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Storage Solutions for our OUT-OF-CONTROL iTunes Libraries

Hey all,

Im considering purchasing an apple TV

How many of you backup your data onto another drive/server? or if you loose your data do you just re download it as you have already paid for it? Is there an expiry date or could you re download your movies in ten years for free if you wanted?

Thanks
 
Bogged down by all the technicalities

Upfront I have to say that I have no idea what most of you are talking about. I am comparatively comfortable with technology, but I don't understand all the technical jargon, and I am not able to build devices myself. (That's why I love my Mac)

I am looking for a solution to my iTunes library storage problem too. Although my library seems very small to what I've seen described here! I have about 40GB of movies (from iTunes), 20GB of TV shows (also from iTunes), and less than 10GB of music. This is all on my MacBook Pro, which only came with a 160 GB drive. When all my photos and school stuff are added in, I frequently cannot do software updates because it's too full.

I also have an AppleTV, with all of my movies and TV shows synced on it. I need a solution that will allow me to move the movies and TV shows off my computer and onto something that will work as a computer with my AppleTV. I have several children who are comfortable using the AppleTV, and the TV shows are mostly theirs, so "the solution" needs to make everything fully accessible with a click of the AppleTV remote.

I would like a solution that would allow my to do the Home sharing option on iTunes, so that if there was a movie I had previously moved to "the solution," I could move it back should I want to watch it while I'm away from home.

My brother suggested connecting an external hard-drive to an Airport Extreme base station and running the movies wirelessly through it to the AppleTV. Does this work? Wouldn't it still need some sort of software interface that runs iTunes? He was also concerned about the amount of energy using a computer would require. He said that while expanding the drives of a G4 would probably be the least expensive option at first, after a year those saving would be lost to the electric bill from running it all the time.

Any suggestions for a fairly techno-illiterate mom?
 
Wirelessly posted (nokia e63: Mozilla/5.0 (SymbianOS/9.2; U; Series60/3.1 NokiaE63-1/100.21.110; Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 ) AppleWebKit/413 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/413)

@ lynn,

Please bare with me, as i am typing this from my mobile! I dont think that it's possible to do the external hdd plugged directly into the airport method - not in the way you described anyway.

I am fairly certain that you will be able to store your entire itunes library on your external hd that is connected to the airport, it will appear as a drive on your desktop and you can copy everything to the hd. From there its then possible to stream/copy files to the appletv. Note that for streaming to happen, you must have your laptop turned on and connected to the network etc.

Another solution would indeed be another computer, such as a old mac mini or even some sort of netbook laptop (which consume hardly any power).

:)
 
Backup

if you loose your data [purchased from iTunes] do you just re download it as you have already paid for it?
Click to expand...


Surely best to double-check with Apple on this, but fairly certain purchases from iTunes are a one time deal; if what you've purchased is lost, you would need to buy it again.

Thus the need to backup your data, in its entirety in two separate places.
 
Mommylinn said:
I am looking for a solution to my iTunes library storage problem too. Although my library seems very small to what I've seen described here! I have about 40GB of movies (from iTunes), 20GB of TV shows (also from iTunes), and less than 10GB of music. This is all on my MacBook Pro, which only came with a 160 GB drive. When all my photos and school stuff are added in, I frequently cannot do software updates because it's too full.

I also have an AppleTV, with all of my movies and TV shows synced on it. I need a solution that will allow me to move the movies and TV shows off my computer and onto something that will work as a computer with my AppleTV. I have several children who are comfortable using the AppleTV, and the TV shows are mostly theirs, so "the solution" needs to make everything fully accessible with a click of the AppleTV remote.

I would like a solution that would allow my to do the Home sharing option on iTunes, so that if there was a movie I had previously moved to "the solution," I could move it back should I want to watch it while I'm away from home.

My brother suggested connecting an external hard-drive to an Airport Extreme base station and running the movies wirelessly through it to the AppleTV. Does this work? Wouldn't it still need some sort of software interface that runs iTunes? He was also concerned about the amount of energy using a computer would require. He said that while expanding the drives of a G4 would probably be the least expensive option at first, after a year those saving would be lost to the electric bill from running it all the time.

