I need a plan to centralize storage across multiple computers and devices in my home. I have a mac mini that serves as a music server for approx 1TB of lossless iTunes music. Music is played thru a Usb connected DAC, or streamed to several Airport Expresses through out the house. An iMac is used for video editing and photos, stored in iTunes or iPhoto, and streamed to an ATV or pushed to the mini in the media room. Current size of photos and movies on the iMac is just over 1Tb. Additionally there's a macbook pro and several iPads that are used along with the other macs to access to spreadsheets and edit documents. Wifi is provided by an Airport Extreme (the version just before the current 'tower' router was released).
All machines have direct attached storage for backup (time machine and CCC bootable copy).
My issue is two fold -- 1) all machines are starting to fill up the computer HDs, and 2) I would like to have more flexibility to share media and files across devices.
I tried an experiment, putting the iTunes movie library on a Usb disk connected to the Airport Extreme, but pulling 1080p files was slow and buffering made it unwatchable.
I'm considering a NAS, connected to the AE with ethernet cable, and using wifi to reach the other devices. This way iTunes on any computer could access music/movies stored centrally on the NAS. And I see some NAS have capability to stream to airport express and apple TV directly, which is a nice bonus.
Is a NAS the right solution to pursue or is there another approach I should consider?
