Need help moving from CDP to Mac Mini music server

Thanks snipes, Sfar, and Edesilva for all the HD advice. The only thing that confuses me about the Terastation RAID 5 solution is that if it only has 4 x 250GB drives, how can one of those drives store the data of the other three? I mean, logically it would seem like the most real storage you could have on the Terastation would be <500 GB, since you need to have that much space to mirror it, even if it's done in blocks, right? I understand that having more drives means that you're better covered in the event that one goes down. I think I'm going to go with one of the drives from Other World Computer or Newer Technology (same company: http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/) such as the 1TB AL Pro 800 RAID STRIPE FireWire 800/400 for $760. It gets some good reviews in the mac mags and online community, and Allows me have total redundacy (and the housing is nicer than the Terastation). I know the terastation is cheaper and has more features, but it's overkill for me. I have a 1BR apartment, so don't need to feed an entire house. I expect Mac at some point to come out with a real home media computer, so I know all of this is a basic (and hence wasted) investment so I'm just looking to get off the ground.

Still looks like the Benchmark is the way to go, although I'm going to audition the Stello DA220 MK2 against it if the dealer will let me bring it home). So it looks like I'm just around 3 grand depending on the DAC.

Any Mac Mini specs (ram, etc) people recommend? I mean, I usually just load it up, but since this is only for music do I need the extra RAM and Faster core duo processor? Thoughts?

I'm also going to use the AE w/toslink to the DAC for the time being, unless I go with the stello. This way I can locate the computer and drives in a better location.

Thanks for all the suggestions. Keep 'em coming.

-matt

Matt, please post the exact link to the unit you are talking about, I couldn't find it on the site. The word STRIPE in your description has me worried. Striping offers no data protection, it's strictly for increased performance, which is not necessary for streaming audio. As for the confusion concerning the Terrastation R5, the confusion is coming from the two different protection mechanisms. RAID 5 gives you usable space on roughly all the disks minus 1 (parity disk). The implementation is rather confusing, see Edesilva's explanation above. Mirroring you get exactly 1/2 of the total amount of available space for use, one disk has an exact duplicate of the other. Both offer data protection against loss of a single disk, just through different implementations. The main difference to keep in mind is with R5 you need 3 or realistcally 4 disks minimum. R1 (mirroring) only requires two.

Again, please post the link to the exact device. My concern is if it's listed as 800/400. My guess is they are giving you two 400 gb disks and you can either mirror them via R1 and have 400 gb usable or stripe them via RAID 0 and have 800 GB usable. Striping you write across both disks, but different data. If you lose either disk you lose everything.

Matt, be careful, RAID striping gets you transfer speed, not redundancy. Let me try RAID 5 again. Say you want to store 3 numbers -- 012, 147, and 532. With the four disks, RAID 5 puts 012 on Disk A in Block/Sector X. In that same Block/Sector on Disk B, it puts 147. In that same Block/Sector on Disk C, it puts 532. In that same Block/Sector on Disk D, it puts 691, which is the sum of what is on A, B and C in that location. So...

If Disk A goes bad, it can recover the data for Block/Sector X on that disk by taking 691 and subtracting what is on that Block/Sector on Disks B and C: 691-(147+532)= 012.

If Disk B goes bad, it can recover the data for Block/Sector X on that disk by taking 691 and subtracting what is on that Block/Sector on Disks A and C: 691-(012+532)= 147.

If Disk C goes bad, it can recover the data for Block/Sector X on that disk by taking 691 and subtracting what is on that Block/Sector on Disks A and B: 691-(012+147)= 532.

Disk D, obviously, can be recreated from A, B and C. This is a simplistic version, but RAID 5 is higher efficiency than mirroring because the effective storage you get is (N-1)*S, where N=number of identical disks and S=size of disks. For mirroring, obviously, the efficiency is N*S/2.

Maybe the tera isn't pretty, but mine's in my closet, do I don't worry about it. ;)

Good luck--as far as Mac Mini specs go, I bought a 1.4GHz one with the bigger memory package and it was overkill for doing audio.

Interesting article from 6 moons... in the end it's not a review rather more along the lines of a technical explanation of usb...
http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/wavelength2/brick.html

You would be much better off using a USB DAC rather than a DAC that is fed through a Toslink connection. Using the toslink and the Benchmark there is always the issue of unwanted variations in the frequency of the incoming word-clock signal, which the converter is always trying to track. But with a USB controller generating its own word-clock signal, the frequency remains steady.