Any suggestions for a fairly techno-illiterate mom?
Click to expand...

The External HDD connected via USB to an Airport Extreme should work perfectly for you. Since it sounds like you are able to sync your entire media library to the :apple:TV, you don't need to have your MBP running with iTunes open in order to view your media on the :apple:TV--this is only essential for streaming (vs. syncing which copies your media on the :apple:TV's hard drive). If you decide you'd like watch something on your MBP while away from your home network, you can just copy it back to the HDD on the MBP. And if for some reason you have to reset the :apple:TV, you can just resync the library (with your MBP on your home network and running iTunes, of course).
 
i have tried just about everything and finally settled on this

Hackintosh unit , 6x2TB drives

Apple's software RAID 1+0

i have 6 TB of usable fast storage, streams to ATV , Popcorn hour and my iphone VIA squeezepod.

all for roughly 800 CAD.

i used to have drobo and then drobo pro....too slow for me.

this setup allows for the utmost flexibility, it requires a little more power...not much though if setup properly.

furthermore i managed to cool the whole system by just 2 fans, downclocked the cpu, fanless video card , fanless cpu cooler (using rear 120mm to cool cpu heatsink).

its very quiet and very reliable.


motherboard : P5QSE-PLUS
memory : 2x2GB PC2-6400
HDD : 6x2TB WD GREEN (ran widdle on them to remove spindown)
Cheap black case , 500W dual reliability coolermaster PSU
6 bay 3.5" that fits in 4 cdrom bays.
9400GT video card 1GB hypermemory
30GB OCZ Solid SSD
cheap raid controller i managed to find with mac support (to run ssd because i ran out of ports :D )

OSX 10.6.3

i installed squeezebox on it and with squeezepod i have access to all 30,000 of my songs over 3g or wifi anywhere i am....i love it to death.

any questions....i can answer :D
 
tbayrgs said:
Since it sounds like you are able to sync your entire media library to the :apple:TV, you don't need to have your MBP running with iTunes open in order to view your media on the :apple:TV--this is only essential for streaming (vs. syncing which copies your media on the :apple:TV's hard drive).
Click to expand...

I had forgotten about that, thanks! Yes, I can sync all the movies and TV shows from my MBP, but I also have some TV shows I downloaded onto our PC :eek: because I had run out of space on my MBP. I would like to move everything onto one server, so neither computer has to be open to watch them. Even with the extra TV shows, I think I could still sync the entire library, if I could first get it all in one place.

I don't actually have the current Airport Extreme base station, I have the older one from 2003, B class, which I was told would not work for doing this. But lets say I use an external hardrive to move my library off my MBP, use Homesharing to move the shows I want from my PC onto my MBP, and then move them onto the external hardrive. Once I have them all in one place, could I then sync the Library (on the EH) with my AppleTV through my MBP? Is that possible, and if so, how is it done?
 
Mommylinn said:
I had forgotten about that, thanks! Yes, I can sync all the movies and TV shows from my MBP, but I also have some TV shows I downloaded onto our PC :eek: because I had run out of space on my MBP. I would like to move everything onto one server, so neither computer has to be open to watch them. Even with the extra TV shows, I think I could still sync the entire library, if I could first get it all in one place.

I don't actually have the current Airport Extreme base station, I have the older one from 2003, B class, which I was told would not work for doing this. But lets say I use an external hardrive to move my library off my MBP, use Homesharing to move the shows I want from my PC onto my MBP, and then move them onto the external hardrive. Once I have them all in one place, could I then sync the Library (on the EH) with my AppleTV through my MBP? Is that possible, and if so, how is it done?
Click to expand...

If you have both your MBP and your PC on the same network, you should be able to connect an External HDD to either, enable sharing of the drive and just move everything from both computers to the External over your network. Then just point your iTunes library on your MBP to the External HDD. You can then sync everything to the :apple:TV--it will transfer your media from the external to the :apple:TV over your home network.
 
