Better storage solution?

There has to be a better option then what i am doing.
I have 4 or sometime 5 FW drives connected with different projects. I do a lot of video work.
Besides a 2TB drive- does anyone know of a solution under 1k that will store large video files and allow me to render from, plus it will make daily backups of the system?
please help --- I am sure I am completing missing an easier solution.
Thanks
KB

Because there is no Time Machine for Tiger you would need to use other backup software. There are several that can do scheduled backups automatically:
Backup Software Recommendations
My personal recommendations are (order is not significant):
1. Retrospect Desktop (Commercial - not yet universal binary)
2. Synchronize! Pro X (Commercial)
3. Synk (Backup, Standard, or Pro)
4. Deja Vu (Shareware)
5. Carbon Copy Cloner (Freewar)
6. SuperDuper! (Commercial)
7. Intego Personal Backup (Commercial)
8. Data Backup (Commercial)
Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQs on maintenance, optimization, virus protection, and backup and restore. Also read How to Back Up and Restore Your Files.

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Best storage solution for central itunes library?

I'd like to create a 4 Gb central library, running itunes permantenly on a headless Mac Mini. The library will contain all music and videos and should be available to an Apple TV, PC and Iphones (remote).
I am not sure about what kind of storage solution to buy. I want a second disk for backups, ideally also for storage of system backups of my PC and iphones. Should I buy and install a NAS and connect via Ethernet or are two firewire or usb 3.0 external hdds connected to the Mac Mini a better solution? I want to avoid issues with corrupt itunes libraries, missing files, connection issues with home sharing, etc. And are external hdds built to run 24//24 in terms of life span, energy consumption and heating?
Thank you.

Derekeys wrote:
I believe there is a way to have my itunes library on an external, but can the iMac read the external and stream to Apple TV with quality?
No problems at all.
Get an external USB drive.
Copy the entire /Music/iTunes/ folder to the external drive.
Hold Option, launch iTunes, select Choose library... and select the iTunes folder on the external.
That is all you need to do.
You can do this with on the laptop and and later use the same iTunes library on another computer just by connecting the external, holding Option, selecintg Choose library... and selecting the iTunes folder on the external.

What's the best storage solution for a large iLife? RAID? NAS?

I'm looking for an affordable RAID storage solution for my Time Machine, iTunes Library, iMovie videos, and iPhoto Library. To this point I've been doing a hodgepodge of external hard drives without the saftey of redundancy and I've finaly been bitten with HD failures. So I'm trying to determine what would be the best recommendation for my scenario. Small Home Office for my wife's business (just her), and me with all our media. I currentlty have a mid-2010 Mac Mini (no Thunderbolt), she has an aging 2007 iMac and 2006 MacBook Pro (funny that they're all about the same benchmark speed). We have an AppleTV (original), iPad2 and two iPhone 4S's.
1st Question: Is it better to get a RAID and connect it to my Airport Extreme Base Station USB port as a shared disk? OR to connect it directly to my Mac Mini and share through Home Sharing? OR Should I go with a NAS RAID?
2nd Question: Simple is Better. Should I go with a Mac Mini Server and connect drives to it? (convert my Mac Mini into a server) or Should I just get one of those nice all-in-one 4-bay RAID drive solutions that I can expand with?
Requirements:
1. Expandable and Upgradeable. I don't want something limited to 2TB drives, but as drives get bigger and cheaper I want to easily throw one in w/o concerns.
2. Simple integration with Time Machine and my iLife: iTunes, iMovie, iPhoto. If iTune's Home Sharing feature is currently the best way of using my media across multiple devices then why mess with it? I see "DLNA certified" storage on some devices and wonder if that would just add another layer of complexity I don't need. One more piece to make compatible.
3. Inexpensive. I totally believe in the "You Get What You Pay For" concept. But I also realize sometimes I'm buying marketing, not product. I imagine that to start, I'm going to want a diskless system (because of $$$) to throw all my drives into, and then upgrade bigger drives as my data and funds grow.
4. Security. I don't know if its practical, but I like the idea of being able to pop two drives out and put them in my safe and then pop them back in once a week for the backup/mirroring. I like this idea because I'm concerned that onsite backup is not always the safest. Unfortunately those cloud based services aren't designed for Terabytes of raw family video, or an entire media library that isn't wholey from the iTunes Store. I can't be the only one facing this challenge. Surely there's an affordable way to keep a safe backup for the average Joe. But what is it?
5. Not WD. I've had bad experiences with Western Digital drives, and I loathe their consumer packaged backup software that comes preloaded on their external drives. They are what I meant when I say you get what you pay for. Prettily packed garbage.
6. Relatively Fast. I have put all my media on an external drive before (back when it fit on one drive) and there's noticeable spool-up hang time. Thunderbolt's nice and all, but so new that its not easily available across devices, nor is it cheap. eSata is not really an option. I love Firewire but I'm getting the feeling that Apple has made it the red-headed step-child of connections. USB 3.0 looks decent, but like eSata, Apple doesn't recognize it exists. Where does that leave us? Considering this dilemma I really liked Seagate's GoFlex external drives because it meant I could always buy a new base and still be compatible. But that only works with single drives. And as impressive as Seagate is, we can't expect them to consistently double drive sizes every two years like they have been -cool as that may be.
So help me out without getting too technical. What's the best setup? Is it Drobo? Thecus? ReadyNAS? Seagate's BlackArmor? Or something else entirely?
All comments are appreciated. Thanks in advance.

