NAS or Mac Mini Server.....

[LumbermanSVO]

One of the first things I did to the 2009 MacBook was yank the optical drive and replace it with a second drive that I used solely as a Time Machine drive. It's how I run all my Apple laptops that originally came with an optical drive. The 2009 MacBook Pro doesn't have an optical drive, so I used an external SSD as a second Time Machine backup.

I suspect there is an issue with the WD in JBOD mode. Maybe you can yank the drives from the WD case and put them in separate cases and see if anything changes?

 

[ctyrider]

Ah yes, the old "torrent" bogeyman. Not all that interesting to those of us that have been buying and ripping discs for a couple decades. And have every right to have them accessible for the family. But no, apparently we should all line up like sheep to pay - again - to stream them again. And there is no container in the world ever other than M4V and Itunes?

Seriously? Save the corporate propaganda for kids.

The solution you are talking about is not about user control, it is about being taken. You set up your own PC to use what you have, not to be a "subscriber" being tapped into.

OK, I seriously don't understand what you're ranting against.. "Corporate propaganda".. what? You're saying I am the one being "taken" for paying a few bucks a month to get on-demand access to huge library of content.. And yet, you somehow come out ahead by buying, ripping and storing optical disks? Right.. that makes a lot of sense..

And I have just as much "user control" of my solution, as any other HTPC based setup. I promise there isn't a single thing I can't do with my home theater setup, which I care to do.. And not once I thought "if only I could drop a PC in my living room, and hook it up to my TV like it's 2003" LOL

 

[Osamede]

OK, I seriously don't understand what you're ranting against.. "Corporate propaganda".. what? You're saying I am the one being "taken" for paying a few bucks a month to get on-demand access to huge library of content.. And yet, you somehow come out ahead by buying, ripping and storing optical disks? Right.. that makes a lot of sense..

This is a bizarre distortion of what was said in black and white: if you have owned content and ripped content already, why would you not want to use it instead of renting it again?

Your ability to misrepresent simple things is rather disturbing. You are creating your own reality. If you dont have mental issues and this is a "debate tactic", i can tell you it's hopeless.

 

[ctyrider]

This is a bizarre distortion of what was said in black and white: if you have owned content and ripped content already, why would you not want to use it instead of renting it again?

Your ability to misrepresent simple things is rather disturbing. You are creating your own reality. If you dont have mental issues and this is a "debate tactic", i can tell you it's hopeless.

Nowhere did I say a thing about "renting content again you already own". It's almost like you enjoy making up strawmen arguments and having debates with yourself. Have fun doing that, I am out.

 

[nebo1ss]

OK, I seriously don't understand what you're ranting against.. "Corporate propaganda".. what? You're saying I am the one being "taken" for paying a few bucks a month to get on-demand access to huge library of content.. And yet, you somehow come out ahead by buying, ripping and storing optical disks? Right.. that makes a lot of sense..

And I have just as much "user control" of my solution, as any other HTPC based setup. I promise there isn't a single thing I can't do with my home theater setup, which I care to do.. And not once I thought "if only I could drop a PC in my living room, and hook it up to my TV like it's 2003" LOL

I think your observation about a PC in the living room being a 2003 type solution interesting. i thought I would provide a picture of my setup which does not look very 2003 to me. In the cupboard with the flip down door under the AVR is a Mac mini, a NAS, two backup disc drives and a ROKU 4. Does everything i need. I do stream with the ROKU 4 but only NBA, Amazon Prime and Sky sports. I have over 600 Movies on the NAS and lots of music.

 

[ctyrider]

I think your observation about a PC in the living room being a 2003 type solution interesting. i thought I would provide a picture of my setup which does not look very 2003 to me. In the cupboard with the flip down door under the AVR is a Mac mini, a NAS, two backup disc drives and a ROKU 4. Does everything i need. I do stream with the ROKU 4 but only NBA, Amazon Prime and Sky sports. I have over 600 Movies on the NAS and lots of music. View attachment 608568

Your setup looks just fine to me. It's not all that dissimilar to mine, except I have my Media Server (custom Hackintosh PC with 8TB of storage) stashed away in the garage.. front ended with 3 Apple TV 4's in each of my room with TVs. Media Server runs iTunes to serve the movies I own, as well as Music/Photos/Home Videos. ATVs provide access to all my local content, plus Netflix, Hulu, OTA TV, YouTube, etc.

