[EDS_]

Hi folks,

I need shared drive capability for my house, two Macbook Pros, 2 old-white macbooks, 2 Dell laptops.

Stuff:
24,000+ pictures
A couple thousand mostly short videos/clips
612 gigs of music nearly all AIFF files from CDs
A few important word docs etc.

Details:
I play my music through one of the Macbook Pros (8gigs ram, 512 gig-flash storage etc.) using iTunes and Audirvana. I'd like to be able to access the music and pics across all computers when desired.

I have an Apple Airport Extreme and could easily attach a usbHDD to that. Does this solution work well?

If the above is too slow, as I fear it might be, and I go the NAS route what might you' all suggest?

Is anyone familiar with a thread or documentation somewhere that might help me?

Thanks,
Ed

[JohnR]

I have an Apple Airport Extreme and could easily attach a usbHDD to that. Does this solution work well?

I tried that a while back, but don't remember why I abamdoned it. Could have been a Time Machine issue. Do you have a USB drive, you could just try it yourself - ?

If you go to the IT Crowd there are some recent threads on NAS (and more if you search)

[paul79]

I'd go the NAS route with shared folder. This will make life easier.

[skunark]

The airport extreme is really only useful as a time-machine server or a just a random shared network drive for temporary files.   The reason I say temporary files is that airport extreme doesn't provide a local backup solution and becomes the single point of failure.   Same goes with NAS unless you make sure it has a way to backup to an external USB drive and maybe to an offsite/cloud service.  A dedicated NAS is a large expense, it will be faster than the airport extreme, but it won't be perfect either.  Several NASes offer features that tend to not work or the manufactures are slow to fix issues.  I purchased a NAS because it was both an iTunes Server and an iTunes share device (there is a key difference), the next version the iTunes server feature went away.   So you really need to know what you are getting into when you select a NAS.   Also NAS doesn't equate to reliability, you still have to treat it just like another computer for security and backup the contents, sometimes it's just easier to use an old computer instead.

For your important word documents, consider creating an encrypted DMG container and store them there.  The encrypted DMG container will appear like a drive when you open it and can hold several files.  When you are finished accessing the files you just close any applications use it and then eject the virtual drive.  I also keep a copy on on a thumb drive that I update a few times a year.   If the files aren't too important consider using dropbox or iCloud to and keep them there.   For tax and financial files i use an encrypted DMG,  financial planning, serial numbers, etc i just used a password protected iCloud file, everything else is iCloud and a few items for dropbox to share across multiple OSes.

For your photos..  I would really consider using adobe revel, this will work across your windows and mac laptops and tablets.  There is a paid and free level, so it's free to try and if you have tons of photos to upload, then you can pay the monthly fee.  I use Aperture to organize my photos and use the built in vault feature that does a backup to multiple locations (network share and USB HDDs), this has worked between mac computers, but Apple doesn't have a solution for the ipad.  (Apple is falling behind on it's eco-system )  I've started to use adobe revel to so i can see the files across a tablets and laptops and I think that will be my long term storage solution.  Airport Extreme and a NAS won't be as convenient when sharing files across devices.   You might also look at Apple's photo stream, flickr, etc and if you have an apple tv where you want to view the photos that's another option.   If you shoot 'raw' files (vs jpg), you will want to use something like aperture to manage the raw files along with the vault for backups, but most consumers of the files will only need jpg files and photo stream and flickr is probably fine.

If the video clips are personal, then use Adobe Revel/Aperture as well.   If they are paid files, you might not need to back them up.  i.e. iTunes/Amazon tv shows and movies, mostly you can redownload them but some studios don't allow this. 

For your music, if you select your laptop as the primary location, then just use the iTunes on all computers and share your library.  You can also consider creating an appleid/iCloud account where you enable iTunes Match, this way you don't have to keep your laptop running 24x7.   Any device that uses iTunes Match will be able to download any song as an AAC file from anywhere. 

