wireless hard drive
July 11, 2007 10:52 AM   Subscribe

What is the best wireless external hard drive and connection method? I intend this hard drive to be my music library for iTunes. I am trying to free up memory but still want iTunes to function like it does when the music is on the computer's hard drive. Is this possible? I have a macbook pro intel duo.
posted by MNDZ to Computers & Internet (13 answers total) 8 users marked this as a favorite
 
Yes, it's possible. Broadly speaking, what you want is called a NAS (network-attached storage) box. This is actually a little server (usually running Linux) inside a hard-drive enclosure, and it connects directly to your network.

You would plug that into your network, make sure it works, and then move your music files to it (iTunes prefs: Advanced: iTunes Music Folder Location/Change...). Here's a good place to read about NAS.

As it happens, the current version of Apple's own Airport Extreme base station has NAS-like capabilities: you plug in a USB-2 external hard drive, and voila, it appears as a mountable volume on your computer. This would probably be the lowest-hassle way to set things up, but not the cheapest.
posted by adamrice at 11:02 AM on July 11, 2007 [1 favorite]


Alternately, you could connect the external hard drive to a separate computer, and simply mount it over the network when you fire up iTunes. This is how I do it. Of course, it requires a separate computer which is a lot more expensive than a NAS box, but worth considering if you already have said computer.
posted by John Kenneth Fisher at 11:05 AM on July 11, 2007


JKF is exactly right. It doesn't even need to be an external hard drive. On my home setup, my music files live in the "shared" user folder of my internal drive, and my wife mounts that on her desktop so that we both have the same corpus of music (there's a little more to it than that, but you get the idea).

I've got a NAS box in the closet that I use for backups.
posted by adamrice at 11:17 AM on July 11, 2007


I have an old Ximeta NetDisk that connects over ethernet but requires software to be installed in order for the drive to be recognized. You can buy just the enclosure and put your own drive inside. I've had no problems with it on the PC, but it requires an ethernet cable connection to the router so I don't know if it meets your "wireless" requirement; I assumed you meant "wireless" to the computer. According to their site it also works on Mac but I have not tried it myself. and it also supports USB if you just want to plug it in directly.
posted by Challahtronix at 11:18 AM on July 11, 2007


Actually I think for what you want to do, you'd be better getting a separate computer or appliance that functions as a DAAP server, rather than mounting the network drive.

There are two ways to accomplish what you want. One is that you set up a drive on some computer (either a dedicated NAS box, or just another computer on the network) and then connect to it, mounting it as a shared volume. Then, you'd need to set up aliases or pointers, so that your local iTunes installation would look for your music on the shared volume.

Although this would probably work, it strikes me as inelegant and possibly fragile.

A better way to share your music, rather than just sharing the volume that it's on, would be to run music-sharing software like mt-daapd (now apparently called "Firefly") which shares music using the same protocol that iTunes does when you browse someone else's shared music on the network. So your music server would appear as a source in the left side of iTunes, and you could click on it and see all the music stored there, and play whatever you want. It has the advantage of letting multiple computers in your house use the music server at once, and it's also less bandwidth-intensive (lower overhead than SMB/CIFS).
posted by Kadin2048 at 11:20 AM on July 11, 2007


"Although this would probably work, it strikes me as inelegant and possibly fragile."

It's what I'm doing and it works for me.

The problem with using a DAAP server is that—unless I'm missing something—you are restricted in how you can use the files made available via DAAP. They appear as part of someone else's playlist, so you cannot build your own (local) playlists with them, copy them to your iPod, etc.

In any case, some NAS boxes also function as DAAP servers.
posted by adamrice at 11:39 AM on July 11, 2007


I have all my iTunes music on a network server. It is robust, but the ipod sync seems slower than it should be over 100baset and would probably be even worse over wireless. Itunes actually will help you relocate an existing library, check the advanced tab.

The mt-daapd idea has its problems. You can't sync your iPod to it, if you have one, and as I recall, you can't use remote songs on local playlists.

I was just looking for a network hard drive solution. I wasnt thrilled with any of the options, the buffalo terrastation was one candidate and the linksys nlsu2 was another. there was also a seagate that looked ok. In the end i just boughtna usb drive because the premium for a cheap nas didnt seem worth it since i already had a small, relatively low power server
posted by Good Brain at 11:44 AM on July 11, 2007


Get an old computer with a large HD.
Load http://www.freenas.org/
Enjoy network storage.
posted by PowerCat at 12:56 PM on July 11, 2007


I have a linksys NSLU2. Im happy with what it does. Although data transfer is not as fast as I would have hoped. This put me off the idea of putting my itunes library on it. But I assume that if you have the time so set it up and leave it to sync, it should be a viable option. There is also a large modding scene for it, should that float your boat. I belive there are instructions for running a daap server from it on that site.
posted by gergtreble at 3:17 PM on July 11, 2007


Response by poster: thanks all, gonna get it done.
posted by MNDZ at 4:22 PM on July 11, 2007


I just use a USB external hard drive for this on my Macbook. Downside is it's not expandable (well, unless you buy another one and copy everything over). Upside is I can take the whole drive with me if I'm not going to be home.
posted by neilbert at 7:18 PM on July 11, 2007


If you want to splurge I would recommend looking into something from these guys: http://www.infrant.com/main.html. It's what I dream of getting.
posted by ericales at 1:59 AM on July 12, 2007


I bought an IcyBox NAS which takes any IDE hard disc - it's a small, nifty device with an easy-to-use web-based interface; I've got it plugged into my wifi router, and as described above allows me to mount the drive for use with iTunes.

The downside is that occasionally I'll load up iTunes to discover that the library can't be found - I've been disconnected from the network drive for some reason.

If you've already got a wireless network with ethernet ports, then this is a nice, easy and relatively cheap option.
posted by Chunder at 2:42 AM on July 12, 2007


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