Suggestions for Divided House - Network iTunes and Backup

[Echthros]

So here's my situation/setup:

1. I live in a divided house. I use PCs + Google services because I do and my wife uses Mac because she does design stuff

 

2. We're further "diversified" because my parents have bought us stuff because it was "cool" so I also have Roku's on the TVs and an Amazon Echo for some reason with an aging PS3 thrown in for good measure as essentially a dedicated Blu-Ray player these days

 

3. My wife has an old iMac (early 2009 so sadly can't use it as an external monitor easily) and a newer 2015 Macbook Pro. I have a self-frankenmachined desktop with all sorts of old parts in it and an el-cheapo laptop from 2015 for watching movies while traveling (instead of paying in a hotel I just hook up an HDMI from the laptop to the hotel TV).

 

4. The Macbook Pro has not much storage (relatively) and as a laptop isn't in the always-on state that the iMac is

 

5. I want to depreciate the iMac

 

6. I want to have all our music consolidated under her iTunes management stuff (so she has easy access) but with Google Play sitting around uploading everything to the cloud so I can have access from work or when we're on vacation. *This piece is already in place* but want to note in case I have to do a different setup.

 

7. I *don't* want the iTunes library living on the Macbook otherwise it eats too much storage (we're at about 75 Gigs of music and the SSD on the Macbook is only 256. Design files take up a lot of space as-is)

 

8. The Macbook (and iMac for now) are backed up to a 2TB Apple Time Capsule that's hardlined to a Netgear Nighthawk X6 router and the router handles our networks because I had it and it has better signal than the TC

 

9. My main desktop only backs up some essential files to an old HDD I had laying around that's connected in the desktop. The laptop isn't backed up at all. 

 

Here's what I want to do:

1. Get some sort of network location for the iTunes library (the files themselves) to live instead of on the Macbook or my PC since my PC isn't always on. This way we can access the library from any computer with her account when we're at home.

 

2. Get some better backup solutions for my PCs and make sure the iTunes library is backed up either on the TC or some sort of raid configuration on the network location

 

3. Give me a place to put electronic versions of movies we own on the local drive so I can pull as necessary (don't necessarily need them to be accessible through a Plex server or anything, just need a place to dump them)

 

4. Keep the budget as low as reasonable (2TB should provide plenty of space for now and stick with known brands)

 

 

 

If I had just one system,  could figure it out pretty easily but dealing with separate filesystems and Apple's "I No Play With Others" BS is stretching my decidedly-PC-mostly limits of network stuff. 

 

Do I just get a 2 disk NAS with a couple 1TB low-ish power drives in Raid 1 with an Apple-friendly partition for iTunes and a different partition for everything else? (or if there's a NAS that supports exFAT so I don't have to keep two file systems, just the two partitions to limit backups from eating space where new music could go)

 

I had thought about just tossing an external hard drive onto the USB port of the Nighthawk or the TC but neither of them support exFAT for external drives, so looks like I'm stuck with a NAS. 

 

I think with a Raid 1 setup that I'd be save using non-NAS-specific drives to save $ and keep the speed for the iTunes accessing.

 

Thanks.

[crzyces]

14 minutes ago, Echthros said:

So here's my situation/setup:

1. I live in a divided house. I use PCs + Google services because I do and my wife uses Mac because she does design stuff

 

2. We're further "diversified" because my parents have bought us stuff because it was "cool" so I also have Roku's on the TVs and an Amazon Echo for some reason with an aging PS3 thrown in for good measure as essentially a dedicated Blu-Ray player these days

 

3. My wife has an old iMac (early 2009 so sadly can't use it as an external monitor easily) and a newer 2015 Macbook Pro. I have a self-frankenmachined desktop with all sorts of old parts in it and an el-cheapo laptop from 2015 for watching movies while traveling (instead of paying in a hotel I just hook up an HDMI from the laptop to the hotel TV).

 

4. The Macbook Pro has not much storage (relatively) and as a laptop isn't in the always-on state that the iMac is

 

5. I want to depreciate the iMac

 

6. I want to have all our music consolidated under her iTunes management stuff (so she has easy access) but with Google Play sitting around uploading everything to the cloud so I can have access from work or when we're on vacation. *This piece is already in place* but want to note in case I have to do a different setup.