One of the main reasons I prefer ATVs as the "user facing" devices is that I have small children.. And it makes a lot easier for them to interact with ATV UI, rather than trying to control HTPC directly. Not to mention, with multiple TVs - front ending each with low-cost media streamers results in a lot less expensive setup, and also each TV gets access to identical content.

But so long as you have a single TV in the house and you're happy to interact with the Mac as a media interface (assume you run Plex or similar) - your setup works as well.

 

[0388279]

Hi Lumberman,

You stated:

"I suspect there is an issue with the WD in JBOD mode. Maybe you can yank the drives from the WD case and put them in separate cases and see if anything changes?"

That is what I thought at first as well. But I also tried two independent portable drives from Seagate and had the same result. I am beginning to think that maybe the issue is when Time Machine alternates back-ups between two different drives.

Donald Barar

 

[talmy]

And I have just as much "user control" of my solution, as any other HTPC based setup. I promise there isn't a single thing I can't do with my home theater setup, which I care to do.. And not once I thought "if only I could drop a PC in my living room, and hook it up to my TV like it's 2003" LOL

Wow. I dropped a PC in my living room in 2003, seriously. Connected it to a monitor instead of a TV.

 

[garyleecn]

With years of experience on both Mac servers and synology's, I can say they both have advantages.

Two major points are,
The Mac lacks RAID feature, therefore lacks future 'expand-ability'. Of course you can buy a bunch of external hard drives but there you will not get redundancy. This is important when you have a LOT of data. And of course you can get softwares like softRAID, but the softRAID is not expandable. Once you are set with 4 drives, you're set. If you run out of space in the future, you gotta get another RAID, therefore you will waste at least one drive for redundancy.
NAS's are certainly lack of raw performances, you pay a LOT more for the same computational power. And easier to hand on. Everyone with Mac experience can play with it, and some (not synology or qnap) NAS softwares can be really tricky to use.

 

[talmy]

The Mac lacks RAID feature, therefore lacks future 'expand-ability'. Of course you can buy a bunch of external hard drives but there you will not get redundancy. This is important when you have a LOT of data. And of course you can get softwares like softRAID, but the softRAID is not expandable. Once you are set with 4 drives, you're set. If you run out of space in the future, you gotta get another RAID, therefore you will waste at least one drive for redundancy.

I will argue against RAID for home servers. While one certainly needs redundancy, this needs to be in the form of off-site backups to protect against theft and natural disasters as well as equipment failure. RAID is great for businesses which need quick or instantaneous recovery from drive failures as well as an "instant" backup. If you have to wait a day before you can watch that movie because you need to recover from an offsite backup, or if you lose a just created DVD rip, it's just a nuisance not a potential bankruptcy.

 

[nebo1ss]

That is the thing about opinions everybody has one. Home servers often have more than just video and music files on them. I run Raid five with my NAS and also have offsite backup with Crashplan. Raid five provides high availability and Crashplan proves backup.

 

[garyleecn]

I will argue against RAID for home servers. While one certainly needs redundancy, this needs to be in the form of off-site backups to protect against theft and natural disasters as well as equipment failure. RAID is great for businesses which need quick or instantaneous recovery from drive failures as well as an "instant" backup. If you have to wait a day before you can watch that movie because you need to recover from an offsite backup, or if you lose a just created DVD rip, it's just a nuisance not a potential bankruptcy.

You are confusing 'redundancy' and 'backup'. Raid and off-site is not one against another, they can (and better) exist at the same time.

First of all, a raid 'backup' is continuous, you don't loose anything if you have a HD failure. But off-site backup? Yes, you can purchase those online service, which can be set up every 5 minutes, but the cost? And do you trust your personal photos, all data to a small company? And is your internet bandwidth good enough? I don't know about others, but most plans Comcast offers has only 5/10 Mbps upload. And you wanna backup your 500g photo library and 300g music library? The backup is going to take forever.
And yes, you can just use a portable hard drive, copy everything off your computer and put it in your office or in your car. But how often will you update your backup? Once your computer/HD crashes, and you realized you haven't updated your backup for half a year or longer, then what can you do?

