Slim Devices SB3 external hard drive

Audioperv, I must be living a charmed life from a hard drive standpoint. Out of the dozens of hard drives I've owned over the years, only one catastrophically failed, and that was after 4-5 years. One other was DOA. I also build/fix machines for friends, and I've only seen one of them die.

The mean time between failure on drives is in the hundreds of thousands of hours. And I guess my experience backs that up.

That's why I advocate 2 inexpensive and large-capacity drives. The 2nd drive will be a backup to the first (and preferably stored elsewhere, for maximum protection). The backup drive is the true defense against data loss, regardless of the mechanism.

Jeff, get an external drive enclosure such as this one:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817198012

Then get a 500GB SATA drive (Seagate and WD have reliable for me for years). It's a breeze to install. Just remember to get two of them so that one can be used to backup the other.

Michael

For latest pricing specials on hard drives see:
http://www.salescircular.com
Select your state. Click on hard drives. For reliability info on individual models check user reviews on Newegg, buy.com, CNET. Even from the same manufacturer, some drive models seem to be much more reliable than others. Good idea to maintain twin copies of the music collection on separate drives. Ideally drives should be from different manufacturers and they won't fail at the same time. . . . believe it or not, twin failures have happened as well. Optionally. . . makes ya bets'n takes ya chances !

For creating a music server around extremely rugged milspec external hard drives capable of surviving 1200G of accelleration see:
http://www.olixir.com
Somewhat pricier than run of the mill consumer grade drives, their 500GB solutions cost approx $550 after rebate. The 750GB drive is approx $750. . . still a bargain for audiophilically hardened pockets.
Olixir has an even more hardened line of drives, but those go only up to 160GB.

Not having done ripping yet I am wondering how many songs you can get from best slightly compressed (I guess Apple lossless) and fully oncompressed say on a 500 Gig drive.
Thanks
Chazz

I have 7211 FLAC compressed songs on my 300GB drive and it is about 66% full. Figure something around 18,000 songs for a 500GB drive if you use FLAC and the assortment is about the same (jazz, rock, classical - small and symphonic). Not sure how Apple Lossless and FLAC compare.