 

7. I *don't* want the iTunes library living on the Macbook otherwise it eats too much storage (we're at about 75 Gigs of music and the SSD on the Macbook is only 256. Design files take up a lot of space as-is)

 

8. The Macbook (and iMac for now) are backed up to a 2TB Apple Time Capsule that's hardlined to a Netgear Nighthawk X6 router and the router handles our networks because I had it and it has better signal than the TC

 

9. My main desktop only backs up some essential files to an old HDD I had laying around that's connected in the desktop. The laptop isn't backed up at all. 

 

Here's what I want to do:

1. Get some sort of network location for the iTunes library (the files themselves) to live instead of on the Macbook or my PC since my PC isn't always on. This way we can access the library from any computer with her account when we're at home.

 

2. Get some better backup solutions for my PCs and make sure the iTunes library is backed up either on the TC or some sort of raid configuration on the network location

 

3. Give me a place to put electronic versions of movies we own on the local drive so I can pull as necessary (don't necessarily need them to be accessible through a Plex server or anything, just need a place to dump them)

 

4. Keep the budget as low as reasonable (2TB should provide plenty of space for now and stick with known brands)

 

 

 

If I had just one system,  could figure it out pretty easily but dealing with separate filesystems and Apple's "I No Play With Others" BS is stretching my decidedly-PC-mostly limits of network stuff. 

 

Do I just get a 2 disk NAS with a couple 1TB low-ish power drives in Raid 1 with an Apple-friendly partition for iTunes and a different partition for everything else? (or if there's a NAS that supports exFAT so I don't have to keep two file systems, just the two partitions to limit backups from eating space where new music could go)

 

I had thought about just tossing an external hard drive onto the USB port of the Nighthawk or the TC but neither of them support exFAT for external drives, so looks like I'm stuck with a NAS. 

 

I think with a Raid 1 setup that I'd be save using non-NAS-specific drives to save $ and keep the speed for the iTunes accessing.

 

Thanks.

I am thoroughly confused here. Don't you have iTunes installed on your PC already? Wouldn't that make the transfer of her music pretty simple so she doesn't have to worry about it taking up space on her overpriced macbook pro (Sorry, they may configure them well, but if they configured them well with better parts then the outrageous may be justified).

 

The R1 w/ non N specific drives seems like a decent way to keep costs down. Also, can't she store the files themselves in TC if you want? That's what I do with pretty much all the media files on my phone (It was a gift so I am appreciative, not complaining about evil Apple and their proprietary dictatorship).

[Echthros]

My desktop probably gets switched on once or twice a week on average so that's why we don't use it for storage. I'm looking for a solution better suited to always-on operation that I can stick with all my networking stuff out of the way. 

 

And using the TC as the network location doesn't seem the right solution unless there's a simple way for my PC to be able to *add* music to the collection (since it doesn't look like Windows and HFS+ work nicely together). But maybe that's the best solution given the circumstances and I just have to buy an external disk drive so she can load music in. Yes, we still buy physical albums instead of licenses mostly because we buy special editions that have extra stuff and because it gives a physical backup that isn't reliant on some server farm on a company that we just hope will still be around when I'm an old codger who still uses Windows 11 because I'm too stubborn to get skynet implanted in my brain. I'll look up that possibility.. and maybe just add more drives to my computer and figure out a decent wake-on-lan process.

 

I do wish there were more basic NAS chassis out there that didn't have all the extra-fancy stuff like personal cloud or baked-in torrent or phone apps. Seems all that stuff does is add cost when all I need is something to handle drivers as a storage location. Bah. I'll look into the TC thing above since I hadn't thought that possible (because I don't use Mac and am only a default "tech support" because I can google things and plug cables in)

 

I know the best solution is to just get my wife to use a PC... but if I tried to do that I might be relegated to the couch so that's not happening. 

[crzyces]

When I was married, our first apartment had two PC's setup, so no couch relegation. Then the condo. Oh goodness, that was awful, as she switched to PC full time besides her phone and iPad, insisted on the best laptop every damn year, but took over my desk, and it was a two bedroom, so no more two desk setup. It was a sad day in Mudville when her $3500 laptop was sitting in the corner on an end table most of the time, while my $900 PC was being used constantly when I wanted to play games; and no, her stupid 17.3" HP laptop played games like crap, was always infested with viri and malware (She'd get real viri that would corrupt Windows, not just the simple redirect or password/keystroke/personal info tunneler/gatherers a 10nth grader could code with a YouTube tutorial.)

