Hard Drive solutions to go with the MBP

[sachin10dulkar]

Hi Guys,

so i have a 13inch MBP, and am loving it.

my MBP will be the only mac i have in the house and therefore will be the main multimedia hub for all my pics, movies and songs.

i have over 65000 photos, 6000 songs, and around 300 home movie DVds that will all be on the harddrive system somewhere. to be accessed and used by the MBP, ipods etc in the house and importantly Apple TV

my question is what do people think is the best hard drive solution for the main storage and access of these files? options:

1) get 2tb ext hard drives and plug into MBP
2) NAS or more likely Airport extreme air disk.

the 1st would be cheaper, but the 2nd 'always' on, in that the files would be accessible even if i take the MBP away.

i am sure using the MBP as a desktop replacement and the only computer in the house is not unsual, and my multimedia library is also not out of the ordinary, so what are other people doing???

Thanks

 

[TopHatPlus]

hmmm well i run a 2 TB western digital external hard drive, when i move out of my parents house (hopefully never wink wink) then i would run a 2 TB time capsule, so you get the universal hard drive and have the 2 tb hard drive 1 backup is not enough =G

 

[neversaynever]

usefulness of data streaming over the airwaves is close to nil except internet. I have one wd fw800 1tb disk and 500gb fw400 time machine backup daisychained. I'm getting a 160gb ssd so I may have to change it soon. My current plan is building my own san setup and connecting it via gbit ethernet- it is the most futureproof and cheap option in the long term. When I need to add hdd's, I will just buy externals and add to the setup, no extra cables, way cheaper than buying externals, and more reliable- and I will set-up a raid array for mission-critical data. this kind of stuff would probably cost thousands if bought ready to use, but provided that you have a working knowledge of computers you can patch it up for $100 or so excluding drives themselves.

if this is overkill for you, just buy some firewire 800 externals and daisychain them.

 

[Eddyisgreat]

I'm thinking about how you could possibly run an always on solution w/ the time capsule/Airport Extreme to your iPods/AAPL TV and so far i'm coming up blank.

AFAIK one is required to have iTunes somewhere on the network acting as a traffic cop for your contents.

From Apple TV Tech Specs:

For streaming media from a Mac or PC:
iTunes 10 or later; iTunes Store account for Home Sharing

As far as my setup goes, it's a simple gigabyte mobo in some antec case running 10.6 and hosts about 3.5 TB of (internal) storage and a rocketraid card so I can add a 5 bay external eSATA enclosure in the future. Functions r media and backup.

 

[fcortese]

either the Time Capsule or external HD for thqt amount of data. The largest GBs the better