've quickly read through the posts and they all seem to be over complicating things. (And needlessly pricey)
Our solution works brilliantly and provides full redundancy.
Step 1. Find an old G4 or G5. ebay, cupboard, shed, etc.
Step 2. Throw a couple of SATA or PATA drives in it. These are cheap as chips these days. Throw in two so you can mirror the data.
Step 3. Find a copy of OS X. Install and share a folder called. "iTunes" The version isn't important.
Step 4. On the client machine, access the itunes folder on this "server" and set it to automatically open at login.
Step 5. Open your iTunes preferences and change the location of your iTunes library. Then import your media files into iTunes on the client.
You can also connect a external HD or Tape drive for even more redundancy. Best this is it's all Apple (hardware & software) and it's cheap as chips. We recently upgraded ours to a G5 but the G4 worked flawlessly. Only reason we upgraded was I wanted to install 10.5 server.
Have has this system for years and works great. Hope this helps.
one question I have for you is how easy is it to expand? (This is one of the main things that attracted me to drobo). how are you mirroring the data? are you using raid (software or hardware controlled?) or are you using some software like chronosync? or manually?
looks like I'll be sending the drobo straight back and ordering the FW800 model now!!
Ahhh! New FW800 Drobo! I think I know what I'm getting now...
If only I had an extra $500 (plus $250 or so for hard drives) sitting around ready to spend.
I have a G4 and might go this route, but my problem is that I have 85'ish hours of home movies that I want to transfer in full ntsc quality so that's just over 1 TB itself
I would raid that of course. The reason I want to do this is b/c I transfer tapes for folks I see how tapes even 10 years old are getting ugly and some of mine are 7 so a digital back up makes sense (realizing I'll need to transfer those to different HDs in the future as well).Then I have my photo library which is modest, but large enough (20 GB'ish), then my itunes music which is expanding b/c i'm reripping into lossless).
I almost need a PC box with ubuntu or whatever that is with 8 1 TB drives...or at least 6 to begin. I'd like to have the home movies then ripped via Handbrake into an easier format for a future appletv to read (easier in terms of data flow over a network).
just nuts. I'll hang on as prices and options become available.
I supposed I could buy some 2 TB externals and used 1 to backup the other and then keep the itunes and aperture libraries on something smaller. That might make more sense as prices come down....
Cheers,
Keebler
I'll try to keep this brief. *deep breath*
I have 2 drives currently connected to my AEBS by USB hub, and soon to be a 3rd. Drive #1 is 1TB and holds all TV shows (2500+ episodes) and movies (150+) currently. Drive #2 is time machine, but currently disabled since stupid AEBS likes to find humor in dropping my wireless connection once the initial backup is about 90% done, effectively never allowing me to utilize this drive; it's pretty much just sitting there taunting me with possibilities. (Pending) Drive #3 will hold all the movies currently residing on Drive #1 as well as the rest of my DVD collection.
Brief sidestory... I just finished a month long journey of ripping over 150 movies in Handbrake and had tagged about 50 of them to be transferred to one of the AEBS drives. That is, until my 16 year old brother came over and ignored all my warnings to stay away from it. In the middle of a tagging session he knocked it onto the floor and killed it. All my movies and tagging efforts of the past month - gone. I literally had to leave the apartment because I almost killed him. So I made him buy me a replacement drive (Mom didn't like that much) and now I'm back ripping all my movies again. *sigh*
"Sorry to hear about your loss."
If you ever find out more about how/why the AEBS was dropping your HD connection, I'd love to hear more. I really like the idea of your setup and keeping all of the drives away from the rest of your setup.
"Sorry to hear about your loss."
If you ever find out more about how/why the AEBS was dropping your HD connection, I'd love to hear more. I really like the idea of your setup and keeping all of the drives away from the rest of your setup.
I think the only reason it happens is that I was backing up about 250 gigs wirelessly and it just eventually tired itself out with the constant data transfer. It never drops while I'm streaming to Apple TV. However, I will say that the Apple TV is much slower with the media on the network instead of directly connected to the computer.
After watching a movie or a TV episode, if you wait more than a few seconds to start watching another one the Apple TV will start "syncing" with iTunes to update the fact that you just watched something. This is not a process that is completed in a few seconds. It sometimes takes a minute or two, and even when it finishes the menu is laggy for another minute or so. Keep in mind - this will also happen if you watch a movie, then immediately start another movie, then pause for any reason. Once the video is not playing, the Apple TV will wait a couple seconds then take that opportunity to sync itself up to update and it will take a while.
All in all, I still feel it's worth the convenience. I don't want to have to keep my MBP tethered to an external in order to have it be the computer hosting my iTunes collection, and I had too many issues with keeping my collection on the PC. I get frustrated, but I have no intention of taking it off my network unless I can stumble upon some pirate treasure and buy a shiny new iMac to replace my desktop PC. Then I'll anchor my collection there.
For the reading/writing impaired (such as me)
*drool* I not only admire the network, but the time and detail in the diagram. Bravo.
I think the only reason it happens is that I was backing up about 250 gigs wirelessly and it just eventually tired itself out with the constant data transfer. It never drops while I'm streaming to Apple TV. However, I will say that the Apple TV is much slower with the media on the network instead of directly connected to the computer.
After watching a movie or a TV episode, if you wait more than a few seconds to start watching another one the Apple TV will start "syncing" with iTunes to update the fact that you just watched something. This is not a process that is completed in a few seconds. It sometimes takes a minute or two, and even when it finishes the menu is laggy for another minute or so. Keep in mind - this will also happen if you watch a movie, then immediately start another movie, then pause for any reason. Once the video is not playing, the Apple TV will wait a couple seconds then take that opportunity to sync itself up to update and it will take a while.
All in all, I still feel it's worth the convenience. I don't want to have to keep my MBP tethered to an external in order to have it be the computer hosting my iTunes collection, and I had too many issues with keeping my collection on the PC. I get frustrated, but I have no intention of taking it off my network unless I can stumble upon some pirate treasure and buy a shiny new iMac to replace my desktop PC. Then I'll anchor my collection there.
What type of network are you using? G? N? Is your signal strength between the hardware at full strength? There must be a way to optimize the setup and reduce the amount of lag you're experiencing.
For the reading/writing impaired (such as me)
Very cool. Thanks for the visual. That would be a very cool thing for others to post here... I may even make one up. What did you use to make it? Anything special?