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
Sent from my iPad
2 comments:
This has got me thinking about it as well. Currently, I only have one computer, which uses Time Machine to back up everything. I used to store the backup at my office, in case the house burned down. Sadly not an option atm.
I have been going down the Google world, which stores everything in the cloud, so we'll have to compare notes and capabilities when I get back. I'll bring the gluten free beer and chips :)
Oh I've got some cloud backups running as well but this is really keeping my media library available and not clogging up my iMac too much
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