 

You might be able to find a cheap NAS setup on eBay. Something like this for instance http://www.ebay.com/itm/Chenbro-Mini-ITX-Home-Small-Business-NAS-Server-Chassis-Case-SR30169-w-250W-PSU-/162482025187?hash=item25d4aef2e3:g:WQAAAOSwcLxYJk9p

 

When you say physical Albums, do you mean vinyl or CD/DVD/Blu-Ray? I actually have an old vinyl player. I rarely use it, but once in a bit it's cool. Most of the Albums I inherited from my Mother (Still around, just stored in my basement), Father, and great grandparents. It's cool to throw on an old Cat Stevens record and hear that sound only a needle spinning on slow spinning vinyl disk can make. I however, can't wait to get a Windows 15 implant. good Fun!

 

I hear ya on physical copies though. If they were as inexpensive and easy to find as digital downloads I'd definitely have more, and burning iso's of everything is a pain.

[crzyces]

1 hour ago, Echthros said:

My desktop probably gets switched on once or twice a week on average so that's why we don't use it for storage. I'm looking for a solution better suited to always-on operation that I can stick with all my networking stuff out of the way. 

 

And using the TC as the network location doesn't seem the right solution unless there's a simple way for my PC to be able to *add* music to the collection (since it doesn't look like Windows and HFS+ work nicely together). But maybe that's the best solution given the circumstances and I just have to buy an external disk drive so she can load music in. Yes, we still buy physical albums instead of licenses mostly because we buy special editions that have extra stuff and because it gives a physical backup that isn't reliant on some server farm on a company that we just hope will still be around when I'm an old codger who still uses Windows 11 because I'm too stubborn to get skynet implanted in my brain. I'll look up that possibility.. and maybe just add more drives to my computer and figure out a decent wake-on-lan process.

 

I do wish there were more basic NAS chassis out there that didn't have all the extra-fancy stuff like personal cloud or baked-in torrent or phone apps. Seems all that stuff does is add cost when all I need is something to handle drivers as a storage location. Bah. I'll look into the TC thing above since I hadn't thought that possible (because I don't use Mac and am only a default "tech support" because I can google things and plug cables in)

 

I know the best solution is to just get my wife to use a PC... but if I tried to do that I might be relegated to the couch so that's not happening. 

There are obviously much cheaper ones, like this one. It comes with a PSU too for $23usd:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Brand-New-Mini-ITX-Enclosure-w-250W-Power-Supply-NAS-Server-PCI/122452967589?_trksid=p2047675.c100005.m1851&_trkparms=aid%3D222007%26algo%3DSIC.MBE%26ao%3D2%26asc%3D40130%26meid%3Dc46fa5d7f2874e8399349ea5cd360601%26pid%3D100005%26rk%3D3%26rkt%3D6%26sd%3D162482025187

 

Or something a little cleaner (no psu though) for $29 usd:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/RAIDMAX-Element-ATX-101B-Black-Grey-Steel-Plastic-Mini-ITX-Tower-Computer-Case/381785304175?_trksid=p2047675.c100005.m1851&_trkparms=aid%3D222007%26algo%3DSIC.MBE%26ao%3D2%26asc%3D40130%26meid%3Dc46fa5d7f2874e8399349ea5cd360601%26pid%3D100005%26rk%3D5%26rkt%3D6%26mehot%3Dpp%26sd%3D162482025187

[Echthros]

Yeah, I think I'm going to have to bite the bullet and just do a full on NAS with two drives in Raid 1. 

 

Learned that you can't offload the iTunes library directly to the TC and keep it backed up... Time Machine won't back up network disks because apparently 250GB is all the storage anyone ever needs. 

 

So maybe this will help in my understanding of how this works. If the NAS states that it formats the drives in, say, EXT4 can both my PCs and the Mac machines here read and write to them "directly"? i.e. I just have a folder on it for music, another for movies, and the one for a backup location for my PC rather than having to create separate volumes in different filesystems? iTunes will manage the music folder and I'll manually manage the movies and backup folders? I can generally recover from losing my PC drives as most of my files live in the cloud and software is re-downloadable, but losing the music and videos and having to re-load it all is time I'd rather pay to save. Backing up my PC is a bonus time saver. 

