multimedia content is synced from a master server onto a remote apple tv (hacked to extend it to 2TB). the syncing is very slow indeed but as i add only about a GB a week, the sync’ing happens over a couple of nights and transparently to the user. it’s not a perfect solution due to the weird naming system of apple tv content, but such is life. the bridge is made using a layer 2 (TAP) VPN connection using openvpn (remember the apple tv is hacked).

i also backup my laptop (which should be a reflection of the core data) via time machine every weekend.

the master server now has some big disks in (but see below) and is set up as a raid array.

one of my desktop disks fried last december, also a laptop disk. i bought a new disk for the laptop and left in connected to the time machine over night. but when it happened I was in another country so I just went along to the nearest apple store and bought a new laptop. with the remote services that i had set up (windows live sync and dropbox) i was able to get the other laptop up and running with all my data in under 30 minutes of work (then just left it syncing overnight). perfect solution.

the desktop was more trouble – i had no spare drives so ripped a raid participant out of the master server and shoved it in the iMac. then restored the computer from the time machine backup. this was (see above) the backup from my main laptop – but as the laptop and desktop should be mostly reflections of each other, no loss there. so I restored from time machine (very slow) and then used the live sync + dropbox combo to update it to bring it into full sync with the live data.

the great thing about this solution is that it’s all free (save the hardware for the time machine and master server). i don’t really need the time machine but it is one more layer of redundancy from the master server.