iMac G5 ikea PS H(ome)office Hack

After all the re-arranging for storing media I needed a new home for the iMac... The Ikea PS seemed like the logical space, but there were a few bits that had to make way for the size of the iMac as it's really only designed for laptops.

I'm pretty happy with the end result although I might put the screen just a little higher.

How much media storage is enough?

Well currently I'm hoping 4.5TB should cover it for now but you never know.

The weekend just gone I started working on the new central media hub for the house based around the iMac delivering all of my iTunes content around the place and backing up to some RAID via FireWire solution. Since then I discovered Twonky Server that comes installed natively on my WD worldbook drive which can stream all of my itunes content to all of my apple hardware (well except the AppleTV but I'll get to that).

This changed my whole media plan now that I can happily watch movies/tv shows on the iPad from the WD drive. The new setup goes a little something like this... 

The iMac is still the central hub storing all of the iTunes content via a 1TB removable drive (via USB, I'd like to move to a firewire option, if only to free up some USB ports but I had the 1TB drive already), this then syncs with the two iPhones (mostly for music), the iPad (mostly for photos and apps) and the appleTV (for you name it). This all works like a charm but it's a bit light on redundancy and streaming which is where the WD drives come in. 

Using the WD Anywhere Backup software to monitor the iTunes movies and TV directories and instantly copy any updates to a 2TB drive attached to the WD World Book. (This also means I can remove items from the current iTunes library and still have them in the archive) The Twonky Server then publishes these files instantly for streaming via a web interface.

Similarly Photos are copied to another WD World Book for archiving and then some are marked as "photos to keep" and moved to a sharing folder for easy access via iPhone/Digital Photo Frame.

This brings me to my last addition to the concept which is ATVFlash  for the appleTV which has opened up endless possibilities. The two most useful features are the ability to use external storage also serving my 2nd Archive for my iTunes library/Photos and the ability to stream media from the Twonky Server (specifically DVD images cutting down the disk archive time on my G5 iMac). I've got a pretty extensive DVD library but since the appleTV I barely use it, mostly because 1. my BluRay player is about the slowest thing to load a disk on earth and 2. I don't have to sit through all the menus and "Don't Pirate Me" messages. I do convert a select few directly to iTunes format but it's a much slower process so I'll only reserve this for those movies that are going to hit high rotation (I'm thinking pixars with the littleone in the house).

So in a nut shell the whole thing works like this:

-iMac hosts the current iTunes library and Picture Library on an external drive array

-iMac (including external array) backed up to WD World Book NAS as time machine

-all iTunes data is archived from the iMac to a WD World Book NAS

-all Picture data is archived from the iMac to a WD World Book NAS

-AppleTV syncs iTunes Library and Pictures to an External Drive

-Twonky Server on WD World Book NAS delivers all iTunes content for streaming

It sounds like a bit of overkill but it's all too easy to lose a drive (as I discovered the other day) and drop all your DRMed or Photo data which can be a scary proposition to replace.

Sent from my iPad

The Mac, the AppleTV and media storage

I had a bit of a scare on the weekend when my main iTunes library storage drive died and it started me thinking about the best way to ensure my iTunes library is always highly available.

Currently my old G5 runs as the household media server. All the media is stored on a removable drive via USB to keep the OS HDD as clean as possible. This is then copied to a media NAS on a regular basis. This was all well and good until the USB drive would no longer mount.

While everything was being backed up due to the size of HD media files there were a number of files that were in the process of being copied when the drive died and they were lost. It only meant a couple of dollars of iTunes TV shows but the potential is for a loss to be much worse.

The new design is both for performance and for reliability

IMac G5 running SSD SATA drive for OS
USB -> RAID (mirrored) iTunes library
USB -> Single Drive time Machine
Ethernet -> Media NAS for Shared itunes Library and shared Photos
Ethernet -> full-time sync to appleTV

While the G5 is quite old now it still serves media more than adequately for the whole house and has a relatively small footprint with the monitor integrated. All I need to do now ISA find a USB raid enclosure

Sent from my iPad

Teneriffe festival

Yesterday was the inaugural Teneriffe festival and it turned out to be a fantastic day. I wasn't expecting it to be as big an event with Vernon terrace packed for most of the morning. It was like having our own mini ekka on our street but with much better food.

I'm really happy it's going to be an annual event for the suburb and I can only imagine it will get better from here.

I'm not sure what the littleone enjoyed more having a street he could ride his bike up and down all morning with no worry of cars or all the animals he could pat.

I did plan on taking some shots of the day but even though I packed the pentax I neglected to check it was equipped with SD card before I left the house.

It was a great way to spend a Saturday and I'll definitely be going off to it next year.

Sent from my iPhone

My New Favourite Photo of the Littleone

There is no mistake that the littleone loves his tech. At every opportunity he wants to get his hands on the iPhones or the iPad... I snapped this one while he was playing with my iPhone the other day.