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Archiving CDs to HD...suggestions?

i'm thinking of moving and wondering the best way to consolidate my 3k CD collection to a hard drive, which would be much easier to move.

clearly i'd go into PC/Mac-based audio in my new abode.

but a few questions first:
1) does the cd drive matter to the rip? or do i just need to use a good software like EAC or the like to ensure an accurate rip?

2) if i rip on a PC, do i have to use a PC in the future, or can i use a Mac against my external music store if it was created under a PC?

3) what sort of redundancy is in order? RAID 1? RAID 5? or just another HD the same as the one i plan on playing from, and simply use it as a backup?

4) which uncompressed file format should i use? AAC or something else?

5) any estimate of how much storage would be required for 3k CDs? or would it be feasible to split my music collection across 2 primary HDs...like A-L, M-Z...which is really asking if playback software can read across multiple drives in one virtual "library"

6) are rips sensitive to vibrations, power conditioning, etc?

thanks for any suggestions
RC
rhyno

Showing 1 response by daverz

daverz
487 posts
 
The format isn't that big an issue because there is free software that can interconvert (like XLD on Mac). Just make sure it's a lossless format. I do prefer FLAC because it can take any custom tag name you want.

1T is probably enough for 3000 discs, but since 2T and even 3T drives are available now, I'd just get the biggest drive you can to allow for future growth. I use an external USB drive for backup. For ease of expansion, I use LVM (logical volume management), but that's a unix thing, I'm not sure how that translates to other operating systems. With LVM I can add another drive when I need more space, issue a few commands to add that space to my existing music library, and then it all looks like one big drive.
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