I am currently using WD 2TB Thunderbolt hard drive for my iTunes, which i love and is works great. i am connected directly to my Mac Book Pro. I am running low on Memory and thinking of buying a bigger Hard drive. My question is should I buy 6TB thunderbolt HD or 6TB NAS drive to work solely for iTunes. I have home sharing enabled for my Apple TV
I also have my time capsule connected just as back up only.

Single best external storage solution for Mac Pro & MacBook Pro ...?

Hello,
I'm still waiting for the Mac Pro delivery I have around me something like four external hard drives from different vendors and different sizes and all containing important data ... it is really a mess, cables, lack of redundancy, etc.
I wanted to replace all these once and for all by a single elegant long-lasting and reliable solution to combine with my new Mac Pro and MacBook Pro. The best I could find was OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro Qx2 8.0TB containing four internal HDD in double RAID with multiple possible setups: RAID 0 and RAID 1, RAID 10 configurations:
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/MEQX2T8.0S/
Looks like an excellent choice for the only one external storage solution! does anyone has experience with this model? are there better contenders?
Many thanks in advance,
Best regards,
Giovanni

Giovanni,
I have the OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro Qx2 (6 TB) external HD array in a Raid 5 configuration (as received from OWC). I have found it to be excellent when connected to my Mac Pro using a PCI SATA card and the SATA output on the Elite-AL Pro Qx2. The speed of the system under Raid 5 easily supports all but uncompressed high definition video, and the system came with Prosoft's Data Backup software which does an excellent job of backing up other external drives installed on my Mac Pro.
I highly recommend the Qx2 and think you will find it is a good single source solution to providing you with reliable and safe storage for your data. With Raid 5 if one of the HD's in the Qx2 fails, you simply remove it and allow the system to rebuild the data when you insert a new HD. Thus unless two HD's fail simultaneously (high unlikely) you are protected against data loss. Note also that your Mac Pro does not have to be left on while the Qx2 is rebuilding.
Tom

ISCSI storage solution Recommendation ?

Hi I am trying to understand where exactly does iSCSI fit in the storage solutions.
is iSCSI recommended ?
My interest:
I would like to provide our users, access to our mass storage, provided by, Sun Fire V890 via 6130 Storage Arrays.
Our users working from their windows box would like to have their mass storage directories mounted as their network drive. Does iSCSI software initiative or hardware HBA's fit into these requirements ???
Can anyone please provide any form of guidance to develope an understanding of the requirements.
thank you!

Hi,
Depending on your situation iSCSI might be a low-cost replacement of a Fibre Channel SAN.
Both are block-level storage solutions. That is, the protocols access devices by reading/writing blocks of raw data not knowing what file they belong to.
The advantages of iSCSI are that it communicates over IP and as such is even able to use the internet for connecting servers and storage placed in a remote location (FC is able to do that too but requires extra, expensive, routing hardware).
Furthermore, if it is about connecting local storage to a server iSCSI can use a basic UTP cabling based ethernet infrastucture which is a lot cheaper than an FC infrastructure. One should however keep in mind that iSCSI requires a separate network to be able to perform well, so connecting iSCSI devices over a company network that is used for other communications too is not a good idea.
To get good performance an iSCSI ethernet infrastructure should at least be Gigabit based and should be redundant to get availability.
FC SAN's are definetly the ones with the better performance. This is due to the infrastructures which are running at 4Gbit/s (most common in recent setups). iSCSI is mostly implemented based on a 1 Gbit/s infrastructure.
As said, both FC and iSCSI are block-based. If you need the storage to replace a fileserver both are not the right solation. In that case you need a NAS (network attached storage) solution which are able to get you file-sharing capabilities right away (CIF, NFS etc.).
(iSCSI and/or FC can be behind the NAS-device as the actual storage, that would involve so called gateways).
An issue that always comes up using iSCSI is that it is not fully vendor independant. The server to connect have to run a so called iSCSI Initiator and, to avoid problems, only those initiators can be used that are certified by the storage vendor. Furthermore the iSCSI initiator takes quite a lot of CPU power of the server to connect so the server should have a lot of CPU power left to handle it. There is a solution for this: using rather expensive networkcards that have an initiator implemented in hardware (so called iSCSI HBA's, or TOE= TCP Offload Engines, HBA's allow for booting from iSCSI too) but besides of being expensive these initiators need to be on the storage vendor's certified list too.
So iSCSI is not as open as it seems to be in the first place (Things are getting better however).
FC is not free of all these compatibiliy problems. In fact, depending on the storage vendor you chooce, there are several compatibiltyy matrices to be met in order for the total solution to be certified. You should leave the design of a FC SAN to a single specialist who knows were to find and how to use these matrices.
My advise would be to first decide on the budget (based on business requirements), than decide on wether file or block access is needed from the storage device and what OS-platforms are to connect, and decide on the performance you need.
This would lead you to the right choice for storage technology.
Regards,
Willeon

