Apple Lossless vs iTunes Plus

My hard drive became too cluttered with my iTunes library so I took my Apple G5 computer to the local shop to see about getting a second hard drive installed.

They noticed that the seagate hard drive that was still under warranty was "sounding a bit too noisy" so they suggested I replace it. Since my Time Machine had been installed for over a year, this replacement was simple and I had my 'old' computer up and running in no time with a second internal hard drive just for my music.

Moral of story: Backing up hard drive is good.

Moral of story: Backing up hard drive is good.

Amen. Another moral you are missing: Store your iTunes library separately on an external hard drive...NOT on your main boot drive, especially if it is a significant size library. You will save wear on your boot drive if you listen frequently, it is more portable if you want to move it from computer to computer. One other thing I learned using my G5 (2.7ghz dual-core) as a server - though it makes for a blazing fast server, it is a terrible power-hog. I plugged a watt-meter into my computer system when we noticed our electric bills had gone way up and determined that if left on as a server it uses as much power as my refrigerator! That's a whole lot of power! I'm looking into swapping over to a MacMini or a laptop since I really don't need the speed of a g5 as a server.

Jax2 - I said "CD's AND spinning magnetic disks," not, "CD's AS spinning magnetic disks." Yes, I understand the difference between optical discs and magnetic disks (notice the difference in spelling between "discs" and "disks"), my point was that either storage medium will eventually fail physically or be supplanted by a newer technology.

Sfar - Sorry, my bad having misread your post. Yes, either storage medium will definitely eventually fail, no doubt. Backup is the word to live by no matter how your store your data.

Jax, I download chunks of the iTunes to my iPhone and play is quite a bit when away from home.

Otherwise the second ( iTunes only) hard drive in my computer works really well.