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How to manage a big itunes library?

I have had a mac mini running itunes for about 2 1/2 years now. The inevitable has happened, my first drive has failed, at least it's icon has stopped showing on the desktop and I can't access the files.

I had a feeling this would eventually happen. I have the files backed up, but this does create a headache to fix it. The files were originally ripped on 250GB drives and the backups are on 500s. I have 5 250GB drives and one 500GB drive, all pretty much full. I have a pretty big collection, about 5000 or so CDs.

I need advise on a solid solution for this type of setup. There are some pretty big drives comming out but I just don't know what would be the best option.

Also this might seem stupid, but I am wondering if there would be any loss in quality in a copy of the original rip vs the original???
ejlif

Showing 6 responses by gunbei

gunbei
2,327 posts
 
Good point, Drubin.

I haven't actually heard a Drobo unit, but four spinning hard drives with a fan can't be dead silent.

Then again, any computer based system will have to contend with some level of hard rive or processor noise.
gunbei
2,327 posts
 
I've had my eye on one of these for awhile and may pull the trigger before the year is out.

http://www.drobo.com/

It's basically a simplified RAID system that utilizes up to four drives of any size. There is redundancy built in so when one drive fails your data is protected and the bad drive can be replaced on the fly.

I'm thinking of buying the newer Firewire 800 model and buying four 1TB Seagate or Maxtor drives for total storage of 2.7TB.
gunbei
2,327 posts
 
6-8TBs is one big library!

The reviewers at Newegg and Amazon don't seem to think the Drobo is TOO loud, however the new unit seems to be quieter AND runs cooler.

In your case, you may have to wait awhile for 1.5TB drives to become more affordable and even more reliable. That would give you a little more that 4TBs on a Drobo, but you may need to of them dark, shiny babies.
gunbei
2,327 posts
 
Whoa, Marco!

I hadn't read the Amazon Drobo reviews in a few months. I just became aware of the release of the FW800 version a few days ago, and it seems the newer unit for some reason has very poor reliability. What happened??!!

The other thing I was looking at is this:

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/MHU27S3.0T64/

But this unit still carries the greater risk that larger capacity hard drives have associated with them.

I've used NewerTech processor daughter cards in my old PowerMac 8500. It's good to see the company is still around.
gunbei
2,327 posts
 
Over the last three years, I've bought a lot of equipment from Other World Computing. Good people and good stuff!

I can definitely vouch for Taiyo Yuden DVDs and DVD-DLs as well. And, Mitsui for CDs.

The number of CDs I've ripped to Apple Lossless is only about 40GBs, so I don't have nearly the challenge Ejlif is faced with. A 250GB fanless hard drive might be a solution for me.

Ejlif, you may have to consider a small RAID system placed in a different location from your listening room.
gunbei
2,327 posts
 
Hopefully, the omission of Firewire 400/800 from the MacBook might just be a prelude to newer Apple devices utilizing Firewire S1600 or Firewire S3200.

I've never been a fan of USB. USB 1.0 was terrible, but 2.0 is better. It'll be interesting to see how things sort once USB 3.0 is in mass usage.

In pure performance terms Firewire S3200 and USB 3.0 should be almost 4 times faster than current Firewire 800, so it'll be interesting to see how they stack up in real world usage.

Are there any DACs that can utilize a fibre channel equipped Mac?
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