Best Storage Options for MBP 256ssd

[remix1988]

Just ordered new MBP w/ 256ssd but I'm a little worried about our media storage capacity/ability?

If it were up to you how would you store your media? Music & photo's are our biggest concerns. We don't want to choke out our new MBP's with thousands of purchased songs, movies & vacation photo's but I'm not sure if we should go with a personal cloud or just use iCloud or external HD?

I just checked my iTunes & I have 55GB of music & I'm sure my wife has about 1/2 that on her own.

I'm not a fan of the Music Match because from what I'm gathering I'm streaming my own content back to myself?? I've already paid for it so I don't want to pay to play it again.

Or should be just get a huge external HD & load our iTunes & iPhoto onto that?

Any advise would be greatly appreciated.

 

[marioman38]

I would use a NAS, make sure you have a good wifi connection at home and preferably wireless A/C. You can keep your entire photo library on it.

Synology and Qnap are two popular brands, as well as Drobo which isn't quite as versatile, but may work well for you.

 

[remix1988]

I would use a NAS, make sure you have a good wifi connection at home and preferably wireless A/C. You can keep your entire photo library on it.

Synology and Qnap are two popular brands, as well as Drobo which isn't quite as versatile, but may work well for you.

Thank you so much for responding I appreciate it! I'll check those options out. I presently have an Airport Extreme (previous flat top model). Would that be efficient or should I move up to the newer AE (tall version)?

 

[pastrychef]

I second the NAS recommendation. Synology is rock solid.

 

[remix1988]

I would use a NAS, make sure you have a good wifi connection at home and preferably wireless A/C. You can keep your entire photo library on it.

Synology and Qnap are two popular brands, as well as Drobo which isn't quite as versatile, but may work well for you.

I just checked out both Synology & Drobo. While Synology had an actual tutorial I found on Youtube about putting your iTunes within the NAS. Drobo didn't have anything yet but I found Drobo to be more like a Mac experience, more just plug & play & that's what I'm looking for. I just need to make sure I can run iTunes & iPhoto out of it.

I didn't know that Apple makes it difficult to try & run iTunes & iPhoto from a personal server?

 

[rjbruce]

I have a Synology NAS and used it to host my iTunes library. It may be better with the latest iTunes/macOS, but I found it constantly lost the mapped drive and would "forget" where my files were. I went to iTunes Match and justified the cost as storage. I've since just went to Apple Music since I buy albums fairly regular. You could share between you and your wife because you get six devices (I think?), but only one person can listen at a time unless you get the family plan. Just know Apple Music is DRM and iTunes Match is not (or wasn't when I had it).

I ended up going the same route with photos. I just ended up buying iCloud space and it all works pretty seamless now. I use the NAS for time machine and a few other services on the device. It really is a pretty great device, but my basic setup cost around $500 for the NAS plus drives. How many years of online storage would that buy?

 

[jeff051177]

It's no problem running iTunes from a NAS - mines been running for the last 5 years without a problem, streaming HD movies (via my laptop to my apple TV).

Setting up time machine on the synology is a bit more complicated, but if you follow the tutorials online, you shouldn't have a problem - mine runs as well as a timecapsule would.

The only thing I haven't braved yet is moving my photos onto it - apparently macs don't like having the photo library hosted on a NAS. Would be interested to hear if anyone's had any success with this?
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but I found it constantly lost the mapped drive and would "forget" where my files were.

Yeah - it's been noticeably better with El Capitan and now Sierra, it's much improved

 

[pastrychef]

I just checked out both Synology & Drobo. While Synology had an actual tutorial I found on Youtube about putting your iTunes within the NAS. Drobo didn't have anything yet but I found Drobo to be more like a Mac experience, more just plug & play & that's what I'm looking for. I just need to make sure I can run iTunes & iPhoto out of it.

I didn't know that Apple makes it difficult to try & run iTunes & iPhoto from a personal server?

It's not difficult at all... Both can be set in the preferences.

 

[remix1988]

I have a Synology NAS and used it to host my iTunes library. It may be better with the latest iTunes/macOS, but I found it constantly lost the mapped drive and would "forget" where my files were. I went to iTunes Match and justified the cost as storage. I've since just went to Apple Music since I buy albums fairly regular. You could share between you and your wife because you get six devices (I think?), but only one person can listen at a time unless you get the family plan. Just know Apple Music is DRM and iTunes Match is not (or wasn't when I had it).

I ended up going the same route with photos. I just ended up buying iCloud space and it all works pretty seamless now. I use the NAS for time machine and a few other services on the device. It really is a pretty great device, but my basic setup cost around $500 for the NAS plus drives. How many years of online storage would that buy?

Unless I'm not understanding Apple Music & Music Match if I have my own collection of music which I purchased over the years, decades from CD's & then MP3's & then I load them into Music Match, am I not just streaming my own music back to me & ultimately having to pay for it on a yearly subscription? Just doesn't make sense to pay someone else to listen to music I already paid for? I mean if that's how the technology is going then I guess but just seems a bit wasteful.

 

[remix1988]

It's not difficult at all... Both can be set in the preferences.
View attachment 670972 View attachment 670973

Hmmm, yeah I've been watching youtube video's & this seems very easily done although there appears to be 2 distinct ways of accomplishing the same goal. Most of the videos show what you've listed above going into Advanced settings & changing the media destination. HOwever I found one that appeared to be a little easier but not sure if it would ruin anything. It stated to go to the iTunes folder & grab the iTL folder??? Supposedly this takes out the hassle of actually copying & pasting?

