Hello Krister, I am going to paste in an message I recently posted to the v iPhone list as I think it may relates to your question.
I am also going to post it to this list as a separate thread. Mark Waking Up From An iTunes Nightmare That I Helped Create Hello Everyone, This message is just an F Y I: Back in 2007, I purchased my first NAS (network attached storage). For many of us, attaching a drive that contained its own web server, media server, and FTP server was exciting and a bit daunting. The general reason why people like using a network attached storage drive is so that anyone logged into the network has access to all of the files on the drive. A NAS provides a kind of localized version of a Cloud. For home users, before such devices such as a network attached storage drive was available, if people wanted to share files, they had to setup pier-to-pier networking or share drives and folders on one computer with another but doing so meant that the host computer had to be powered on all the time. Now you history buffs will no doubt find fault in my conclusions but it is not my goal to write a comprehensive history of technology here; I just want to sketch out a generalized background for the purpose of perspective. So, when I purchased my first iPhone, which was a 3GS, I downloaded iTunes on my Windows computer for the first time. To say that I absolutely hated iTunes would be the understatement of the millennium (smile). At that time, I had no real experience with the Mac or with any of Apple's file system or file handling policies. As a result, in retrospect of course, I made a mess of things in terms of telling iTunes what to do with what files. Please keep in mind that iTunes, itself, was very different back in those days and, on Windows at least, the program did not handle files as well as it does today. For example, the version of iTunes I started with, could not play certain video files if they were nested too deeply in the Windows file system. No doubt some of you may ask, how was such a scenario possible; just take my word for it, it was possible and did happen more often than not, for many of us who tried to impose a Windows type file structure on an Apple product. But I digress. So, when I installed my first copy of iTunes to use with my first iOS device, way back then, I installed it on the Windows computer's main drive. As time passed, and I began purchasing apps, creating playlists, importing photos, etc, I realized that it would only be a matter of time before the size of my iTunes Library would begin to dwarf the size of my computer's internal hard drive. I also worried that if anything happened to that computer, such as becoming infected with a virus, I would lose my iTunes Library. What did I do? You guessed it, I transferred my then rather tiny iTunes Library to my NAS. Believe it or not, this was quite exciting. What I soon discovered was that, in addition to making my iTunes Library independent of my primary computer, since the Library was on a constantly shared drive, I could access that exact same Library, complete with it's playlists, etc, from any PC on the network. Again, keep in mind that this was before the days of home sharing and such. Remember that I said that iTunes used to have a nested level file limit? In order to compensate for that little glitch, from within iTunes, I changed the location, on the NAS, of my Library several times until I found a formula that worked. I know this may sound arcane to some of you but, we old timers, had to do a great many things to keep the lights on, as it were. Once I realized the true power of a NAS, I purchased several more over the years in order to augment my home network. Network attached storage devices are wonderful but they do have two major drawbacks. (1) Many NAS devices will only allow you to access the files via their built-in web server. This means that you much use an Ethernet cable not a USB cable to see the files and (2) almost all of the NAS use proprietary files systems, many based on Linux. Why is this a problem? If anything happens to the physical enclosure, that is to say, the box in which the actual disk is installed, even if you can remove the disk from within the enclosure and place it in a USB box, the files will not be seen by your computer because of the network attached storage's proprietary operating system. Sometimes, the proprietary software installed on a NAS can be quite flaky after a while and simply stop working; or, due to poor quality control, the drive's controller will malfunction. This happens more than the manufacturers want the public to know. That wouldn't be so bad except, as I stated earlier, you cannot access the files on either a Windows computer or a Mac because the system is non-standard. Keep in mind that even when such a thing happens, usually, the files themselves are just fine, you just can't access them. When this happens you have two choices. You can (1) ship the drive off to a special company that will charge you a great deal of money to open the drive, platter by platter, and extract the files for you or (2) remove the disk drive from its original NAS enclosure, place it into a USB enclosure or equivalent, go online and hope you can find software that will allow you to see the file structure from your computer. Over the last 4 years, I've had two NAS devices go bad but I was able to recover the files using the latter option described in the paragraph above. Okay, I'm almost done. So, as I just said, I've had several network attached storage devices go bad but never that very first one I purchased back in 2007 which still hosted my iTunes Library. For the past several years, I've noticed that my original drive began to have problems. When I tried to make backups as I have done in the past, I would get read errors and such. Be that as it may, whenever I powered off the device for a minute or so and then power it back on, it would appear to be fine. Last week or so, I found that I needed to reboot the drive three and, sometimes, four times a day in order to get iTunes to run so I could sync up my iPhone and Nanno until finally, I received a message that Windows could not see any files on the drive. I received a similar message when attempting to access it via my Mac, also. As an aside, when an iTunes Library is installed on a NAS and all permissions are set correctly, both Windows and Mac computers can access the exact same Library and see the exact same media. That is to say, I can turn on my Mac and see the Library or I can use any of my Windows computers to see it. Since the last successful backup I made was about a year ago, I new that I might only have one more chance to get the files off of the drive before it completely died. So, I purchased a new 3 Terabyte USB 3.0 drive and, keeping this simple for you, tried to copy the files using standard procedures. I was completely unsuccessful. Fortunately, the FTP server on the drive was still working. Again, keeping it simple, in order for me to transfer the files to the new drive, I had to copy each folder, one at a time, on to the new drive and rebuild the structure manually. For whatever reason, the old drive would not allow its folder names to be copied by the computer nor would it allow more than 100 or so files to be accessed at once. Remember how I said that when I first started using iTunes I made a mess of the file structure? and how I changed the location of my iTunes Libraries several times back in the old days? All of that came back to bite me in the you-know-where when it came to copying everything as my media was strewn all over the drive. It really was a nightmare. To make along story short, it took five days and more man-hours than even I can believe but I finally transferred the entire contents of that old drive to a new one, complete with an intact iTunes Library. On the old drive, when I Clicked on iTunes from my Desktop, it would take between two to three minutes for iTunes to open successfully, even with a new computer. On the new drive, it takes less than 5 seconds for the program to launch successfully. The time it takes to sync my iPhone, now that the Library is located on a modern drive, has decreased significantly, also. The reason I purchased a USB drive instead of another NAS is because I want to have the option of being able to attach the drive to any computer anytime without needing to engage a web server. Also, as you have probably guessed, I do not want the files on the drive to fall hostage to a proprietary NAS operating system. How am I sharing the USB drive on my home network? My Router has two USB ports. This means that when the drive is attached to my Router, it looks just like a NAS. In conclusion, let me say that (1) I should have wrestled this bear to the ground years ago, (2) I now know more about the iTunes for Windows file structure than I ever wanted to know, (3) how blessed we are to live in a time in which a blind or low vision person can have enough access in order to resolve these kinds of issues, independently, and (4) whatever you do, make backups, backups, backups (smile). In The Journey, Mark -----Original Message----- From: macvisionaries@googlegroups.com [mailto:macvisionaries@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Krister Ekstrom Sent: Monday, August 25, 2014 12:00 PM To: macvisionaries@googlegroups.com Subject: Good and accessible NAS anyone? Hi, I’m thinking about switching my NAS from a Readynas that i have now to something else, mainly because i think the web interface of the Readynas is a bit complicated and i never could get the hang of the ITunes server and/or how to make playing songs from the ITunes library that i have on my Nas easy. The latter may just be me not being used to the whole Nas concept. I wonder what people use and what you think about that from an accessibility point of view? I heard of a NAS called Qnap it had among other features some kine of sync that looked a bit like Dropbox and i wonder if their configuration apps are accessible both on the mac an the IOs? Any other recommendations? /Krister -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
