Hard Drives

[scangle]

I have reached a saturation point of cdr's and am considering putting all my shows on a hard drive for easier storage. The question is what brand of hard drive to buy with how much memory? I have over 1000 cdr's. Any suggestions will be appreciated. Thanks!

[direwolf-pgh]

one idea.
1. RAID = safety + speed.
2. Portable solution (not enclosed inside a server)
3. swappable drives

.. I'll leave it at that for now - great topic. I havent bought CD's in months and I dont miss the mess!

[GIGFY26]

I only use hard drives as well.

I suggest external enclosures with internal drives. You only need one or two enclosures and you can then buy as many drives as you will ever need and just swap them out. SATA drives are now cheaper than IDE/PATA drives so I would buy a SATA enclosure. I also suggest you buy enclosures with a fan. I tried a few external drives that didn't have fans and they eventually crashed from the heat.

I generally use Seagate drives but also have some Western Digital. Both brands have been very good. The Seagates come with a 5 year warranty but of course there is no warranty for the lost data. :D

I have used the AMS Venus series external enclosures and recently purchased two Veris enclosures but I haven't put them online yet.

It works much better for me than CDs do and I can keep all the shows in their original filesets.

[dude87]

Shop around at various online retailers to find the best deal. Someone mentioned RAID for safety and speed - caution, it depends (plus speed is overrated for listening to music). RAID 0 gives you great speed but offers no safety - if one drive fails than the contents of both drives are lost.

I have a media PC with four TB drives in it. I went with Western Digital "Green Power" drives for lower energy use, quieter operation and cooler temperatures. The four drives are arranged as two RAID 1 pairs (each pair acts has two drives with identical content). My media PC case won't hold any more drives so my next step is to move to network storage - either a PC file server or a dedicated network device (I've only just started on the second array so I've got a while to go, plus I keep videos on DVDs for now). RAID 1 has the slowest speed, and the Green Power drives are slower than other drives but I'm able to listen to 48/96 FLAC files with no problems.

[bot]

you could forget RAID and just keep a hard drive backup copy in a safe place.

computers are annoying. you can do everything 6 different ways. :lmao:

[Karst]

God! That InfoSafe thing is ugly. That wouldn't get anywhere near my desk! Bweh!

This is *much* nicer!

http://www.lacie.com/imgstore/product_large/hd_hddesignbyneilpouton_7.jpg

;)

[saltman]

Let me guess mac? :lol4:

I'm just kidding. Usually when people suggest things that have less potential and cost twice as much (but look really cute) I assume mac.

[classicrock1169]

God! That InfoSafe thing is ugly. That wouldn't get anywhere near my desk! Bweh!

This is *much* nicer!

http://www.lacie.com/imgstore/product_large/hd_hddesignbyneilpouton_7.jpg

;)
:lol4: See what happens when that overheats and fails on you.

[daddyray]

I have a mess of external hard drives, everything is backed up (so to speak) thrice and then I have two TB drive for use. Maxtor because that is what was gifted to me. they are just fine for what I do. I rarely burn CDs maybe as gifts or for learning songs.

[direwolf-pgh]

the biggest issue I had with moving away from CD's was how to find and play my stuff easily.
I've tried many many products & most wont play .shn, .ape, one prog wanted everything .wav - which means conversion of original files ( i dont like that)
this product rocks IMO, cause it also auto-includes the original text file with the songs and artwork + creates a database + interfaces with my player of choice !!!
its too cool imo. I dont have to convert any .shn, .flac, .ape...etc..etc. I currently have the OrangeCD interfaced with winamp.
http://www.firetongue.com/cd-database.html

[saltman]

Have you looked at a squeezebox? keep everything on the wireless network and plug this in to the receiver. supports flac out of the box and there is a huge community of hackers for it. there is a shn firmware hack.

http://www.slimdevices.com/pi_squeezebox.html

[direwolf-pgh]

that would be nice for store bought CD's
which brings up another major issue when going away from CD's
for live recordings it would require endless tagging of TB of data (read: never going to happen)
non tagged files from live shows are a HUGE issue. there is no data to identify what the hell the tracks are.
that display with 90% of shows collected from these type of sites would read: band name/track01 (at best)
OrangeCD does a really nice job with live shows from the online database to auto-tag live shows.

[saltman]

I see... I don't care about the tagging too much. I just play whole shows. works for me. auto tagging would be nice.

[daddyray]

http://www.firetongue.com/cd-database.html
thanks for the link, Wolf!
I'm starting to look into this sort of thing as I have run my mouth to friends about cool shows I've dl'ed and then cannot find them leaving me to look like even more of a tool than I am.

[saltman]

when you say tagging do you mean file id? like it tells you the name of the song?

that would be neat.... you could search for all the Dire Wolf tracks or something like that. And it would be nice to have that on the display also.



I just label my shows by date and that is good enough for me. I don't have trouble looking through the dates. They sort. The tracks are labeled by date and track number per etree standards.... That "title" or file name shows up on the squeezebox. Actually I make playlists with winamp and send that to the squeezebox. I have 10 or so playlists that are many many tracks long and I just click whatever one I'm in the mood for. Then I can use the squeezebox remote to flip through the track titles. But I am missing the song name interface like you mentioned. because my files are not id'd.

I use the same playlists to make DVDs for my MyGiG.

[direwolf-pgh]

the etree standard is exactly the problem I speak of
the database ends up showing a folder of tlg2008-09-05..which isnt too bad - right?!
but unless you have the text file with the show on your screen you never know 'what the tasty setlist is'
now you're just guessing that you want to play 'that band and date of show' - you cant choose by setlist/songs & its hard to remember TB's worth of setlists in your head.

(speakeasy as an example - and most other progs do exactly the same thing) - this is all you would see: tlg2008-09-05 - tlg2008-09-05d1t1

and that info sucks when browsing thousands of shows on a screen. you would have to have the original text file displayed to decipher.
..which again is why I'm currently a big fan of OrangeCD database - it includes the original text file on the screen with the show and artwork. no guessing.

[saltman]

I agree that would be nice. very nice. It's rare I go searching for a certain thing. I just throw in a random show. But it would be nice to have the setlist displayed.

[Karst]

Let me guess mac? :lol4:

I'm just kidding. Usually when people suggest things that have less potential and cost twice as much (but look really cute) I assume mac.

Sony and Apple, yes. You pay for what you get. BMW vs. Skoda? Makes sense? :lol4:

[saltman]

You pay for what you get.That is exactly my point. :)

[dude87]

that would be nice for store bought CD's
which brings up another major issue when going away from CD's
for live recordings it would require endless tagging of TB of data (read: never going to happen)
non tagged files from live shows are a HUGE issue. there is no data to identify what the hell the tracks are.
that display with 90% of shows collected from these type of sites would read: band name/track01 (at best)
OrangeCD does a really nice job with live shows from the online database to auto-tag live shows.

Tagging is a major pain - I've been using the live show tagger for Foobar 2000, it works relatively well with minimal need to alter a .txt file to get the song titles to be properly assigned. But it's still a slow process, I tend to do it in batches and I've got a ton of shows sitting on various hard drives waiting to be moved to my media PC.

Tagging and a good playback program (I use Jriver Media Center) also allows you to search your collection in an easier fashion - find all versions of a certain song, say, or at least scan a setlist before playing the show. If you get really into it you can (depending on program) even rate different versions of different songs although I don't have the patience for that sort of stuff.