Suggestions please - media server, file sharing AND 3 x Time Machine backups

[mr1970]

Afternoon all

We're doing some work in the house and I'm thinking about taking the opportunity to put in Cat 5e while I'm at it. I'm also thinking about reconfiguring my storage somehow and would welcome any advice. Story is:

- we have about about 500GB and rising of iTunes media, currently sitting on an old G4 Powermac and serving an Apple TV (the G4's got a 2-port SATA card).
- 3 machines (mine, my wife's and now my son's) needing Time Machine space
- at the moment, my wife's and mine back up via Airport Extreme to a USB 1TB drive hanging off the back
- we run the whole arrangement at the moment over a Devolo powerline network
- we have a bunch of photos we'd like to be able to put somewhere and share
- we have a bunch of other home files it would make sense to have somewhere common too.
- finally, we have an old Windows PC which runs a couple of bits and pieces (eg MS Money) so it would be good to be able to back up to a network partition somehow.

All in all, I think I need about 2.5TB and maybe more, so filling the G4 any more isn't going to work. As far as I can see, my options include (but probably aren't limited to):

1 - External 4 or 5 bay eSATA or Firewire enclosure for the G4
2 - Drobo via Firewire onto the G4
3 - DroboShare and ditch the G4
4 - ReadyNAS or similar (Qnap, Synology etc) and ditch the G4

As far as I can see, the problems I might have with these are:

1 - Can the G4 run soft RAID over eSATA or do I need an enclosure with it built-in?
2 - Does Drobo have the speed (and indeed does Firewire?)
3 - Does Drobo have the speed and can it be set up to run multiple Time Machine partitions and work as an iTunes server? Oh, and DroboShare's expensive.
4. Not sure how this would work on multiple TM partitions. And can the iTunes server run the ATV?

All thoughts welcome...would be good to decide what I'm doing before I start laying cables or buying kit!

Thanks in advance

 

[Donar]

...
2 - Does Drobo have the speed (and indeed does Firewire?)

4. Not sure how this would work on multiple TM partitions. And can the iTunes server run the ATV?

2 - Drobo should be fast enough to deliver HD Media Files to your Apple TV if connected to your G4 over Firewire. Read and wite rates are a bit slow - about 15 MByte / second.

4 - I have 4 Macs in my household and all back up to a Synology 509+ with Time Machine. No problem so far.
Usually the itunes server inegrated into a NAS does not run the aTV, as you have to enter a PIN for it to work - at least that is what i have heard.