Digital music storage question

Yes, multiple backups are a must!!!! With the introduction of SSDs, HDD technology is really coming down in price. You have no more excuses!!

 

The term, "future-proof" never comes up enough in threads like this...because many looking to improve their current system usually did it the first time fine for their original need, but just discovered it won't work on another platform or device, or found their newer component was capable of noticeably better sound, or better ergonomics.

 

This ^ If you have ever had to re-rip your 200+ cd collection you will understand why you should do it right the first time.

 

Not if you've been ripping your collection for nearly 20 years, when storage was still prohibitively expensive and the ability to play lossless formats wasn't as prevalent. I'm on my 3rd run through now: 192, 320, lossless.

Hindsight is a beautiful thing.

 

Even if the laptop is dead, the harddrive might not be. The data might all be there, you should check that with a different computer. There are adapters which allow you to access a harddrive as an external USB device.

 

Read this only after I said the same thing

 

The iPod was never intended for the exchange of audio files between different computers.

 

So it lacks a function that any regular MP3 player has?

 

gotcha...not really up the workings of Apple...

 

It was done intentionally to slow (make only slightly more difficult) illegal sharing of music.

 

It worked well...

 

Honestly asking: Why would ALAC be insane?

 

I rip everything to ALAC, it's just a container, if I want FLAC, I just convert from ALAC; lossless to lossless.

Insane to think otherwise

 

My main reason was he uses a PC. You can play ALAC on PC I believe. But, Flac is more common. ALAC never really seemed to take off like Flac did. But I am not sure his iPod will play Flac. So maybe it's not so insane. Take that comment with a grain of salt, please. I must admit I was being a little flippant. I apologize.

 

iPod's won't play FLAC, no.

I'm in no rush to convert to FLAC now, even though I don't use an iPod. Muzecast converts to FLAC on the fly when it streams from my PC to anywhere I want to play music and, as I said earlier, I keep my iTunes library maintained as I have a lot of scripts for batch-tagging that access my iTunes library and I can't be bothered to reverse engineer them to work on other databases/software/platforms.

 

Obviously, yes. It was Apple’s idea that the iPod is nothing but a portable “mirror” of a music collection stored one a computer. Of course, anyone is free to use a different device if the iPod’s functionality is perceived as insufficient.

 

I have a large collection of music ripped from CDs to FLAC plus digital purchases, including high-res files.

Everything is stored on an external RAID5 drive array for safety reasons. What is RAID5? It is a combination of 4 hard drives installed in a single enclosure that protects your collection from malfunction of any single drive. This happened to me three times in the past 10 years: one of the drives died. In this case, you just remove it from the RAID5 enclosure, replace it with a new one and everything instantly works again without a need to re-rip and restore your music database.

Additionally, I pay for the CrashPlan backup service. This is one of many online services that constantly backs up your music collection to their own servers via Internet. So that in the event of fire or theft at your home you still have an option to restore your music collection. Another way to achieve the same goal is to back up your music to a spare drive on a weekly basis and keep that drive at another location, for example at your office.

 

+1

 

It is a combination 3 or more hard drives.

 

Whatever solution you arrive at, you need to come up with a backup plan for any digital files you want to keep. I use Backblaze. Costs about $50 a year for unlimited backup space for one computer. Well worth it in the event of a failure. I have a 10TB hard drive backed up that way.

 

I don't think that it is insane to rip to FLAC or ALAC. I think that is best to rip to FLAC/ALAC as source files, then convert them to other formats as needed. That way, you only have to rip your CDs one time.

As an example, I use MediaMonkey to manage my music and I have it autoconvert my FLAC files (it doesn't change the FLAC files in my library) to high-bitrate LAME-encoded MP3s when loading them on my iPod Classic. The only disadvantage is that it takes longer to load the files on my player because it has to convert each file as it loads them. At the same time, I can have it convert my files differently for different players, I just have to tell MediaMonkey how to autoconvert them.

 

Untrue. Apple supports using the iPod as an external hard disk. The issue is that the file system the iPod uses varies, depending on whether it's been used with a Mac or a PC. If it was used with a Mac, it's in the HFS+ format, which typically cannot be read by a PC. If it was used with a PC, it's in the FAT32 format, which can be read by a Mac. Apple likely designed it this way, to use the "native" file system, so as to simplify the programming of iTunes and allow it to work on multiple operating systems.

 

I was only referring to ALAC as insane. Flac makes complete sense to me. All my files are in Flac. I also mentioned I was being flippant later on. No big deal, I just thought I would bring you up to speed.

 

I have dBpoweramp installed which I do use to convert ape files to flac quite regularly but I've never actually used it to rip CD's though. Better to use than cuetools/ripper or Foobar?

I have also been using Mediamonkey for my music management for years. I have heard of Musicbee and did use it once but I found it buggy at the time. Maybe I'll give it another shot. One thing I'd like to include in the digital file data that MM doesn't seem to feature for example, are Label numbers and barcodes among a few.

 

Some of you need to get your crap straight...FLACs will not only play on an Ipod or iPhone but also on a MAC.