Large Storage Solution For Files

[mjones185]

All,

I switched to Mac's about year and a half ago and have been in heaven ever since. I use to build PC's an have been into photo and video editing for years. I'm now to the point I want to expand and am struggling in one area. Long term storage solution with easy access from three Mac's. At the moment I have an iMac 24", Macbook Pro, and a Macbook. I have have this hard drive setup:

1 ea. G-Drive 500GB (FW800) for music/video's
1 ea. G-Grive 500GB (FW800) for Photos
1 ea. Seagate 750GB (USB 2) for Movies
1 ea. Seagate 750GB (FW400) for iTunes Backup
1. ea Seagate 160GB (USB 2) for Files/Documents, etc

All these external drives are full (no space left) and either daisy chained or plugged into a USB hub plugged into my iMac. The run 24/7 and I'm not sure if thats good or bad.

What do you recommend for getting a handle on long term storage? if I was to start over should I get say 4 of the Seagate 1.5TB external FW 800 drives for primary use and then another 4 for backup and all being daisy chained into one FW 800 port on my iMac or is there a better solution?

I've thought about the HP Media Server but it's windows based (yuck), building a Linux box (but it sounds complicated), Mac Mini with the hard drives mentioned above.

I appreciate any help you can Offer

 

[prg909]

One word - Drobo

 

[Aea]

Easy solution is Drobo.

Semi Geek solution is building a *nix or HackMac box with a JBOD (Just a Bunch of Disks) structure, similar to what you have now, but in one machine.

Geek solution is building a RAID 5/6/10 Array on a *nix or HackMac box.

Very Geek solution is building a Solaris box using ZFS and Z-RAID *

* You can also use ZFS on OSX I believe, I don't know if it supports the ability for array expansion though, I haven't done too much research into this one.

 

[mjones185]

Thanks for the quick responses. I have been reading about the Drobo and have been reading mixed reviews. Some say it's slower than they like and there's inaccurate free space readings within OSX.

 

[Aea]

It's a standalone consumer NAS without full fledged hardware behind it, as a result it will be slower then a separate box to do the same job

Do you need fast access speeds?

 

[QuarterSwede]

It's a standalone consumer NAS without full fledged hardware behind it, as a result it will be slower then a separate box to do the same job

Do you need fast access speeds?

But at the same time it provides hot swappable drive arrays for cheap (relatively). From what I've heard from users, they love it.

 

[prostuff1]

I am running a linux based NAS that i am loving. Take a look and read up on it over at this site. There forums are here.

I am loving this setup as it allows me to add any size of drive i want (unlike raid 5) and any type of drive i want (SATA or IDE). There are also other benefits to it and if you would like me to continue let me know. But i would suggest reading up on unRaid over at there site, forum, and the wiki.

Since you are familiar with building computers this kinda of system should not be hard for you to put together and you will get more expandability then you ever could from something like a Drobo.

I put together the components for my comptuer for right around 300-350 without the drives. With a little bit of luck you could pull the drives out of those enclosures and put them into the server, if you want.