What is the Best Storage Solution?

I have a laptop and an external drive E (where I store all my photos 9000plus). I would like some suggestions on the best (most reliable and long term) storage solutions. I was burning them on CD as well but now I have a Canon EOS Rebel GT (pictures are much larger files) I dont get many on a CD. I was wondering if I should get a DVD burner. I thought they probablly store a lot more pictures?? Wondering how many more?
Also, do I save all my tagged & edited pictures seperately from my originals (have two sets of photos)? And if so on the hard drive or on CD/DVD? Then I assume if I backup my catalogue when I get a new computer all I need to do is restore and everything is there?
Finally, any good stragegies on deleting pictures. I have 3 kids and have such a hard time deleting their photos. The obvious poor ones no problem but when I take rapid shot pictures they all seem so good. At this rate I will need to buy a bigger house to store all the hard drives and back up disks :)
Would love to hear what works well for you!
Thanks,
julie

The original poster asked the question whether or not to have two sets of photos (originals and edited).
What do most people do as far as this is concerned?
Do you include your original files in your Organizer catalogue or not?
The "workflow" that I have finished up with is this:
At the end of each day, I transfer all my camera shots into a folder such as C:\Negs\2006\0605\2006_0521Flowers ("Negs" because I think of them as equivalent to "negatives")
I do not use PSE4 downloader but use Fuji FinePixViewer simply because it came with my first camera and I have just continued with it. It makes it easy to rename the files to things like 0605210001.jpg (last 4 digits sequential for each date). I have tried descriptive file names but found them too difficult.
The word tacked onto the sub-folder name is a reminder of the general nature of the subject matter. I do not worry if there are a few shots that do not really belong but if there are a significant number of shots of totally unrelated subjects, I can cheat and artificially split the sub-folder in two. (The descriptive part of the folder name is pretty much redundant because of PSE4's tagging ability, it is really a carry-over from the Fuji program.)
I then go through and delete any completely useless shots.
I then copy and paste the sub-folder into a another folder named C:\Photos" which contains an identical sub-folder tree.
C:\Photos is watched by PSE4 so whatever is in it is automatically included in my catalogue.
I then go through and do my tagging.
I do my editing in the C:\Photos folder and save processed files in their original sub-folder but append _E to the file name to indicate that it has been edited. (I have a few other suffixes like _W for web images, _Q for max quality for large prints)
If I am not entirely satisified with my editing and think that maybe in a few days time I might be able to do a little better, I save my processed file as psd. Otherwise I flatten it and delete the un-edited version. (A copy of the original still being available in C:\Negs if required.)
Am I unusual in keeping my original shots outside Organizer? - my reason for doing it this way was to keep my Catalogue down to a manageable size.
As far as backing up is concerned, I have a comprehensive system that involves daily backups from C to D (a second internal drive) and monthly backups to external USB drives (used in rotation and kept off site).

