Personal Cloud Storage

[Gabriel1]

They ain't making this easy for me, are they!

Thanks for the reply...

I guess it's all to do with anti-piracy, which is a good thing despite it not being ideal for everyone's circumstances.

The Archangel

 

[janner43]

I guess it's all to do with anti-piracy, which is a good thing despite it not being ideal for everyone's circumstances.

The Archangel

Which makes sense, I suppose, but you can copy movies from a computer to Airstash via an iTunes sync process - if I remember the help topic I read earlier today...

On a related note, I read this from the iCloud help section...

When you sign up for iCloud, you automaticallyget 5GB of free storage. And that’s plenty ofroom, because of the way iCloud stores your content. Your purchased music, movies, apps, books, and TV shows — aswell asyour Photo Stream —don’t count against your free storage

So I guess if I was to buy say 30 HD 1080p films at 4gb in size each from, iTunes, I wouldn't need 120gb of local backup storage for them as they would be backed up to iCloud. So if a film disappears from iTunes, I wouldn't loose it. Is that right? Or if I delete a movie from iPad, does it get deleted from the iCloud backup too?

 

[Gabriel1]

Which makes sense, I suppose, but you can copy movies from a computer to Airstash via an iTunes sync process - if I remember the help topic I read earlier today...

On a related note, I read this from the iCloud help section...

So I guess if I was to buy say 30 HD 1080p films at 4gb in size each from, iTunes, I wouldn't need 120gb of local backup storage for them as they would be backed up to iCloud. So if a film disappears from iTunes, I wouldn't loose it. Is that right? Or if I delete a movie from iPad, does it get deleted from the iCloud backup too?

The stuff in iCloud that you have obtained from iTunes isn't really backed up, so it is kind of impossible to delete, all you are doing is downloading/streaming it again from iTunes but at no further cost to you. You always have access to it as long as you have a connection.

The Archangel

 

[janner43]

I see, thanks Gabriel.
I'm currently looking at the rash of cheap 32 & 64gb usb sticks currently available, so will have a look at cloudFTP, too...

 

[janner43]

OK slight? change of tack here...
Remembering that I am going to be doing all of this without a PC, and with future proofing in mind...
One of the things that concerns me is backing up the NAS. With that in mind, wouldn't I be better off going for something like this...
D-Link DNS-320 ShareCenter Pulse 2-bay (no disks) NAS.. | Ebuyer.com
With a couple of drives from this list
Hard Drive - Internal - 3.5" SATA Drives | Ebuyer.com

Or even something like...
LG Electronics N1T3 1TB NAS iTunes Server, DLNA and Built-In DVD-RW (N1T3) - BT Shop

And then accessing them with either...
BUZZ Viewer HD for iPad on the iTunes App Store
Or
App Store - media:connect for DLNA and UPnP media streaming

I am using BT Infinity, with a Home Hub 3.

Please bear in mind that my experience with networking is virtually zero & that I have exactly NO experience of NAStorage at all.

Comments? Opinions? Lessons? All welcomed

 

[Gabriel1]

OK slight? change of tack here...
Remembering that I am going to be doing all of this without a PC, and with future proofing in mind...
One of the things that concerns me is backing up the NAS. With that in mind, wouldn't I be better off going for something like this...
D-Link DNS-320 ShareCenter Pulse 2-bay (no disks) NAS.. | Ebuyer.com
With a couple of drives from this list
Hard Drive - Internal - 3.5" SATA Drives | Ebuyer.com

Or even something like...
LG Electronics N1T3 1TB NAS iTunes Server, DLNA and Built-In DVD-RW (N1T3) - BT Shop

And then accessing them with either...
BUZZ Viewer HD for iPad on the iTunes App Store
Or
App Store - media:connect for DLNA and UPnP media streaming

I am using BT Infinity, with a Home Hub 3.

Please bear in mind that my experience with networking is virtually zero & that I have exactly NO experience of NAStorage at all.

Comments? Opinions? Lessons? All welcomed

I'm not entirely sure how the d-link would work successfully, I need to do a bit of googling on that one but.......the LG NAS looks incredible and I think that it may well cause me to open my wallet. The price, for what you are getting is amazing and if the DVD drive rips DVD's direct then it really is a great bit of kit.

I'm still pretty sure that you won't be able to get iTunes movies onto either without a PC/Mac but.....a simple solution may be to get an old MacMini (or PC equivalent) which uses your existing TV as a monitor keeping your home computer footprint as small as can be.

You have definitely got me thinking and when work finishes tomorrow I'll probably be putting in an order for the LG NAS, I can't believe that I haven't seen that before so a big thank you from me

The Archangel

 

[Gabriel1]

I've just had a look at the LG's on Amazon, the reviews don't fill me full of confidence.....especially as I have a Mac despite the LG website saying that the drives are OSX compatible........for the price I may still give it a try but definitely a case of caveat emptor!