 

[pastrychef]

Hmmm, yeah I've been watching youtube video's & this seems very easily done although there appears to be 2 distinct ways of accomplishing the same goal. Most of the videos show what you've listed above going into Advanced settings & changing the media destination. HOwever I found one that appeared to be a little easier but not sure if it would ruin anything. It stated to go to the iTunes folder & grab the iTL folder??? Supposedly this takes out the hassle of actually copying & pasting?

I've never tried that... It sounds more complicated to me...

 

[remix1988]

I've never tried that... It sounds more complicated to me...

You could be right!? LOL!
Wow! What a pain in the a$$. I waited so long to finally buy my first MBP thinking I'd simplify & consolidate but I'm having to buy more peripherals just to do what my iMac did! LOL

 

[pastrychef]

It's just storage limitations... Depending on configuration, you may eventually need to do similar things on an iMac as well.

 

[remix1988]

It's just storage limitations... Depending on configuration, you may eventually need to do similar things on an iMac as well.

Well I have a 1tb HD on my iMac & as of today I've barely used 250GB & that's between both my account & my wife's. The new MBP (we both purchased our own) has only 256GB SSD.

I guess I'll be okay since now we're splitting the accounts between 2 separate machines intead of one large one with the iMac?

 

[pastrychef]

You can always use that external 1TB hard drive for this purpose... You just won't have the redundancy that the above NAS or Drobo would offer. Redundancy can help protect you against failed hard drives.

 

[Samuelsan2001]

Well I have a 1tb HD on my iMac & as of today I've barely used 250GB & that's between both my account & my wife's. The new MBP (we both purchased our own) has only 256GB SSD.

I guess I'll be okay since now we're splitting the accounts between 2 separate machines intead of one large one with the iMac?

Or you could return them and get them with 512gb ssd!!

 

[rjbruce]

Unless I'm not understanding Apple Music & Music Match if I have my own collection of music which I purchased over the years, decades from CD's & then MP3's & then I load them into Music Match, am I not just streaming my own music back to me & ultimately having to pay for it on a yearly subscription? Just doesn't make sense to pay someone else to listen to music I already paid for? I mean if that's how the technology is going then I guess but just seems a bit wasteful.

It depends how you look at it, but yes, if you look at music match as buying and streaming your own music back, then yes it seems sort of wasteful. I had justified it to myself as $25/year bought me a couple things:

1. Storage - Because I no longer had to store music locally, I freed up a ton of space on my mac. It also freed up storage on my iPhone because I could stream the music there too rather than download/sync everything.
2. Portability - I had access to all of my music anywhere I had an internet connection on multiple devices. I could of course download music to listen offline, but I didn't have to be attached to the device or on the same network to get to it.
3. Cost - Purchasing a decent external drive is going to run around $100. A decent NAS is going to be several hundred. This was $25/year and would free up 55GB immediately for you (plus your wife's). Of course you can do pictures, time machine, and anything else you want with the extra space of a NAS.
   
4. Recovery - It's stored in the cloud, so it's offsite in case of a disaster.

You can of course download your entire library any time. So for about $2 a month you space plus a few other benefits. It's just up to you whether you can shift your view to the price of storage versus the price of music you already paid for.

 

[ZMacintosh]

I think you're referring to iTunes Match (Music match?). Basically what it entails is iTunes match entails is to match your current music (CDs, etc) against Apple's high quality lossless songs. So if you have a 320Kbps MP3, if iTunes has it - it will provide you the better quality. if the artist/song does not exist it stores it for you in the cloud to access/sync.

Apple Music/iCloud Music Library does some of the same things but like iCloud Photo Library it matches all of your playlists, content across the board. It's really handy.

I would recommend iCloud Drive and get 500GB or 1TB to handle your syncing. Apple makes it easy with it to have it all the same wherever you are and the redundancy is its in the cloud (Which is synced to your other devices) and on your time machine back-up. less maintenance than these personal NAS devices. They're not difficult for Apple applications, but most of these use various databases and library files, its easier to corrupt over these types of devices that don't use Apple's protocol.

 

[HDFan]

I don't use iTunes match as my understanding was that the download quality was limited to 256 kbs and all of my CD's are enclosed as lossless. According to this MacWorld UK article if your original is encoded at less than 256 kbs it will only be upgraded to 256. Am I missing something?

http://www.macworld.co.uk/feature/a...tch-apple-music-icloud-music-library-3634505/

Apple has access to high bitrate masters but I've been waiting for years for them to make them available to customers. So I use Tidal HIFI rather than Apple Music if I'm streaming, or play from lossless tracks on my iPhone.

 

[ZMacintosh]

if you have higher quality it will allow you to stream it over iTunes Match, if yours is less quality it matches it with iTunes quality

 

[HDFan]

ZMacintosh - that would be really cool if it did. What's the source of your information? Every place I've checked (MacWorld, CNN, lots of apple discussion threads (such as https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7417637?start=0&tstart=0) are unanimous that 256 Kbps is the maximum streaming supported - the same as iTunes.

And that is what Apple says (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204146):

If you have songs encoded in ALAC, WAV, or AIFF formats, we create an AAC 256Kbps version and upload it to iCloud so that it can be played on all of your other devices.

But there is one somewhat confusing statement about downloading files:

• Matched songs in your local library don't automatically transcode to 256 kbps AAC. To get a higher quality transcoding, download the matched songs from iCloud.

which I take to mean you can download a higher bitrate song which you have uploaded. You just can't stream it.