aubuti wrote: > 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, proper > backups on a hard drive 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.
I agree with all the points made here. Obviously, I'm using vortexbox (see signature info, and I know nothing about linux) but I have lots of USB drives (mostly usb2.0 1TB and 2TB models, different makes, etc.). In my opinion, almost nothing matters about the USB drives (platters, speed, etc. as long as at least USB 2.0). I've used about every brand (and many brands have the same owner anyhow). I use NTFS on all my drives. I do have some usb/esata drives at work and they are certainly fast for copying files, but this is essentially irrelevant for use with LMS and music server. Don't over invest in your drives or over think which drives to buy, as over time you'll want to rotate old ones out and replace with new ones. USB Drives are like underwear--better to replace every so often. ;-) All drives will go bad eventually (and never at a good time). Best approach is to have lots of backups. In addition to my vortexbox setups at home and the weekend place, and eSATA drive connected to my work machine (where I run LMS on a win7 desktop), I have 6 other USB drives containing complete backup of my about 70,000, mostly FLAC files. And these are stored at 3 different locations (and not connected to anything except when I'm using to backup). USB drives are cheap. My time in ripping and tagging file is NOT cheap (to me). The nice thing about the vortexbox setup, is that I can plugin a USB drive, click on backup and it will do an INCREMENTAL backup. So other than the initial backup which took hours, the incremental backup may only take a few minutes. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ garym's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=17325 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=96069 _______________________________________________ Touch mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/touch
