Airport Extreme -> home media server (with Pogoplug?)

[jugrote]

Hi all, first time post. I'm not much of a techie with my home computer setups, typically fiddling my way around with things. A couple years ago I switched exclusively from PC (with some forays into Linux) to Mac. I am now using a 2009 Macbook (OS 10.6.8) as my main computer. I now have an Airport Extreme base station with a 1TB hard drive linked to it to run Time Machine to backup my laptop. I also have a Google tablet (Asus Transformer) and Droid (RAZR MAXX) phone, although I don't store any original files on my phone (other than photos I take with it, which I back up by cord every once in a while) or my tablet. I was using a Pogoplug version 2 (POGO-E02) to access files from my laptop on my phone and my tablet and over the Web, but disconnected my Pogoplug when I moved and left it in my drawer.

I recently got married. My wife has a Macbook (Pro with Snow Leopard), and I'm now successfully backing up that laptop along with mine using Time Machine to the same 1TB hard drive.

I want to have a shared network drive with my wife, so we can put all our photos and music and videos in one place and stream them to our computers over our local network (not necessarily over the Web, although that could be nice). I still want to back up our laptops using Time Machine. I'm wondering if I can use the Pogoplug to do this. I looked into Plex but don't understand how to use it with my setup.

Right now I have 360 GB of music, movies, and photos on my laptop. I'm guessing my wife has 100 GB on hers. So I want to have around 500GB of drive space on our home network for our media files.

Other than my 1TB drive I have a 300 GB portable hard drive that I can use in this chain somewhere. Or I'll buy a new hard drive. I seem only to be limited by the 1 USB port on my base station -- my Pogoplug has 3 USB ports.

(I don't need to use Pogoplug for this -- if there's another easier way to create a home media server, I'm all ears.)

THANKS!

[anthlover]

Sorry no one responded earlier.

So I was not familiar with Pogoplug (I looked it up for fun). Mixed reviews, interesting, like a very lightweight NAS/media server. There is of course freeNAS and you can put what ever hardware you like into it and also add media serving capabilities. There are some here that use that.

So here is the thing, generally a swiss army knife is not the best tool for anything but a reasonable or perhaps only a mediocre tool for that which it can do.

It appears you want to do a few different things that generally fall into 3 categories:
1) Media serving including to Mobile device
2) Local Cloud based storage
3) Back up

I would argue that regardless of the Tool the most important of these is Backing up. Best to use Multiple strategies. Multiple Separate Physical disks (using Carbon Copy Cloner or Super duper [image based back ups]). And an off site back up using something like crashplan which many including me consider to be the best of the online backups. Around $60 year for unlimited storage for one computer or $115 for up to 10.

What you do not want to do is use Time Machine wirelessly to sparse bundles (the only way it works wirelessly) even over the network (sparse bundles get corrupt, data gets lost). Locally TM machine is a reasonable solution but you have to be aware of its limitations. Chiefly that it overwrites its data when it chooses (when it needs space).

Crashplan also can back up to internet encrypted cloud or to to drives and other computers, but is not an image based back up. It is file based including revision histories, even deleted files.

Your Airport Extreme by itself can already provide AFP mount points for your Macs and It can also provide bonjour aware or even not, simple Windows based shares. It does not provide
any media serving capability on its own that I am aware of. Others can correct me on that point.

Airport Express and Apple TVs and offer some media serving capability (mostly two and from a computer or from a mobile device and Music respectively). Not aware of what needs to be added to any solution to be available to a mobile device but I am sure there are software stacks for it.

I would avoid putting all your eggs in one basket. Media serving and Back up. No rush you might want to switch to Mountain Lion at some point.

Please give us a little more info we might be able to provide better advice.

[jugrote]

Thanks Anthlover! I had never heard of Crashplan. I've tried online backup in the past and haven't been too happy with it, but they've probably refined the process of it by now. This could be really great.

I think you're right about Airport Express not providing any media streaming capabilities. I'm now looking springing for the BUFFALO LinkStation Live NAS ... unless I want to go back to hacking the PogoPlug to do that. But the Buffalo is pretty cheap -- ~$140 for a 2TB disk.

And then I can try turning the PogoPlug into a LAMP web server -- there is a tutorial on Lifehacker!

Thanks a ton for the advice -- jg

(Also, curious why you think I should switch to Mountain Lion. I have some older software and I'm worried about compatibility issues.)

[anthlover]

Mountain Lion is becoming necessary for the most recent version of Apple and other companies Applications. ML Also offers nice features. Snow is a very good OS and if it meets your needs thats fine.

App wise you can look up or test compatibility by upgrading a back up.

Good Luck.

[jugrote]

Thank you! Much appreciated.
jugrote