Time Machine ?'s using multiple external drives +more

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Time Machine ?'s using multiple external drives +more

I just a new 2012 base Mini to replace my iMac and want to do it right when I set this up so things are exactly how I want them if I can afford it. Basically I have on my iMac about 75gb of DVD movies ripped to my HD using H.Brake (not looking to debate legality of this) and about the same amount of music. I plan on converting the rest of my DVD collection to digital format to access it via my AppleTV and other devices.

The problem is it will be well over 3tb of audio and video when done. I want to set up my iTunes library on an external drive along with my iPhoto photos too, however, I am worried about losing all this stuff due to a drive failure and want to have a second identical drive to back it up to daily as well a third external drive for the internal drive on the mini. My main concern is I want to connect all these drives to an Airport Extreme model A1143 along with my laser printer via USB hub. Will Time Machine be able to handle this connected in this fashion ?? I see many threads containing one of the things I want to do but not ALL the things I want to do. Just don't want to waste money buying more drives etc if this won't work as I planned.

I am open to a third party software solution to make this happen but again did not see anyone doing exactly what I want to do so maybe someone who done this or a similar scenario could chime in with suggestions??

iMac (21.5-inch Mid 2010), OS X Yosemite (10.10.2)

Posted on Feb 24, 2015 8:50 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

LaPastenague

Level 9

67,208 points

Feb 25, 2015 3:07 AM in response to mrmontebuilder

Sorry but this is just a really bad idea.

1. The airport is ancient.. your speed will be terrible.

2. Hubs filled with USB drives are never reliable.. disks refuse to spin up.. become unavailable.

No.. don't do it.

Plug USB3 hub into the mini and use multiple decent hard drives .. that is fine.. use thunderbolt hub.. use thunderbolt drives if you can afford it.. but never use USB drives on the network.

3. Time Machine is not reliable to external drive on Airport Extreme.. Apple do not support it in any Extreme except the latest one.

If you want the material available to the network buy a NAS. You can buy a cheap NAS of 8TB or so and another 8TB of USB drives which you plug into the NAS for backup.. however.. iphoto is not supposed to ever be put on network drives..

Apple explicitly states you will corrupt it.

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS5168 Although mostly about FAT32 it adds network drives.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1198

And I quote

It's recommended that you store your iPhoto library on a locally mounted hard drive. Storing your iPhoto library on a network share can lead to poor performance, data corruption, or data loss. If you use both iPhoto and Aperture with the same library, using a Mac OS X Extended formatted volume is recommended. For more information, see Aperture: Use locally mounted Mac OS X Extended volumes for your Aperture library.

For backup of the drives.. use Carbon Copy Cloner.. it is much better than TM as you can setup different job.. TM is really a single function.. !!

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Answer 2

Feb 28, 2015 9:01 AM in response to LaPastenague

Sorry for the slow response been under the weather. How about using a USB drive for iPhoto library and NAS for the rest ? I saw a few NAS 6-8TB drives reasonably priced and was thinking about getting one of those and maybe backing up to a cloud based storage. Will my AppleTV still be able to access the video and music content on an NAS without issue?? There seems to be no easy solution to this and I was going to skip ripping the DVDs entirely but then that kind of nullifies having a 128gb iPad and 64gb iPhone because everything I have is not available to stream and sometimes my signal is so poor streaming is impossible.

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Answer 3

Feb 28, 2015 12:26 PM in response to mrmontebuilder

You cannot stream direct from a NAS (or a TC or a USB plugged into an Extreme) from Apple TV.. it doesn't have the brains.

Apple TV is a streamer.. not a media player. You must run itunes somewhere in the network.. link it to the library and then stream it.

That is why your mini is the best place for the media to live.. on a thunderbolt drive plugged into it.

NAS provides extra storage or backup.. however only in the world of NOT itunes can you stream from them.. almost all TV now include DLNA, and any media player can stream DLNA material. There is also some ability to handle iTunes on some NAS.. but I would be careful about assuming it handles more than music.

Apple are very sensitive about their iTunes.. and have never designed it to run on anything but a computer.

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Answer 4

Feb 28, 2015 8:03 PM in response to LaPastenague

This is turning into quite the project just to neaten up my desk it looks like a bomb went off most of the time and I was trying to simplify things in hopes of neatening it up. My new Samsung TV is a "smart" TV but the interface is slow as molasses and I have grown quite attached to the AppleTV interface and it's simplicity. I stream from the iTunes library on my 2011 iMac now but it has a dead optical drive and a quickly filling 500gb HD so I stopped ripping discs until I figured out what I was going to replace it with and how I was going to manage storage for what I have now and what I will be adding either via ripping or purchasing from iTunes. I need to sit down and think this through a bit more and decide where to go from here. LaPastenague you have been most helpful in pointing in all the mistakes in my ideas about how to do this, thanks it is much appreciated!!

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Answer 5

Mar 1, 2015 1:50 PM in response to mrmontebuilder

I need to sit down and think this through a bit more and decide where to go from here.

There is a gaping hole in the Apple lineup of no iTunes server on a NAS like device.. Apple clearly want you to run computers.. and you either opt in or opt out... so if you opt in I strongly recommend a mini as a HTPC plugged directly into the TV perhaps, with whatever size disk on it you need and use that to home share itunes library.

If you opt out then you can use any NAS and use DLNA direct to the TV. (or Plex server and a plex client etc).

I do not see it as something you can easily mix and match.

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Answer 6

Mar 1, 2015 3:25 PM in response to LaPastenague

I agree with the gaping hole in the way things are done. I am the only one in my house who streams anything so as long as AppleTV works I am happy. I have a Roku, AppleTV and Amazon Firestick so I can find something on without much trouble. I mainly use what I rip on my iPhone which is a 6+ 64gb and iPad 4th Gen 128gb when I am out and about or on a trip etc. so streaming is actually secondary to me. I may ditch all my streaming devices and do as you suggested and get another Mini to hook to my TV and this will also allow to use regular Hulu for free and everything else I already do with the other 3 and only use one device. Thanks again for all your advice!!

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