MacBook – Storing and working off iphoto and itunes library on NAS

backupiphotoitunesmacbook pronas

I have the 2011 macbook air with 128gb ssd. Storage is low so i'm hoping to set up for the very first time, a NAS to host large files such as photo's (raw format), video's and music (lossless and aac format). I require your help in achieving the below functionality. A list of of hardware/software that I need to achieve the below will be very beneficial as will be those products that would provide very good performance. I would like most action to occur wirelessly.

  1. I have 1 macbook air, 1 ipad, 2 iphones, 1 cable modem, 1 airport express 802.11n
  2. Itunes library to be hosted on NAS with writing and reading files to occur wirelessly.
  3. When I plug in my iphone or ipad to sync, I would like it to sync and backup with the files on the NAS wirelessly.
  4. Iphoto library to be hosted on NAS. When I plug in my sd card, I would like files to be imported to the library wirelessly, which is on the NAS
  5. I understand iphoto library needs to be sitting on a disk that is formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Does this mean I just partition one of the disks in the NAS and format it to Mac OS Extended (Journaled)? Which products support the formatting of Mac OS Extended (Journaled)? I am only familiar with fat32 and ntfs.
  6. For photos stored on the NAS, I would like to browse and view the photos on my ipad wirelessly.

I am willing to go without iphoto if it turns out that iphoto becomes the biggest challenge.

Thanks in advance,
Rob

Best Answer

To keep this general, here are some things to think about:

DAS: Direct Attached Storage - Thunderbolt, eSata, USB 3.0, FW800, FW400, USB are the rough pecking order. FW400 is better than 100 MB ethernet, and FW800/USB 3.0 are equivalent to Gigabit Ethernet.

NAS: The network matters - latency over WiFi can be a big bottleneck as can the controller chip / lack of cache in less expensive NAS.

Think in terms of the bottlenecks - For streaming a song, AirPlay shows you what to expect - a slight delay, but the system can buffer the music to overcome little lags and delays due to network burps. DAS is much more responsive - especially for little file input/output as opposed to streaming a large file or song.

NAS does offer some nice features like cross platform sharing and with a good network can be shared effortlessly with several clients that don't mind sharing the speed of the device. DAS is designed for one user and optimized for speed - especially for database workloads like iPhoto.

NAS can be harder to back up, where DAS works easier with whatever backup program you use on your mac.

Your iPhoto database will be the last thing you want to move. It has no provision for splitting the large files from the database files and the latency of reading / writing to the NAS might make you feel the program is too slow. Try it out, but don't be surprised if it's the least responsive by it's design.

You want programs that can use local database and thumbnails on the fast SSD and store large original files on NAS or slower storage.

Aperture works amazingly well if you find iPhoto too laggy when stored on the NAS.

I would start with the iTunes media folder - move that to the NAS and see how you like the performance.

Then get a tool like WhatSize or DaisyDisk so you can quickly measure what folders on the SSD are largest as you prune things down.

You might find you don't need all the audio loops from Garage Band or other surprising folders that make a difference in what you want to bring along on the SSD.

Have fun with the tweaking - you'll learn how things work. Also, it won't be long until ThunderBolt storage is more available - your NAS might even have a DAS connection for when you really need some speed to access / move files to the NAS.

Don't forget to back up your NAS. CrashPlan might be a great thing to try for that.

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