 

And to answer your question, "Albums" refers to a collection of music put out by a publisher as a single volume regardless of format in my definition. We have vinyl and CDs for our music (need to rip the vinyls at some point). Most of these videos are home videos of the kids and the other ones are legacy "Digital Copy" versions of Blu-Rays and DVDs we bought before UltraViolet and other cloud licenses came to be the thing of the day. 

 

So looking at this sort of setup, does it seem to make sense?

NAS = Synology DS216J NAS DiskStation (DS216j)

https://www.amazon.com/Synology-DS216J-NAS-DiskStation-DS216j/dp/B01BNPT1EG

 

Disks = 2x refurbished 2TB Hitachi Ultrastar-HUA722020ALA331 Enterprise

https://www.amazon.com/Hitachi-Ultrastar-HUA722020ALA331-Enterprise-Refurbished/dp/B01CM85C0K/ref=sr_1_7?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1493097225&sr=1-7&refinements=p_n_feature_keywords_four_browse-bin%3A8067152011%2Cp_72%3A1248879011

 

Or should I spend $15-$20 more per disk to get something else? Getting a 64mb cache seems nice and refurbished seems fine as I'm doing a Raid 1 anyways? 

 

2TB available space should cover what I want to store since my desktop is using a little more than a third of a TB itself (including the movies) and iTunes music is less than a tenth of a TB. I can always upgrade the drives in a few years if we need more space.

 

Thanks for the help, been getting in the frustration of googling things that should be easy and the Apple forums just going "lol our things just 'work' and we won't support backing up any data unless it's hardlined to your 'portable' machine that we sell with bare minimum storage". unmount /soapbox

[crzyces]

39 minutes ago, Echthros said:

Yeah, I think I'm going to have to bite the bullet and just do a full on NAS with two drives in Raid 1. 

 

Learned that you can't offload the iTunes library directly to the TC and keep it backed up... Time Machine won't back up network disks because apparently 250GB is all the storage anyone ever needs. 

 

So maybe this will help in my understanding of how this works. If the NAS states that it formats the drives in, say, EXT4 can both my PCs and the Mac machines here read and write to them "directly"? i.e. I just have a folder on it for music, another for movies, and the one for a backup location for my PC rather than having to create separate volumes in different filesystems? iTunes will manage the music folder and I'll manually manage the movies and backup folders? I can generally recover from losing my PC drives as most of my files live in the cloud and software is re-downloadable, but losing the music and videos and having to re-load it all is time I'd rather pay to save. Backing up my PC is a bonus time saver. 

 

And to answer your question, "Albums" refers to a collection of music put out by a publisher as a single volume regardless of format in my definition. We have vinyl and CDs for our music (need to rip the vinyls at some point). Most of these videos are home videos of the kids and the other ones are legacy "Digital Copy" versions of Blu-Rays and DVDs we bought before UltraViolet and other cloud licenses came to be the thing of the day. 

 

So looking at this sort of setup, does it seem to make sense?

NAS = Synology DS216J NAS DiskStation (DS216j)

https://www.amazon.com/Synology-DS216J-NAS-DiskStation-DS216j/dp/B01BNPT1EG

 

Disks = 2x refurbished 2TB Hitachi Ultrastar-HUA722020ALA331 Enterprise

https://www.amazon.com/Hitachi-Ultrastar-HUA722020ALA331-Enterprise-Refurbished/dp/B01CM85C0K/ref=sr_1_7?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1493097225&sr=1-7&refinements=p_n_feature_keywords_four_browse-bin%3A8067152011%2Cp_72%3A1248879011

 

Or should I spend $15-$20 more per disk to get something else? Getting a 64mb cache seems nice and refurbished seems fine as I'm doing a Raid 1 anyways? 

 

2TB available space should cover what I want to store since my desktop is using a little more than a third of a TB itself (including the movies) and iTunes music is less than a tenth of a TB. I can always upgrade the drives in a few years if we need more space.

 

Thanks for the help, been getting in the frustration of googling things that should be easy and the Apple forums just going "lol our things just 'work' and we won't support backing up any data unless it's hardlined to your 'portable' machine that we sell with bare minimum storage". unmount /soapbox

Oh my gosh. I just typed everything out, and hit the back button and lost it all. Ugh.

