My new scheme...

[acosmichippo]

So... i want to put a SSD into my MacBook Pro. I can get a heck of a deal on an 80GB Intel. The only problem with that is that i'll have to store all of my media on a server somewhere... which i can do on my Time Capsule. The only problem with THAT is that the TC doesn't auto-backup itself.

OR i can get a Mac Mini (that i've been wanting to do anyway)... which can act as a media server, AND the TC will be able to backup automatically.

I think i'll try the former, and see how it works out...

[TarekElsakka]

I think you should go ahead and get the Mac Mini. Save your self effort and time trying :D.

Yes, I am one lazy mother****er.

[acosmichippo]

i think i'll be getting one for christmas... that'll give me time to get my media situated.

[acosmichippo]

well, it's not looking so good for streaming media... overnight i transferred all of my itunes music, videos, etc to an external HD hooked up to my time capsule... I then began to import the songs back into itunes, which went ok... but iTunes froze when it decided to re-download album art for everything.

And now finder freezes whenever i try to mount that HD... rebooted and tried it three times now.

[TarekElsakka]

Looks like the only choice left is for you to buy a Mac Mini. But at least you tried. I'm sorry it didn't go well and good luck buying it my friend.

[acosmichippo]

i finally got things to stop freaking out. iTunes for some reason has been re-determining gapless playback for my entire Library... for the last seven hours or so. Once that's done, i'll put the streaming to the test... i'm curious to see how transparent it will be.

[acosmichippo]

ok... syncing my iphone with the iTunes library located on the time capsule is TAKING FOREVER. I added ONE song to a playlist, and transferred THREE apps from the iphone to itunes, and it's still going after ten minutes... no progress bar yet, either.

aside from that (and the initial instability), streaming media has been pretty decent... there is a little lag to start the playing, but once it's streaming, it's smooth.

there's also the tedium of having to "mount" the Time Capsule manually every time you turn your computer on... which, due to the size of the files, takes a minute or so. And if you don't do this, itunes can't find the music folder on the TC... i wonder if there's a way to get this to happen automatically...


Also, after removing all the media from the HD, deleting a few VMware virtual machines, and uninstalling some apps (most notably Office), i'm down to 61GB, which will be perfect for normal use on an 80GB SSD. The only problem is that i'll probably have to give up my bootcamp partition, which i needed to use once in a while.

[acosmichippo]

well, after "syncing" for 45 minutes i killed it. I'll start it again later and let it go overnight.

I also realized the idea of sharing an iTunes library from a Mac Mini won't work... i would be able to play the tracks, but not actually use it AS my library, which is what i can do with the TC... kinda.

[acosmichippo]

so i figured out why it was taking forever to sync. I had my "recently added" playlist checked to sync, and when i re-added all the music from my Time Capsule, all of the songs were added to the Recently added Playlist... i guess iTunes got confused.

Still is a little slow, but nothing like earlier.

[acosmichippo]

well, i think by transferring over 120GBs of files off of my machine somehow really f'ed up my time capsule's file system... i think it either got REALLY fragmented or just the addressing got completely screwed, and that has been really hindering performance of basic networking functions lately. For a time, i wasn't even able to start time machine to try to retrieve ANY files from my backup.

I formatted it a few days ago, and things are going much more smoothly... but this is yet another in a long list of frustrations that should not happen on a "set it and forget it" backup solution.

Anyway, the iTunes lag is much better now.

[coasts]

as usual, your tech talk has left me dumbfounded. i got lost, but remain interested. i'm also using Time Capsule as the location for my entire iTunes library. streaming music and video is nearly seamless, although at times i get the spinning ball for a few seconds. uploading a video can take five minutes to start, but there are no interruptions once it gets going.

its a great setup. i love not having to bog down my laptop with media storage, but didn't want to connect an external HD every time i updated my phone and ipod.

[acosmichippo]

Basically, I think by transferring such a large amount of data somehow really messed up the way the files were stored on the TC. So in the end I had to erase 5+ months of backups to make things copasetic. It wasn't a big deal this time, but doesn't exactly give me much peace of mind... Which is the whole point of Time Machine.