Copying your music collection to hard drives: who else is doing this?

Oh, I meant optical media backups.

 

I don't keep my music on internal drives.

I'm just going by what I have been reading about RAID.

For how much music I have, i'll need a nice tall stack of Blu-ray discs!

You can even build your own NAS. I just don't hand that kind of money, si i'm going for the external drive route. Besides, having the extra drive off-site is a very good idea. If you keep everything on just one NAS, your house could still burn down and you will lose it all.

I am a paranoid person. I do not trust people. It's how I must survive. I must trust my instincts. Everyone should.

 

NAS boxes

Ha, everything ain't for everybody.

Anyway, I got one of these http://www.adstech.com/products/NAS-806-EF/Reviews/NAS-806_reviews.asp?pid=NAS-806-EF I purchased it off of "E Puke," my goal is to put a 750GB WD in it and go from there. If that works out then I'm set for a bit. The next move is to buy one of the following http://www.shopping.hp.com/can/desktop/desktop_hp/home_servers/1/accessories?jumpid=re_r602_de_rnav_other_psg_nov07_buynow_447351 and build up my PCtainment system from there.

I hear you about trusting your instincts, for the most part I do.

m~

 

The NAS looks like a winner, but how many HDs can it hold?

 

Four.

 

Thanks! Either I didn't see that on the link, or it wasn't there. Anyway, sounds like I have a plan. Mo money, mo money...

 

If you are talking about the ADS, I believe one, and that's sad, that I don't "know," I jumped on it because of; the price ($42.98 on fleabay) and the fact ADS equipment "usually" works for me right out of the box. Since it's so reasonably priced, I'm gonnaplay with it until I get enough experience to merit buying that HP media server. The ADS will then go to down to the Church and finish out it's life there as a backup and media streaming server.

FYI, I've played movies on my TV via my laptop hooked up to the TV and wirelessly accessing the video files via a shared folder on a USB drive which was hooked up to my main computer. The video played mostly without a hitch. I'm sure that I could access my music files the same way and play them thru the system in the family room.

m~

 

I have one.

 

Are you talking about the HP? If so how do you like it? My plan is to stuff that puppy with 4 1TB drives.

Grant

FYI http://www.shopping.hp.com/store/product/product_detail/GG795AA%2523ABA?aoid=41243&kw=mediasmart+server

m~

 

Be careful if you get the HP, because it runs off Windows Home Server. I just did a google search on "Windows Home Server" + "complaints", and got 14,000 hits. There's a lot of unhappy people screaming about it right now.

 

ReadyNAS NV+

I love it.

 

Got you! I'm going to preuse the HP site also. It would be nice to get feedback from someone who has one though.

m~

 

Wow, I just watched the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sD3BjhOjq8
this seems to be the way to go. Damn, I have more research to do, thanks for the info.

m~

 

Grant, watch this...please:

http://drobo.com/products_demo.aspx

Heck, everyone should watch it...

 

There are people selling hardrives full of music on ebay, I know 2 dj's who did this I'm just ripping promo only one month at a time

 

Great video, should be required viewing for anyone considering putting all of their music onto hard disc drives. Made me crave for one, even though I already have it

 

Grant,

There are a bunch of different types of RAID array setups. RAID-0 is for the birds and has no place in a music server system. RAID-1 is a full redundant backup of the primary drive. You lose the primary, the secondary is available when you rebuild. The downside is that your effective storage capacity is 50% of the entire array.

RAID-5 is probably the safest way to go. In RAID-5, you have an array of x drives (4 in the ReadyNAS). Data is written to three of the drives and a checksum to the fourth. The theory is that you could calculate and rebuild the value of the data on any one of the drives with the data remaining on the other three drives. In RAID-5, the drives that contain the data vs the checksum are varied in every write to the drives. Each drive contains data and checksum data.

The theory is that you could lose a drive without losing your data. Simply replace the bad drive and let the array rebuild itself by calculating and replacing that data that was on the bad drive. That is all well and good. But I am the Angel of Death. 4 months ago, I had two drives go down simultaneously.....thus causing the complete loss of the array. Such a situation is quite rare - but it did happen. (Secondary backups are necessary even with the safest of RAID setups.)

 

Losing 2 drives, ouch, I thank god that my RAID controllers at work alert me via SNMP about any possible drive failures ahead of time

 

Whew! $650 for the diskless version, around $1000 for the one with the HDs! I can't afford it all now, so I have to stick with the poorman's plan of seperate HDs for now. I also need to get this done ASAP. I cannot wait until I save the money. What I can do, is stay with my original plan. Then, when I do get the money, I can copy it all to the NAS.

 

Got one here, too.

 

That Drobo site mentioned above claims you can use 3 out of 4 drives and still rebuild all the data. I wonder how the heck they're doing this? It almost sounds too good to be true.

 

ADS NAS device

FYI

I just got this up and running as follows:

1 laptop with Windows XP = no brainer install 5 minutes.
1 desktop Vista Ultimate 64bit = no brainer install 5 minutes
1 desktop Vista Home Prem 32bit = crap#$%^& 2 hours. Finally took the short cut from the 64 bit and installed it on the desktop of the 32bit and changed the properties and got it to open up. Now I have to check it to make sure that it works like it's suppose to, but it most likely won't, because it will take the properties of the short cut with it. Anyway, I'm going to read some more, check out the FAQ's and then if all of that fails email customer support.

Good news - it works as advertised not withstanding the afore mention "stuff," I had a 160GB WD laying around and I'm using that for right now.
Bad news - The device is rather noisey, about the same noise level that a microwave oven would make. It's most likely not that bad, but I have been accused of hearing like a bat.

But for $40.00 plus the cost of the hard drive, it's not a bad deal to learn off and for storage/backup and etc, purposes. Right now it's taking on some videos that I'm transferring from a 8mm camera.

I'm not responsible for anything that I do.

m~

 

The data is redundant and distributed. That's why 4 1T drives gets you 3T of storage.

 

There is no way in HELL I'll ever be doing this. Just indexing my collection on computer (and getting the data relatively correct) will probably take the better part of a year, I'm into the "Ms" right now.

Doing 4,500 needle drops? I don't think so. Plus, call me old fashioned, but I like listening to my stereo, not my computer. My computer is not even on the same floor as my primary system.

I know Grant has a huge collection, though his may tend more digital than mine (I'm about 2/5 digital), but, unless you're planning on dumping your physical collection (which is violative of copyright) what's the point.

 

http://www.slimdevices.com/

'Nuff said!

Edit: well maybe not quite:
http://www.slimdevices.com/pi_transporter.html