I'm seriously debating deleting all of my SD content for shows with HD versions... between my iPhone and iPad, I no longer sync SD content when an HD version exists (even though SD content on the retina display looks great, HD content is noticably better) and of course, only HD videos are watched on the Apple TV. I can probably free up around 200GB of space if I delete my SD content.

Has anyone done this or thought about doing this?
 
When I purchase HD content I don't even bother downloading the SD versions as I have no portable device to play them on and it's just a waste of storage space and download bandwidth. The down side to this is I now have about 120 un-downloaded SD items in my iTunes download queue that I can't get rid of:mad: Meaning every time I try to download something in iTunes the whole queue starts to download and i have to delete everything I don't want from the queue:mad:
 
Regarding the DROBO, I am specificallyinterested in the FW800 model, are they noisy?

I currently use a 2TB in RAID 1 WD mybook via FW800 and it is fanless so very silent.

Noise is an issue for me, can anyone comment on this?
 
Kaiser Phoenix said:
Regarding the DROBO, I am specificallyinterested in the FW800 model, are they noisy?

I currently use a 2TB in RAID 1 WD mybook via FW800 and it is fanless so very silent.

Noise is an issue for me, can anyone comment on this?
Click to expand...

When the fan kicks on they get a little loud, but nothing horrible. When the fan is off, they are pretty quiet. I highly recommend one.
 
Kaiser Phoenix said:
Regarding the DROBO, I am specificallyinterested in the FW800 model, are they noisy?

I currently use a 2TB in RAID 1 WD mybook via FW800 and it is fanless so very silent.

Noise is an issue for me, can anyone comment on this?
Click to expand...

when copying to the Drobo there is a little noise, but it is very low. I haven't noticed the fans kicking in at all. All I keep on my drobo is a copy of my itunes library (music, movies, tv shows)
 
marknicholls said:
Hey all,

Im considering purchasing an apple TV

How many of you backup your data onto another drive/server? or if you loose your data do you just re download it as you have already paid for it? Is there an expiry date or could you re download your movies in ten years for free if you wanted?

Thanks
Click to expand...

All of my itunes library is on a drobo (about 600GB). I have also hacked the apple tv (atv flash) and store the library on an external hard drive connected directly to the apple tv.
 
Kaiser Phoenix said:
Regarding the DROBO, I am specificallyinterested in the FW800 model, are they noisy?

I currently use a 2TB in RAID 1 WD mybook via FW800 and it is fanless so very silent.

Noise is an issue for me, can anyone comment on this?
Click to expand...

I have my Drobo connected to an iMac which serves my iTunes content to my ATV (even though they're less than 10 feet apart, I run it all through my Airport Extreme). The Drobo is unobtrusive and I can't hear anything, even during very quiet moments in movies. When I stand right next to it and the fan's kicking in then it's audible, but fairly soft.
 
Very pleased with my Drobo streaming via the iMac, but I'd still like to move to a setup which doesn't need the Mac to be switched on.

Is there anything out there yet which will act as a proper iTunes home server, allowing you to stream audio & video as well as synching iPods/iPhones etc?
 
Synology Disk Station DS410 The Best

Personally, I prefer Synology DS410 over Drobo products. It supports Time Machine and iTunes.

I am using (4) 1.5TB with RAID 5 which equates to 4TB of use-able space. For movies, I have gone the XBMC on Apple TV route over using iTunes to stream content. For music I use a iTunes on a normal laptop and a PC to stream music to the Apple TV's speakers.

There are some draw backs to using a NAS:

1. XBMC has some difficulties working around the DS410 administration system, as it can't immediately access the root; you have to use a guest account that is password free.
2. Virus scanning a NAS is problematic due to software availability. It's easy to virus scan an attached drive but not a NAS.

I hope this helps the community.