Storage solutions for my G5

Hi,
I'm desperetely seeking a cost effective solution for my G5.
I have a bunch of external HDs, but i'm exciting the possibility and cost effectiveness of an e-sata solution. I've been obsessing over the Fusion 4 and 5 bay gadgets from sonnet tech, but it's pricier than i'd like to spend. if it turns out to be the best solution out there, then i'll seriously consider it.
BUT, i heard someone mention using a PC case with a powerful power supply and then stacking it with HDs. I'm sort of technical, but i've never seen/heard of anything like this.
Does anyone know how I could make it work? Would i buy and install an e-sata card into my G5 and somehow connect the HDs from a PC case?
Any thoughts?
Cheers,
Keebler

If you are just looking for an inexpensive SATA storage solution why not consider the Kingwin 3.5" SATA Aluminum External Hard Drive Enclosure. They are only $33 here:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0007SMQLG/arizomacinusergr
You can stack them and as the enclosure is as cheap as some drive trays you can hot swap them while still in the enclosure. Four units runs $130 which is
cheaper than any 4 bay solution I have seen.
The next step up is the Addonics Storage Tower. You can get it with four 5.25" bays and with 6 eSATA ports model ST6ESA for $150 here:
http://www.addonics.com/products/raid_system/ast4.asp
It also has the ability to add hot swap bays or a port multiplier later if you wish to. With the Storage Tower you can build it any way you want it and change it later if you want to.
As far as a SATA card - since you have a PCI PowerMac, I would get a FirmTek 4 port eSATA card model SeriTek/1eVE4. It is the only unit that provides booting and eSATA connections. You can see the AMUG review here:
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/firmtek/1eve4/
This is an awesome 64-bit card that will get your drives running fast. I have one and love it.
The enclosure options above will look better and run better than using a PC case and they will not take up as much space. You might want to read some of the AMUG Storage Tower reviews for more ideas. They are located here:
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/addonics/tower/
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/addonics/3sa/
I hope this helps,
Michael

Best storage solution for collaborative editing between two editors

Hello!
I was wondering what would be a recommended hardware storage solution for collaboratively editing Final Cut Pro X Libraries. Our current process revolves us copying all the video footage onto a portable drive and copying it over to each others machine. This is a time consuming process and the process gets broken up if one of us isn't in the office. We are working only with 1080p (and less) footage and both machines are MacBook Pro's (both have Thunderbolt connections).
I've dug around the internet and found network solutions (setting up another machine as a server w/ the storage drive there) but that setup seems like a lot of work.
Is there another way to do it with a single shared drive, no additional computer setups that would allow us to edit videos concurrently? I'm not looking for a scalable solution, just something to allow us to edit from the same pool of footage at the same time.
Thanks,
Aaron

If you want to edit concurrently, you are looking for a networked solution: either a drive on a server, like you mentioned, or a NAS (a drive connected directly to the network) or a SAN (storage area network, which is a more sophisticated, professional setup - that would likely be overkill in this case).
In any case, you need a fast network - at the very least gigabit ethernet. There exist NAS options for a decent price.
In this kind of setup, you would save all your media in the NAS, work on your libraries locally, and use "external media" - so the media would stay in the designated places in the NAS, and the libraries point to it. Libraries will be fairly small, and you could pass them around.
In any case, you would share the media concurrently, NOT the libraries.

I want to use my airport time capsule as a network attached storage solution, is this possible or do I need to connect a separate hard drive?

I want to use my airport time capsule as a network attached storage solution, is this possible or do I need to connect it to a separate hard drive?

The Time Capsule is by default a network hard drive, but it has no "brains" of it's own. So, it cannot function as a stand alone media server if that is what you are asking.
If you are also using the Time Capsule hard drive for Time Machine backups of your Mac(s), then there may be struggle for available space on the drive since it is not possible to partition the Time Capsule drive in a traditional manner.
If space is getting tight on the Time Capsule, it might be a good idea to connect a drive to the USB port on the Time Capsule and use that drive for your network storage needs.

Oracle hardware and storage solution configuration questions

Hi all,
I am configuring hardware and the storage solution for a project and am hoping to have some questions answered about using Oracle as the storage solution.
The current setup will have 2 Dell NX3100 NAS gateways each with dual quad core processors, 24GB of RAM, 12x2TB data disks, and running Windows Storage Server 2008 64bit as the OS.
Will also have direct attached storage of 2 Dell PowerVault MD1200 disk arrays, each disk array with 12 x 2Terabyte SAS disk drives giving a total of 36TB of storage space for each NAS Gateway.
Based on this information, is there any problem with two Oracle Standard Edition installation (1 per NAS) holding up to 36TB of data (mostly high res images) in this hardware configuration?
Does Oracle have a built in solution for replicating data between the 2 NAS heads and down to the disk arrays? Where the application sever will write to one of the NAS+disk arrays and then that data is written from the first NAS to the 2nd NAS+disk array? Currently I've used DoubleTake in other projects but am wondering if Oracle has something similar that is built in.
Finally, will Backup Exec Oracle agent work with this configuration for backing up the data to a Dell PowerVault ML6020 Tape backup device?
Thanks in advance for any insight.