The Archangel

 

[Gabriel1]

I've now checked out the reviews of the D Link on Amazon, again, I would check them out as they provide some good feedback. Again, I'm not certain that this is the ideal solution either but for you it may work.

One think to note with both NAS drives, the reference to iTunes is for music not video. That isn't to say they don't work with video, of course they do, my WD Live Book NAS does, and does it well but don't read more into the fancy titles that manufacturers give their devices than is really there, as always with advertising, it's often smoke and mirrors.

The Archangel

 

[janner43]

Thanks Gabriel

I'm really just trying to get a pathway clear in my mind prior to cracking open the wallet... the moths don't seem to like fresh air that much

Here's another idea... My BT Home Hub 3 can accept usb flash drives plugged into it directly. I thought "why not give it a try" & plugged an ancient 1gb stick into it & accessed it via an android file manager app ES File Explorer - copied a pdf & mp4 to it & was able to stream & read the pdf without any problem at all!!

So- you have a HH3 & a USB drive, don't you? What can you see direct from your iPad? This is the help page on BT giving the simple instruction...
Why is there a USB port on the back of my BT Home Hub? | Help | BT.com Help

 

[Gabriel1]

Thanks Gabriel

I'm really just trying to get a pathway clear in my mind prior to cracking open the wallet... the moths don't seem to like fresh air that much

Here's another idea... My BT Home Hub 3 can accept usb flash drives plugged into it directly. I thought "why not give it a try" & plugged an ancient 1gb stick into it & accessed it via an android file manager app ES File Explorer - copied a pdf & mp4 to it & was able to stream & read the pdf without any problem at all!!

So- you have a HH3 & a USB drive, don't you? What can you see direct from your iPad? This is the help page on BT giving the simple instruction...
Why is there a USB port on the back of my BT Home Hub? | Help | BT.com Help

I have the HomeHub 2......which is annoying because it has a known issue of crashing on occasions when transferring large files and even more annoying, if I want to go to a HH3 I have to sign up for another 12 months minimum despite it being an issue with BT's equipment, their forums are full of discussions about this fault!.....I may have to bite the bullet though!

The Archangel

 

[janner43]

I have the HomeHub 2......which is annoying because it has a known issue of crashing on occasions when transferring large files and even more annoying, if I want to go to a HH3 I have to sign up for another 12 months minimum despite it being an issue with BT's equipment, their forums are full of discussions about this fault!.....I may have to bite the bullet though!

The Archangel

Oh. The BT link I gave gives instruction on how to plug in a usb stick to the HH2 as well.
I'd be interested to know if Goodreader (for example) or this free app App Store - NetPortalLite - Access files on remote computers can see and access files on a usb stick plugged directly into the HH.

What did you decide on the LG?

 

[Gabriel1]

Oh. The BT link I gave gives instruction on how to plug in a usb stick to the HH2 as well.
I'd be interested to know if Goodreader (for example) or this free app App Store - NetPortalLite - Access files on remote computers can see and access files on a usb stick plugged directly into the HH.

What did you decide on the LG?

After reading the reviews of the LG I decided to keep my wallet closed. One disappointing thing is the the DVD drive appears to be purely for backing up data (for which there are many much simpler solutions) rather than ripping DVD's which I can understand the reason to try and prevent piracy but it still seems a shame for those of us who just like to rip our own DVD's for our own use.

The Archangel

 

[janner43]

The DVD backup solution would be useful to me, but I'm minded to just use a USB stick in the HH, to be honest.

If some kind soul would check it works for me
On my Android tf101, the drive is accessed using the smb share protocol. Goodreader may read it, Netportal lite says it reads smb shares
Can I connect a USB Drive to the USB socket on my BT Home Hub 2.0? | Help | BT.com Help

This might help, too... http://www.filesaveas.com/jarviser/howto1.html#type6
And http://www.filesaveas.com/bthomehub_usb.html

 

[Hayles66]

Interesting Gab! My HH 2 is giving me loads of problems. It keeps dropping the signal and my iPad 3, iPhone 4 and 3GS keep losing wifi signal. I wondered whether it was the hub. What problems are you getting exactly?

Sent from my new iPad using iPF

 

[Gabriel1]

Interesting Gab! My HH 2 is giving me loads of problems. It keeps dropping the signal and my iPad 3, iPhone 4 and 3GS keep losing wifi signal. I wondered whether it was the hub. What problems are you getting exactly?

Sent from my new iPad using iPF

It only crashes if I am transferring large files over my local network otherwise it's fine. The only cure is to reset it.

The Archangel