The hardware looks fine. I would recommend new drives as opposed to refurbished though. They could be fresh pulls that were wiped, had zero's written to them, essentially making them new, or they could have been dropped and fixed. You never know, so for an extra $20 bucks, I think it is worth it.

 

Can they both read/write to EXT4?

 

I know they can, but am not sure if it will be supported natively by your OS' . Recently running into a similar issue, you can simply install Paragon to both Windows and MacOS. It's free for Windows, $20 usd for Macs. Why for Mac? Probably because Apple charged them to look at their code so they could optimize it for MacOS, because as you know, if Apple did not make it and sell it, then they want deniro'. And why would their support help you with something non-proprietary? They are good with their products (though you may figure the issue out before them), but very nice all the same as long as it is ALL APPLE Hardware/Software/Peripherals.

 

Here is a link to Paragon for Macs: https://www.paragon-software.com/home/extfs-mac/features.html

Here is the link for Windows: http://www.paragon-drivers.com/extfs-windows/

 

There are probably free options, but being semi-familiar with Paragon, well, it works well, and avoids a lot of headaches. Don't let the wife know you are having fun though. Build up those brownie points ;^) .

 

I literally wrote out a bullet point step by step guide, I cannot believe I erased it. Darnit. Anyway, this was brief, and I believe covered the basics without the entertainment of me hopping on your soap box since it was available.

 

Tell me how it's working out, but you should be all good.

[dalekphalm]

17 hours ago, Echthros said:

So here's my situation/setup:

1. I live in a divided house. I use PCs + Google services because I do and my wife uses Mac because she does design stuff

 

2. We're further "diversified" because my parents have bought us stuff because it was "cool" so I also have Roku's on the TVs and an Amazon Echo for some reason with an aging PS3 thrown in for good measure as essentially a dedicated Blu-Ray player these days

 

3. My wife has an old iMac (early 2009 so sadly can't use it as an external monitor easily) and a newer 2015 Macbook Pro. I have a self-frankenmachined desktop with all sorts of old parts in it and an el-cheapo laptop from 2015 for watching movies while traveling (instead of paying in a hotel I just hook up an HDMI from the laptop to the hotel TV).

 

4. The Macbook Pro has not much storage (relatively) and as a laptop isn't in the always-on state that the iMac is

 

5. I want to depreciate the iMac

 

6. I want to have all our music consolidated under her iTunes management stuff (so she has easy access) but with Google Play sitting around uploading everything to the cloud so I can have access from work or when we're on vacation. *This piece is already in place* but want to note in case I have to do a different setup.

 

7. I *don't* want the iTunes library living on the Macbook otherwise it eats too much storage (we're at about 75 Gigs of music and the SSD on the Macbook is only 256. Design files take up a lot of space as-is)

 

8. The Macbook (and iMac for now) are backed up to a 2TB Apple Time Capsule that's hardlined to a Netgear Nighthawk X6 router and the router handles our networks because I had it and it has better signal than the TC

 

9. My main desktop only backs up some essential files to an old HDD I had laying around that's connected in the desktop. The laptop isn't backed up at all. 

 

Here's what I want to do:

1. Get some sort of network location for the iTunes library (the files themselves) to live instead of on the Macbook or my PC since my PC isn't always on. This way we can access the library from any computer with her account when we're at home.

 

2. Get some better backup solutions for my PCs and make sure the iTunes library is backed up either on the TC or some sort of raid configuration on the network location

 

3. Give me a place to put electronic versions of movies we own on the local drive so I can pull as necessary (don't necessarily need them to be accessible through a Plex server or anything, just need a place to dump them)

 

4. Keep the budget as low as reasonable (2TB should provide plenty of space for now and stick with known brands)

 

 

 

If I had just one system,  could figure it out pretty easily but dealing with separate filesystems and Apple's "I No Play With Others" BS is stretching my decidedly-PC-mostly limits of network stuff. 

 

Do I just get a 2 disk NAS with a couple 1TB low-ish power drives in Raid 1 with an Apple-friendly partition for iTunes and a different partition for everything else? (or if there's a NAS that supports exFAT so I don't have to keep two file systems, just the two partitions to limit backups from eating space where new music could go)

 

I had thought about just tossing an external hard drive onto the USB port of the Nighthawk or the TC but neither of them support exFAT for external drives, so looks like I'm stuck with a NAS. 