Hi,
Does Oracle have a built in solution for replicating data between the 2 NAS heads and down to the disk arrays? Where the application sever will write to one of the NAS+disk arrays and then that data is written from the first NAS to the 2nd NAS+disk array? Currently I've used DoubleTake in other projects but am wondering if Oracle has something similar that is built in.NAS - I still doubt during the network issues (In case of RAC - all nodes would get afftected), I would not suggest certainly for this. Let the other experts reply back.
- Pavan Kumar N

Im completely new to Mac. Im swapping my windows laptop for macbook pro and looking for network storage solution which the Time Capsule seems to do. Is it possible to use this as NAS for my desktop Windows PC - windows 7

Im completely new to Mac. Im swapping my windows laptop for macbook pro and looking for network storage solution which the Time Capsule seems to do. Is it possible to use this as NAS for my desktop Windows PC - windows 7

Broadly speaking I want some sort of network storage( wireless or through my existing wifi router) that I can access files for both my windows PC and Macbook and also to access files to my iPad/ iPhone. Some sort of backup and sychronisation so that I can access certain files remotely.
Buy a real NAS.. synology or QNAP are the standard... although companies like Netgear and Western Digital and Seagate make them as well.
There is no problem sharing between Mac and PC now.. you do not even need a NAS to do that.. you simply share the hard disk directly. Mac talk SMB.. everything talks SMB nowadays.. so it is easy.
ipad and iphone are not designed to use NAS.. they are designed to backup only to the cloud or itunes.. but you can load an app like file browser if you want.
http://www.stratospherix.com/products/filebrowser/
Remote access to the Apple TC is somewhere between difficult, to impossible from a PC.. Apple use BTMM and iCloud but the service is not offered to PC.
A real NAS will offer HTTPS or SFTP or several other methods.. that both Mac and PC can use.
You simply plug it into the current wireless router.. it is a network device and assessable over the network. It is not necessary to buy another router.. in fact that is a waste.

Has anyone ever installed OWC 1.0TB Aura Solid State Drive and Envoy Storage Solution for MacBook Air 2012? Did it work out?

Has anyone ever installed OWC 1.0TB Aura Solid State Drive and Envoy Storage Solution for MacBook Air 2012? Did it work out?

Has anyone ever installed OWC 1.0TB Aura Solid State Drive and Envoy Storage Solution for MacBook Air 2012? Did it work out?

I would like to have a storage solution that is accessed wirelessly, can be accessed remotely and is viewable in the finder side bar (mavericks)

I would like to have a storage solution that is accessed wirelessly, can be accessed remotely and is viewable in the finder side bar (mavericks)
Is this possible? if so, how? Thanks in advance
Ini

You have to pay for online storage, someone has to pay to keep the lights on. As far a getting it on the Finder sidebar, you did something wrong. That is where mine resides, see below.

I want to put my .m2ts movies (Sony HD recorder) on my Ipad3. It looks they need to be converted to h.264 format. Question is will Quicktime Pro work or are there any better software solutions. Running XP system. Thanks

I want to put my .m2ts movies (Sony HD recorder) on my Ipad3. It looks they need to be converted to h.264 format. Question is will Quicktime Pro work or are there any better software solutions. Running XP system. Thanks

You could try Handbrake, it works quite well.

Central storage solution for video & digital content

I'm looking for advice on storage solutions for a small scale (audio) recording studio which is expanding into video and post production.
There is a simple wired/wireless network connected via a simple Netgear wireless/ethernet router to which two MacPros (ethernet), one iMac (wireless) and one MacBook (wireless) are connected.
Currently audio is recorded onto 10,000rpm drives in the main MacPro and then archived onto SATA drives in a firewire Wiebetech traydock system. There is also an Apple Time Capsule which backups up the other computers.
The system is rather fragmented and messy and I'm looking to upgrade to a simpler and more resilient system for managing all this. I've been using Mac for a long time but haven't kept abreast of central storage solutions.
Advice on a simple central storage solution would be appreciated. Thanks.

One thing I'm unsure about is the difference between Firewire 800 and Ethernet as connection protocols between a computer and an external drive or RAID. I've seen "Networked" external storage devices that look quite simple ( eg IOMEGA StorCenter ix2-200 Network-Attached Storage - 4TB)
Are both suitable for connecting an external drive/RAID, providing adequate bandwidth for uncompressed HD video editing?
With a standard 4 year old MacPro and ethernet routed via my Netgear Wireless Router, what would the bandwidth be?
Thanks for any answers to these basic questions.

Better storage solution?

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