DS410: $499 (Amazon.com)
HDs: $80 x 4 = $320 (Western Digital 1.5 TB Caviar Green SATA Intellipower 64 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Desktop Hard Drive WD15EARS)
Total Cost: $819
 
I don't know if anyone has seen these yet or not, but seagate is releasing some nice little NAS devices that say they are compatible as an iTunes server. The new Blackarmor 400 line comes in 3 options. The most basic, which doesn't include any storage is still $400, but it includes 4 hot swappable drive bays and can be set up in all RAID configurations as well as JBOD (I have no idea what that is anyway). From their site stats it looks like each bay can accommodate up to a 2TB HD. I think I'll be looking into these a little later on down the road. I don't need it yet, but at the rate of my increasing TV show consumption, I'll need by the end of the year.


http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/products/network_storage/blackarmor/
 
vastoholic said:
I don't know if anyone has seen these yet or not, but seagate is releasing some nice little NAS devices that say they are compatible as an iTunes server. The new Blackarmor 400 line comes in 3 options. The most basic, which doesn't include any storage is still $400, but it includes 4 hot swappable drive bays and can be set up in all RAID configurations as well as JBOD (I have no idea what that is anyway). From their site stats it looks like each bay can accommodate up to a 2TB HD. I think I'll be looking into these a little later on down the road. I don't need it yet, but at the rate of my increasing TV show consumption, I'll need by the end of the year.


http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/products/network_storage/blackarmor/
Click to expand...
interesting to know. bit expensive - especially since they dont state anywhere what hardware chip it uses, so i am not sure if i trust it.

MacModMachine said:
Hackintosh unit , 6x2TB drives

all for roughly 800 CAD.

any questions....i can answer :D
Click to expand...

man.. you can answer me HOW the hell you got 6x2TBs and an entire computer for $800!! aussie -> CAD is roughly the same.

also, what RAID card was that?
 
vastoholic said:
I don't know if anyone has seen these yet or not, but seagate is releasing some nice little NAS devices that say they are compatible as an iTunes server. The new Blackarmor 400 line comes in 3 options. The most basic, which doesn't include any storage is still $400, but it includes 4 hot swappable drive bays and can be set up in all RAID configurations as well as JBOD (I have no idea what that is anyway). From their site stats it looks like each bay can accommodate up to a 2TB HD. I think I'll be looking into these a little later on down the road. I don't need it yet, but at the rate of my increasing TV show consumption, I'll need by the end of the year.


http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/products/network_storage/blackarmor/
Click to expand...
I bet the iTunes Server is based off of the same package as everyone else -- Firefly. The problem with this is, unless something has recently changed, it will only serve music and hasn't been under active development in awhile.
 
NightStorm said:
I bet the iTunes Server is based off of the same package as everyone else -- Firefly. The problem with this is, unless something has recently changed, it will only serve music and hasn't been under active development in awhile.
Click to expand...

I don't think it's a big deal for me anyway. I would probably still have it routed through my computer anyway. That's not one of the selling points for me. I've just been looking into a prebuilt package deal that included more than 2 swappable drive bays.
 
magikgeek said:
Personally, I prefer Synology DS410 over Drobo products. It supports Time Machine and iTunes.

I am using (4) 1.5TB with RAID 5 which equates to 4TB of use-able space. For movies, I have gone the XBMC on Apple TV route over using iTunes to stream content. For music I use a iTunes on a normal laptop and a PC to stream music to the Apple TV's speakers.

There are some draw backs to using a NAS:

1. XBMC has some difficulties working around the DS410 administration system, as it can't immediately access the root; you have to use a guest account that is password free.
2. Virus scanning a NAS is problematic due to software availability. It's easy to virus scan an attached drive but not a NAS.

I hope this helps the community.

DS410: $499 (Amazon.com)
HDs: $80 x 4 = $320 (Western Digital 1.5 TB Caviar Green SATA Intellipower 64 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Desktop Hard Drive WD15EARS)
Total Cost: $819
Click to expand...

How's the performance of those WD hard drives? I'm thinking about getting a setup very similar to yours, except getting the 2TB Caviar Green hard drives.
 
Seeing the comments about Firefly, is there still nothing out there which will act as a true, standalone iTunes server allowing you to stream music & video while synching iOS devices as well?

Still using a Drobo here via an iMac and it would be good to be able to stream to Apple TVs without having the Mac on.
 
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