Here's my two cents. First, how do you figure you have 1.5 TB of data? If you rip to FLAC then I expect 2000 CDs would require 0.75-1 TB of disk space. Don't get me wrong -- futureproofing is a good idea and drive prices are ridiculously cheap. But the drives could very well die before you get anywhere near 3TB.
Speaking of dying drives, I fully support rayman1701's suggestion for 3 drives, and especially for keeping one drive off-site. I keep one backup on a NAS on-site and a second backup on a USB drive (that has all my home files, not only my music) that I keep at my workplace. Don't think about the CDs themselves as a backup, except maybe as a last-resort backup. If you value your time spent ripping and tagging at all, backups are a no-brainer. Platter speed really doesn't matter. Additional interfaces may be convenient, but I wouldn't pay extra for them. Okay, I take that back -- at least a little. When buying a new drive for my offsite backup I paid a little extra for USB 3.0. I don't believe I have connected it to another USB 3.0 device in the 1-2 years that I have had it. You should answer the OS question before you decide on the drive format. For the OS, I'd say your choices are (a) bend over and pay the extra $200 for Win XP, (b) install an "easy" Linux like Ubuntu, or (c) install Vortexbox. Even friendly Linux distributions take some getting used to, so if you don't think you have the patience for it, then go with (a). If you'd like to play around a bit and learn some Linux, go with (b). Or if you plan to use the box only for serving music, and possibly other file serving, look at (c). Vortexbox is a specialized Linux distribution (based on Fedora) that works straight out of the box for running LMS, providing shared storage on Windows networks, and running some other media software. It has a custom graphical user interface so that you never have to see the Linux guts working in the background. And of course, it costs $200 less than the WinXP option. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ aubuti's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=2074 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=96069 _______________________________________________ Touch mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/touch