So I believe RAID is actually the best insurance policy if I have to choose in between. Really, the only thing you have to worry is like fire. A theft? I mean if I were a theft, even I like tech gears a lot, I'd rather go looking for other stuff like cash, rings, watches. A hard drive is worth nothing, you can buy a new one with like $100, I won't steal that. And the raid system is a 'set-and-forget' system, really, usual people don't have that much time and effort to manage their backup solutions, and they'll probably forget the system once set up until they need it.


If you want some extra safety, then off-site comes into place, just grab a portable HD with your most valuable, must have data, and put it somewhere else.



Just think, off-site is against fire, and raid is against HD/computer crash.
What's the odds of fire vs HD crash. Fire is wheather, and HD crash is when.

 

[talmy]

You are confusing 'redundancy' and 'backup'. Raid and off-site is not one against another, they can (and better) exist at the same time.

Not confused at all. Backups are a form of redundancy being that its extra equipment not necessary for functionality. But what I tend to chime in at is the notion that RAID (which has "Redundant" in its name) is not a means for backup.

I'm not going to take the chance that a fire or theft (It can be intentionally stolen) or disk controller failure or power surge that gets past the UPS or a simple act of "sudo rm -rf /" would wipe out my lifetime of irreplaceable photos, financial records, and other documents.

Offsite backup is more than just cloud (for which I've got 25 Mbps up) but also cloned disk images rotated to an "offsite' location on a weekly basis.

I've lost many drives over the years but have yet to lose any data.

 

[garyleecn]

Not confused at all. Backups are a form of redundancy being that its extra equipment not necessary for functionality. But what I tend to chime in at is the notion that RAID (which has "Redundant" in its name) is not a means for backup.

I'm not going to take the chance that a fire or theft (It can be intentionally stolen) or disk controller failure or power surge that gets past the UPS or a simple act of "sudo rm -rf /" would wipe out my lifetime of irreplaceable photos, financial records, and other documents.

Offsite backup is more than just cloud (for which I've got 25 Mbps up) but also cloned disk images rotated to an "offsite' location on a weekly basis.

I've lost many drives over the years but have yet to lose any data.

For average users, the biggest risk is still just drive failure, which can be covered by simply using a raid.
As for 'theft', if someone is intentionally stealing your data, a cloud backup only makes it easier for them to steal.
And if you are really that worried about fire, there are fire proof raid enclosures available on the market.
At last, most usual users will never touch command line interface, not to mention knowing 'sudo rm -r', and they usually forget to update their backups after a few weeks.

 

[nebo1ss]

You are confusing 'redundancy' and 'backup'. Raid and off-site is not one against another, they can (and better) exist at the same time.

First of all, a raid 'backup' is continuous, you don't loose anything if you have a HD failure. But off-site backup? Yes, you can purchase those online service, which can be set up every 5 minutes, but the cost? And do you trust your personal photos, all data to a small company? And is your internet bandwidth good enough? I don't know about others, but most plans Comcast offers has only 5/10 Mbps upload. And you wanna backup your 500g photo library and 300g music library? The backup is going to take forever.
And yes, you can just use a portable hard drive, copy everything off your computer and put it in your office or in your car. But how often will you update your backup? Once your computer/HD crashes, and you realized you haven't updated your backup for half a year or longer, then what can you do?

So I believe RAID is actually the best insurance policy if I have to choose in between. Really, the only thing you have to worry is like fire. A theft? I mean if I were a theft, even I like tech gears a lot, I'd rather go looking for other stuff like cash, rings, watches. A hard drive is worth nothing, you can buy a new one with like $100, I won't steal that. And the raid system is a 'set-and-forget' system, really, usual people don't have that much time and effort to manage their backup solutions, and they'll probably forget the system once set up until they need it.


If you want some extra safety, then off-site comes into place, just grab a portable HD with your most valuable, must have data, and put it somewhere else.



Just think, off-site is against fire, and raid is against HD/computer crash.
What's the odds of fire vs HD crash. Fire is wheather, and HD crash is when.

I use Crashplan with a Family member which has Zero cost except for the 1TB drive at his place for my backups and one at my place for his backups.

I did the initial backup locally and then moved the drive to his location and it does incremental on a daily basis. From an internet speed point of view I have no issues since I run a gigabit internet which provides real world speed of 650 Meg, family member internet is more restrictive at only 50 Meg. As you said Raid provides immediately redundancy and with four drives in my NAS, Raid five was an easy choice.