Looking for Media back up

[wrkngclasshero]

Good morning all,

I am struggling with an ever growing movie/music/tv show collection and am beginning to need more storage than I currently have. I think I would like to avoid a NAS box because I just feel like it's a bit of a hassle, also infrequent external HD purchases are much easier to clear with the missus.

Anyway, right now I got a 2009 24" 3.06 1TB 4gb iMac. That 1TB is getting full much quicker than I anticipated, (got about 400 gb left). I am thinking of incrementally adding these as needed. I intend setting them up as a 1TB raid 1 as opposed to a 2TB raid 0 and use the FW 800 connection.

As my need for storage increases, I would daisy chain additional drives via FW. To start I would have 2 of them chained, one for a Time machine drive (for my iMac and macbook) and one as an external media drive (which backs up itself with the Raid 1 and will not be backed up by the Time Machine Drive). I like this solution because I am able to purchase a single piece of hardware and have storage and a back up solution combined.

Here come the questions:

1. Would daisy chaining multiple drives slow down streaming to my two apple TV's via my N network. Specifically, I am concerned about streaming a HD movie or two (I have multiple TVs) while a time machine back up occurs. Is it possible that could lead to spiking bitrates that may exceed the FW800 limits?

2. Do you think that the Raid 1 set up for each drive would be adequate back up?

3. Do you have any negative experience with these drives?

4. Anything other suggestions?


Also, being aware of what today is, can we try to keep this limited to somewhat serious responese, thanks!

 

[techound1]

My father is doing the same thing you are thinking of - he's got several mybooks (up to maybe 5 now?) daisychained. He doesn't stream things from them, so I can't speak to some of your questions, however, I can offer some thoughts on #2.

Spouse's HUGE iTunes library is on a mirrored raid set-up. It's great because when (and when, not if) one of the drives fails, pop it out, jump up and down on it in frustration, and put a new one in. The drive makes the mirror, and you're back off to the races. The only thing that will bite us in the butt is theft. Oh, and fire. Oh, and pestilence. And famine. Oh, wait, sorry - you said to keep the silliness to a minimum. Seriously, we're still thinking over how to pull off an out-of-building ginormous backup set-up.

 

[wrkngclasshero]

Since you seem to be familiar with the raid system, if a file accidentally gets deleted, would i be able to access the mirrored drive and get the single file, or does the raid only allow for a complete drive restore?