Home Media Sharing: Hackintosh vs Freenas vs Reuse MBP

[lulgle]

Hello Everyone,

Trying to get some good advice for best home media sharing. I currently have a 07 MBP that i have stuck in a closet and have it running iTunes. Thats working ok but I may need more storage room. I use that station as mainly iTunes for atv2 and various ipads/iphones around the house. So my question to the community is…

Should I keep the mbp working? and how best to set it up? or build a simple hackintosh with loads of storage, or lastly build a freenas and just make it a huge hdd?

I would like to make this a backup for pictures and stuff also, don't know if that will help with the answers. Not mission critical though.

Thanks for all the help, and if I'm repeating another thread, my apologies.

Happy Holidays everyone.

 

[paulrbeers]

Hello Everyone,

Trying to get some good advice for best home media sharing. I currently have a 07 MBP that i have stuck in a closet and have it running iTunes. Thats working ok but I may need more storage room. I use that station as mainly iTunes for atv2 and various ipads/iphones around the house. So my question to the community is…

Should I keep the mbp working? and how best to set it up? or build a simple hackintosh with loads of storage, or lastly build a freenas and just make it a huge hdd?

I would like to make this a backup for pictures and stuff also, don't know if that will help with the answers. Not mission critical though.

Thanks for all the help, and if I'm repeating another thread, my apologies.

Happy Holidays everyone.

Outside of just adding more storage via Firewire, what isn't your Macbook Pro doing for you that building new would?

Also, if you are going to build a server, do NOT hackintosh it. Just go Windows with itunes.

 

[cardsdoc]

I also use my retired 2007 MBP. Have a 2tb usb2 drive. As an itunes media server it works just fine as not much horsepower needed for this task. Works seamlessly on my network with other macs and ios devices. East to screen share to and control. I also use it as a plex server and do sometimes have trouble transcoding some high bitrate files. A faster Mac mini would be ideal but can't justify the cost for my typical usage (95% itunes server). Agree a hackintosh not worth the time. For a server you want to ensure stability with little upkeep. I've done the hackintosh thing a couple times (although not for a couple years) and while fun to get it working was just not worth the time. Maybe it's better now, don't know for sure.