I would recommend that you sign up for the family crashplan plan ($12.50/month) to back up all computers, adobe revel (free or $5.99/month) for photos and personal video, iTunes match (24.99/year for 10 devices) for your music and then use your airport extreme as your Time Machine server to keep a local backup of your laptop with the music.  So you will need two usb HDDs about $110 each with about a two year lifespan $5/month each.  HDDs don't last forever so I tend to retire the music drive about every other year and just keep it in the safe.    Without getting into a format war you might consider switching to ALAC so you can convert that 600GB of music to 300GB of music if you don't want to keep your AIFF files on an external USB drive.     

You might still consider a NAS is if you wanted to enable the logitech media server or DLNS/uPNP for streaming, but you can also run that on your laptop, gaming consoles, blu-ray players and several devices now..   

Jim

[jarcher]

Obviously hooking up a USB HD to your AE would be the most economical solution.  I have a USB 3TB Western Digital Studio hooked up via USB to my Apple Airport Extreme and streaming to iTunes w/ Pure Music works fine : even with very big DSD files.  Maybe it's because my mac mini is hooked up via ethernet to the network (all CAT 6) and not WIFI.  There is a pause to load the track, but I think that because I'm using PM w/ memory play mode, not necessarily because of some issue with the WD HD or network. 

The WD HD can also be seen / accessed by my other mac mini in another room with no problems (also ethernet connected to network).

I think the principal advantage with a NAS is getting a 2 or more bay one so you can run it in RAID and have constant hassle-free backup.  And swap out to bigger drives if you are a media hoarder and think you'll run out of space.  Of course you can just manually back up the USB HD to another, and / or replace it with another if it starts to go bad (though this often happens without warning).  You just have to have a bit more discipline, which is worth it considering the probably substantial investment in the media.

[skunark]

Obviously hooking up a USB HD to your AE would be the most economical solution.  I have a USB 3TB Western Digital Studio hooked up via USB to my Apple Airport Extreme and streaming to iTunes w/ Pure Music works fine : even with very big DSD files.  Maybe it's because my mac mini is hooked up via ethernet to the network (all CAT 6) and not WIFI.  There is a pause to load the track, but I think that because I'm using PM w/ memory play mode, not necessarily because of some issue with the WD HD or network. 

The WD HD can also be seen / accessed by my other mac mini in another room with no problems (also ethernet connected to network).

I think the principal advantage with a NAS is getting a 2 or more bay one so you can run it in RAID and have constant hassle-free backup.  And swap out to bigger drives if you are a media hoarder and think you'll run out of space.  Of course you can just manually back up the USB HD to another, and / or replace it with another if it starts to go bad (though this often happens without warning).  You just have to have a bit more discipline, which is worth it considering the probably substantial investment in the media.

RAID isn't a backup, you still have a single point of failure for file corruptions, theft, fire, virus, power surges,  etc.   All what raid gives you is less downtime in the event that one drive fails, nothing more.    RAID-0 has worse reliability than a single drive, RAID-1/3/5/10 will allow you to have one drive fail while you can still access the files, so unless you can't handle downtime, it's not an expense most consumers should pay for.    It's a great feature for a NAS to offer redundancy, but if they don't offer a local backup solution of the NAS itself, then it's only a false sense of security 

[jarcher]

One operation note worth mentioning : my Pure Music with iTunes doesn't work using the "shared library" function of iTunes.  There is some convoluted way to do it as explained by technical support, but I haven't bothered.  If on one of my other mac's I want to access my iTunes library  via the "shared library" function, I just close Pure Music and listen to it straight from iTunes and take the quality hit. 