 

I think with a Raid 1 setup that I'd be save using non-NAS-specific drives to save $ and keep the speed for the iTunes accessing.

 

Thanks.

Okay I'll try to get through this. There's a lot of confusion going on in the thread.

 

First: Totally forget about HFS, exFAT, etc, support. The NAS will be sharing the files over SMB or NFS, both of which macOS can connect to with no problems. The local filesystem of the NAS is irrelevant, since the network protocol (SMB) will translate everything for you.

 

A pre-built NAS is probably the way to go. The options you've chosen in the last post are good ones. Synology makes a solid NAS product, and their software is very easy to use.

 

I would personally avoid refurbished HDD's, if you can spend a bit more to get new ones. You should also consider (though not strictly required) getting NAS rated drives, like the Seagate NAS drives, or WD Red's. They're about twice as expensive as your chosen drives though (~$85 per drive) on Amazon. With RAID1, you'll have less issues with non-RAID/NAS rated drives, but they tend to be a bit better quality, and usually offer a better warranty too.

 

I would suggest storing the iTunes library on the NAS. It has RAID1, so there's SOME protection to the data.

 

But remember, RAID is NOT a backup solution, It protects against hardware failure, but not against data loss resulting from accidental deletion (Eg: If someone deletes the Library folder by accident, the NAS will automatically replicate that deletion to the 2nd mirrored drive), or virus infection, etc.

[Echthros]

1 hour ago, dalekphalm said:

Okay I'll try to get through this. There's a lot of confusion going on in the thread.

 

First: Totally forget about HFS, exFAT, etc, support. The NAS will be sharing the files over SMB or NFS, both of which macOS can connect to with no problems. The local filesystem of the NAS is irrelevant, since the network protocol (SMB) will translate everything for you.

 

A pre-built NAS is probably the way to go. The options you've chosen in the last post are good ones. Synology makes a solid NAS product, and their software is very easy to use.

 

I would personally avoid refurbished HDD's, if you can spend a bit more to get new ones. You should also consider (though not strictly required) getting NAS rated drives, like the Seagate NAS drives, or WD Red's. They're about twice as expensive as your chosen drives though (~$85 per drive) on Amazon. With RAID1, you'll have less issues with non-RAID/NAS rated drives, but they tend to be a bit better quality, and usually offer a better warranty too.

 

I would suggest storing the iTunes library on the NAS. It has RAID1, so there's SOME protection to the data.

 

But remember, RAID is NOT a backup solution, It protects against hardware failure, but not against data loss resulting from accidental deletion (Eg: If someone deletes the Library folder by accident, the NAS will automatically replicate that deletion to the 2nd mirrored drive), or virus infection, etc.

 

"First: Totally forget about HFS, exFAT, etc, support. The NAS will be sharing the files over SMB or NFS, both of which macOS can connect to with no problems. The local filesystem of the NAS is irrelevant, since the network protocol (SMB) will translate everything for you."

 

That's good to get a clear answer on. I was having trouble getting clarity on different forums I was looking in (probably because just mentioning Apple and NAS in Google automatically assumes I'm trying to use a NAS as a Time Machine target location... which I'm not. And everyone Apple seems to just default to "Use HFS+ always").

 

"But remember, RAID is NOT a backup solution, It protects against hardware failure, but not against data loss resulting from accidental deletion (Eg: If someone deletes the Library folder by accident, the NAS will automatically replicate that deletion to the 2nd mirrored drive), or virus infection, etc."

 

I understand that RAID is not the backup solution for the iTunes library. Part of the reason why I've been digging into this is that the 8 year old iMac the library is currently on is starting to show signs of it's age in that accessing the data on the HDD is getting slower (whether that's due to the HDD or the other hardware isn't clear but I want to avoid a HDD failure at this point.) Music is generally "backed up" to my Google Play account. Getting a local backup is there to avoid having to re-download all the music in case of hardware failure *in addition* to providing storage separate from the MBP. 

 

Thanks for the feedback. Synology looks solid. I'll see what cash comes in next month to try and get this started. I may try to scrounge an external drive from one of our dads' stashes (both have worked in large-scale IT for years so they always have vendor swag laying around) to hang off the router in HFS+ to hold the iTunes library temporarily so I can decommission the iMac and get the cash to do the NAS right.