iTunes star ratings, play count, playlist info

The iTunes library file keeps track of where the music files are located, so when copying your music files you would have to maintain the same drive heirarchy in the new location in order to make use of the old library file. Assuming that's the case all you have to do is copy the old library file to the location I mentioned above. You will lose whatever changes you've made in the interim.

Ed-

I may be headed in the same direction... I had been using LaCie 250 GB drives, but just had a disk crash on my second data drive that wiped out 300 CDs or so. I had gambled that I'd be OK through the ripping process, so it wasn't backed up--was going to do that when the disk was done. Even worse, I went ahead to back up the first data drive, about 2% of the data was generating CRC errors.

I am now thinking that the external drives for consumers currently available really aren't ready for prime time. At least not 24x7 operation and having people actually use the capacity that is available.

I was thinking about the Buffala terastation, 1 TB (700 GB w/RAID 5) due out in Feb., but I'm totally losing faith in consumer storage. If this thing is built around Maxstor consumer drives, it just may not be worth it in the end. So... I had previously checked with Dell and was looking at $14K for 1 TB of NAS RAID 5 storage. That doesn't work. I briefly looked at the $3K Niveus 1 TB media server but, again, I'm guessing its built on consumer hardware. So... I'm now looking at an xServe w/3x400GB drives in a RAID 5 configuration.

Is that where you ended up? Have you used your xServe with Windows devices (most of my 'puters are WinXP)? Did you go with the cluster version or the normal one? Any help would be appreciated...

Oh yeah, one more question...

How quiet/loud is it?

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!

Holy god. At least now I have an answer when people tell me I've gone overkill...

I'm thinking of the xServe G5 w/3x400GB drives and the RAID card. Should give me 0.8 TB of actual storage configured as RAID 5 for about $5K. Of course, I can only lose one drive without losing data, but I think the LaCie drives will be OK as standalone backups (as long as I never turn them on and never need them). Should be good enough for pics and 1500 or so CDs. I needed something in the way of a standalone network device, however, so don't think the xRAID works for me. I think--tell me if I'm wrong--that won't work as a standalone network device.

Turns out the cluster thing is irrelevant, I really just need the xServe. Anything else fun I can do with this puppy once its hooked up?