Best hardware/software solution to serve/backup our files to MacBook Airs?

[J.C]

Sorry if I've posted this in the wrong forum or missed any previous posts. I did search the forums and this seemed like the best place to post.

Until recently we used an iMac with an external HD for backup via Time Machine. To make room in our unit we've recently moved to a MacBook Air each (small HDs) and we're looking for the best way to store and backup our music/photos.

Originally I intended to use my old G4 with external HD as a media server over our Wi-Fi network. Unfortunately the G4 has just carked it!

I'm now wondering what's the best hardware/software solution to store and backup our files? We're really only talking about music and photos; everything else can be stored locally. We want to be able to remotely access our iTunes and iPhoto libraries and know that they are also backed up on another HD.

These are our requirements
----------------------
- 500GB of storage for iTunes and iPhoto libraries
- a way to make that storage accessible by the MBAs over a Wi-Fi network
- a way to backup that networked storage to a second external hard drive
- ideally we'd like to be able to add to that networked/backed up storage directly from the MBAs (i.e. download music on the Air and have it added to the backed up storage mediums)
- we don't want to store any music/photos on the MBA hard drives

I've considered an Apple Time machine but I'm not sure if it does what I need.

Any help anyone could offer would be much appreciated.

Thanks!!!

Josh.

 

[n0de]

The Time Capsule would work, but it sounds like you will probably need to grow your storage.

Your best bet would be a networked Drobo. It is effectively a RAID networked storage device.

The Drobo does not contain a wifi AP or router, just ethernet to connect it to your network. This is actually a good thing; if your router dies, do you want to have to give up all of your storage while it is getting repaired?

I do keep my iTunes music on the network and access it via wifi with no issues, as long as I manually connect to the remote drive in finder.

A word of caution; do not waste your time trying to do Time Machine backups or restores over wifi, it is just too slow.

 

[r6girl]

Have you seen this thread that's posted as a Wiki/sticky at the top of this forum? I plan to use these instructions myself to store at least some things I don't need with me all the time to save space on my Air...