This is Pure Music, and not Audiovarna, which you use, so I don't know if Audiovarna has the same problems.  But it is possible that if you want to use Audiovarna on all your mac's, you may run into the same problem.  I suppose you might be able to start fresh with all the other iTunes on the other mac's and "import to library" from the same shared iTunes music file location (i.e. the USB HD on the AE).  Because iTunes manages a library file for each copy of iTunes on the computer's local drive though and doesn't I think actively look at the volume and "refresh" itself, this means that if you added media to the shared library with iTunes on one mac, the other copies of iTunes may not know it's there.  And you would have to therefore do an "add to library" for each copy of iTunes on each mac for all of them to see the file. 

This joint limitation of iTunes and Pure Music - and the hassle of "importing" DSD & Flac files into the iTunes library even with the Pure Music tools - is one of the reasons I'm seriously considering jumping ship to a dedicated streamer like the new Auralic Aries or something similar.  Either that or investigating Jriver Media Center for Mac, which with it's own library presumably doesn't have these problems.

I know this is just one aspect of your question about central file management / access, but just thought I should mention it considering you are using Audiovarna, which may have the same issues.

[jarcher]

RAID isn't a backup, you still have a single point of failure for file corruptions, theft, fire, virus, power surges,  etc.   All what raid gives you is less downtime in the event that one drive fails, nothing more.    RAID-0 has worse reliability than a single drive, RAID-1/3/5/10 will allow you to have one drive fail while you can still access the files, so unless you can't handle downtime, it's not an expense most consumers should pay for.    It's a great feature for a NAS to offer redundancy, but if they don't offer a local backup solution of the NAS itself, then it's only a false sense of security

Drive failure is the most likely failure point of all (vs theft, fire, virus, power surge etc).  But your point is taken nonetheless : NAS introduce cost and complexity that may be unnecessary for a typical home user.  If you want a true backup plan, you need to not only have another copy, but preferably in another physical location, whether that is done via online back up options, or just having a copy on another physical drive at some other place (like office / second or other family members home / or even maybe in a fire proof safe).  Most of us don't go to that precaution, but we should.

[skunark]

Drive failure is the most likely failure point of all (vs theft, fire, virus, power surge etc).  But your point is taken nonetheless : NAS introduce cost and complexity that may be unnecessary for a typical home user.  If you want a true backup plan, you need to not only have another copy, but preferably in another physical location, whether that is done via online back up options, or just having a copy on another physical drive at some other place (like office / second or other family members home / or even maybe in a fire proof safe).  Most of us don't go to that precaution, but we should.

I would say file corruption is more likely than a HDD failure, but it took a HDD failure for me to notice several files were corrupt on a past restore.  Both my local and offsite storage also had the corrupt file, and for several months back, since time machine and backblaze both use the inotify API to schedule files to be backed up, guessing the corrupt caused by software vs a hardware failure, but that's only a guess.  The drive did fail, so you can't rule that out as the source of the corrupt file, perhaps iTunes/spotlight scheduled it to be backed up when it noticed the file was changed. 

Virus and dumb-user tricks are a more likely scenario than a HDD failure, but of course if you wait until your HDDs fail before you replace them, well sure a hardware failure would be number one. 

For the OP, i used a mac mini server to essentially do everything required... I ran the time machine server, iTunes, file share, and backblaze and it had it's own local backup as well.   The cost is more than a NAS, but you got a few more features.  With each new release of the mac osx server, I felt that it just wasn't up to the the same level as other Apple products, let alone other NASes.  With more iOS devices than computers, I decided to try a Synology NAS, and was disappointed mostly.  It will perform well as a backup solution and alternate share for music files, but i won't ever trust it as a primary location for files.   It's loud and the customer support experience hasn't been responsive (time-machine server feature didn't work for several months), and some of the NAS apps are not even fully functional. 

Jim

[JohnR]

FWIW I use Carbon Copy Cloner with the checksum feature turned on to make a nightly bootable clone to an external SSD. That should in theory be at least a first step to a proper copy of important data, but however doesn't handle "dumb-user tricks" nor does it handle media files (for size reasons).

I guess I'm starting to think that backups are some sort of odds game, but I've not seen any specific method of analysing it (or even better, software that will do it)