Kijanki,
I think we're basically making the same argument: RAID (0, 1, 5) is OK, but backups are imperative.
Musicnoise, how large exactly is your music collection and how fast do you anticipate it growing? If it's slightly over 1TB, then the least expensive option would be to get 2 1.5 or 2TB external hard drives, one for production use and the other for periodic backups. If it's in excess of 2TB or threatening to go there, then you should probably look at external enclosure that gang together at least two drives and run them in RAID 0 (no redundancy but maximal use of storage space). You will need two of these gangs of drives, because that's how you'll make your backups.
As an example of something you might consider, Try this from OWC.
Can you use two completely separate external HDD's to store your data on? Yes. Most software (including iTunes) should handle this just fine. And you can even create some trickery using symbolic links if you're on a macintosh to make those external drives appear as though they're available elsewhere on the filesystem. (Go to the command prompt and type 'ln -s source_directory target_directory' but this is an advanced exercise that I don't think you'll need to do.) But there are enough relatively inexpensive external enclosures that accommodate 2 drives and automatically provide RAID 0 that I'm not convinced there's a real benefit to having two separate external drives (and then another two for the backups) when you can simply have them in the same box.
Michael
I think we're basically making the same argument: RAID (0, 1, 5) is OK, but backups are imperative.
Musicnoise, how large exactly is your music collection and how fast do you anticipate it growing? If it's slightly over 1TB, then the least expensive option would be to get 2 1.5 or 2TB external hard drives, one for production use and the other for periodic backups. If it's in excess of 2TB or threatening to go there, then you should probably look at external enclosure that gang together at least two drives and run them in RAID 0 (no redundancy but maximal use of storage space). You will need two of these gangs of drives, because that's how you'll make your backups.
As an example of something you might consider, Try this from OWC.
Can you use two completely separate external HDD's to store your data on? Yes. Most software (including iTunes) should handle this just fine. And you can even create some trickery using symbolic links if you're on a macintosh to make those external drives appear as though they're available elsewhere on the filesystem. (Go to the command prompt and type 'ln -s source_directory target_directory' but this is an advanced exercise that I don't think you'll need to do.) But there are enough relatively inexpensive external enclosures that accommodate 2 drives and automatically provide RAID 0 that I'm not convinced there's a real benefit to having two separate external drives (and then another two for the backups) when you can simply have them in the same box.
Michael