03-01-2011, 11:10 AM

Hi everybody new member here.

So, I've been doing a lot of research on back ups and now I'm totally confused.

My stuff includes

Window 7 desktop w/ 750 gb power hog and wicked loud
MacBook w/ 750 gb
apple TV gen 1 mostly used for boxee
iPad
iPhone 4
airport express (only used for airplay to other speakers)
Xbox 360 (uses connect 360 to listen to stream music off MacBook)
Wii
Apple extreme newest gen

Hooked up to Airport extreme
2.000 tb external video
1.500 tb time machine
1.500 tb Music

6.500 tb total storage

What I'm looking for is to have a second backup of everything in case I have a drive failure. (raid 1?) so, I want when one drive adds something it's companion drive also get it too.

Right now my desktop and MacBook can see the three drives perfectly. But it is not very fast because of the USB hub and I heard that I can't attach anymore hdd to my aes without having problems. Would it be worth getting some kind of external with hot swapping and adding some hdd moving things around then crack openly my other externals and add those to it be a viable option? And if so what would be a good thing to get for this?

So get another 2tb to Match my external 2 tb drive = files
Match the two 1.5tb drives = time machine
And get two more 2tb drives = files

Having it be expandable would be great too.

Or

Would a mac mini be a good option. It seems a bit expensive and what else would I need to get. The plus side would be that with hdmi I could hook this up to my tv and move my ATV to the bedroom.

Or*

Some kind of rack server or two. I don't know a lot about these

Please let me know what you think the best option would be for me. And why

Thanks*
Hollis

Ps sorry for the long post

03-01-2011, 02:16 PM

I am not sure this would be what you want but if I had that much this would be something I would definitely look at connected to the ethernet port on the AE. LaCie - LaCie 5big Network 2