ITunes Storage

[Jasons0147]

Long time stalker; first time poster with a quandary.

Quick breakdown of my setup

2012 IMAc
(2) 32GB Iphone 5
32GB Ipad Mini for Daughter
16GB Ipad 2 for Wife
16GB Ipad 3 for Myself
3 Apple TVs
90meg internet service
No Cable TV

We cut the wire about a year ago and couldnt be happier however now because of our compulsive tv/movie/music habbits we are at our limits with storage space and I am looking for a more permanent storage solution. Currently I keep all of my Itunes Library (about 700gb) on the Imac and then have another 2TB of media on an external that I am using as additional storage, we do not stream from external because of it being USB 2.0, I just move things back and forth.

I was looking at possibly buying either the Gtechnology 8TB thunderbolt hard drive or the WD 8TB Thunderbolt hard drive but after reading another post about thunderbolt being useless if it doesnt have a SSD inside of it got me to thinking, is it really the best way to spend my money?

I am open to any and all solutions including buying a dock and adding in my own hard drives (I would need serious direction here as I have been very confused when shopping). I do however have an immediate budget of between $700 and $800 tops. I would be willing to purchase a dock with 4TB to start with options to expand as time goes on and just add in hard drives as I have the need.

So, where do I go from here......

 

[Nightarchaon]

i Hung my iTunes library off the back of an old Macbook Pro, connected via Firewire 800 to a Drobo, TBs of storage, all shared via homesharing to Apple TVs, iPads iPhones and other PCs / Macs.

Can manage 3 1080p simultaneous broadcasts, + still using that drobo to host my Steam library, not had any drop-outs.

Ultimately there are as many ways to deal with this issues as stars in the sky, but you cant go wrong with the drobo, easy to expand "as you grow" unlike many raids

 

[whoiare]

There is no reason why you cant use your current USB 2.0 drive to house your Itunes library and stream to all i devices. i have no issues streaming to 3 ATVs all at the same time using a similar setup.

The only suggestion i have is what the previous user stated, just get a dedicated FW 800 drive. 3 to 4Tb, since that port is basically not used anymore and the HD and Imac arent moving. This would free up a USB port, however cost a bit more for the drive with FW 800.

And a comment on storage/movies/tv shows etc. I too was once a "movie collector" where i was desperate to find some end all solution to have as much storage as possible so i can keep all my TB's worth of tv shows movies music and pictures in some library somewhere where i can access them with any one of my i devices at any point in my house and either watch or listen to them. I was doing this with XBMC on jailbroken Idevices. I got to the point where i wanted to keep updating my i device software - losing the jailbreak etc etc i decided to give it and rip all my content to itunes friendly formats. So i started in on my TBs of movie and tv show data. Most were in MP4s so it was an easy convert, some were MKVs, not as easy but not difficult. a good portion was in avi. Most of my earlier TV shows were also in avi. So i had 2 choices. 1) run handbrake day and night for months to convert every file to mp4 formats for itunes, or 2) sort out which items ill actually WATCH again or really NEED to keep.

i went with option 2. and ill tell you, especially with tv shows....its REALLY REALLY hard justifying watching any tv show again. Movies are a bit harder, but even then im sure you can go through your collection. Pick a movie and say will i ever watch this again to the point that its worth converting. After doing all this i cut my library in half, and i probably delete as much as i add as of late. The thing is...especially with tv shows... there will always be something NEW to watch. The only time i find myself going back through a season of a show is during these summer months when not a lot is happening on tv. however, by this time, usually the latest season of the show is already on netflix. Example: we watch the middle and modern family - basically because they are the best shows on a weds night. However, onced watch there is no way we would watch those episodes again nor watch the entire season over during the summer. However raising hope and new girl, we like enough to do marathon season watching over the summer. So whats the point in saving all the modern family and middle episodes? just to show off the collection? it becomes a waste of space - and especially since the ATV menus dont allow a lot of sorting options it just adds to the long list of items you need to scroll down to find what your looking for.

bottom line - you dont need tons of storage, you need to take a look at what you will actually watch multiple times and justifying the HD space your using.

 

[Panch0]

USB2 is fast enough to stream, although I'm not sure how it would do with multiple HD Streams.
FW800 is my personal favorite, but then I have a 2009 iMac and don't have TB available... You can get a TB-FW adapter directly from Apple for $29.

The only reason that TB would be a waste is that you have to have a lot of spindles in the enclosure to even come close to what it can handle. large capacity enclosures are expensive, and tend to not be 'consumer grade' which makes them even more expensive. If you have the money, it's not like you're going to be disappointed in a TB enclosure - it just won't be any faster than FW800 (maybe even USB2) for a single disk because the disk is the bottleneck.

There are adapters for TB-eSATA that you might want to take a look at. eSATA has been pretty well adopted so there are lots of inexpensive options out there.

Checkout OWC at macsales.com. Big fan of their enclosures, although they don't seem to be supporting TB directly yet - only through adapters. They do sell some 3rd party stuff that is direct TB.