iTunes star ratings, play count, playlist info

O.K. so it sounds like I transferred the iTunes library incorrectly.

How do I do it correctly?

I love the xServe RAID. It has been up and running for over 40 days now. It mounts instantly, and is more than fast enough for any uses I have. I use it for graphics files, audio, and general storage. It seems to be very well built.

I bought the full boat. 14 x 400 Gig drives. There are two separate banks of drives. I have 6 drives on each side set up as a RAID 5 and the remaining drive on each side set up as a "hot spare" . That means that I have about 1.81 TB per side of storage. I can lose two drives per side without losing data. All other components are redundant.

My brother has an xServe RAID in a mixed Apple/Windows environment, and says that it works great. I only have Apple computers.

It is loud (though not much louder than the LaCie Terrabyte drives!). You could deal with the noise in two ways: first, you could place the RAID in a separate room, since you can use optical cable as a connection. That is what I have done. Second, you could house the RAID in a cabinet specifically designed to be quiet, available from Apple. Another consideration is the heat generated. The Apple site says how many BTUs it sheds.

The xServe RAID does not come in a cluster version, that is only the xServe G5 Server.

The only downside that I see to the xServe RAID is that it will probably be pretty much worthless in 5 years, as alternative storage systems are developed. Gotta love the computer industry!

Having had the RAID for over a month I just can't imagine doing without it, so it really is not overkill - just expensive!

I can't help but think that an xServe G5 might be overkill for you if all you are looking for is a NAS solution. (It is a different story if you are also looking for a server.)

I know that LaCie just increased their Ethernet Drive capacity to 1Terrabyte for $1,599.

You could buy two (or even three) of them for less than the xServe. You could then use one for backup. You could stash them in a remote location - wherever you have ethernet.

They seem to have gotten good reviews. The biggest negative for me would be the fact that they are only 10/100 ethernet.

I am a huge fan of Apple products. So if you are looking for a server, the xServe would be a fantastic way to go. If you are only looking for storage, it might make more sense to find a different solution.

I know the feeling of just wanting your data to be safe. I really don't want to have to re-rip all those CDs, let alone the impossibility of retaking ten thousand photos!

I have my RAID set up as a local disk on my G5. In other words, I don't have a server at all. The RAID volumes just show up on my desktop as local drives. They never have to spin up, they are just always there.

One interesting note about RAID. A RAID is actually less RELIABLE than a normal disk.

If you take 14 hard drives (ignore the controller for now), each with a Mean Time Between Failure of 500,000 hours each and tie them all together. You get a system with a MTBF of only 35,714 hours! A decrease in reliability of 93%. What makes RAID 5 (with distributed parity information) so great is that it is FAULT TOLERANT.

In theory anyway, my RAID can have 4 drives, one controller, one power supply, one cooling fan, and one UPS all fail all at the same time without losing data. I have a far greater chance of having some failure than just a single disk drive with a MTBF of 500,000 hours. The difference is that when I have a failure, it is likely that it won't be catastrophic.