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Ripping 700 CD's to HD using FLAC-How much space?

Hello all,

Currently, I am in the process of transferring my cd's to an external hard drive using FLAC lossless, EAC for transfer and WinAmp for a media player. I would like a HD with enough space for future downloads but am unsure as to what size to purchase? Memory seems reasonably priced these days and 1TB external HD's are plentiful. Also, I may let go of cd's that I no longer listen to after I have them on the HD which leaves me with another dilemma - how many HD's would suffice for backups? Everyone's advice is appreciated. Thanks, Chris

Currently using:
Windows XP Home
Dell XPS 400
Room for 2 internal HD's (using only (1) currently)
chris74
starcon
98 posts
 
of course the new way is a static player. You use flash memory instead of a reg.
hard drive which eliminates the jitter (in theory) check out the blacknote dss
at blacknote.eu
ozzy's avatar
ozzy
7,574 posts
 
I havent a clue what you guys are jabbering about.
Do you like 2 channel Audio quality?
br3098
1,000 posts
 
Starcon,

Jitter is not a result of storage technology. It's an I/O overflow issue due to the USB/USC 2.0 bus spec using a non-optimized asynchronous communication protocol. Solid state disks (SSDs) are very fast - too fast, frankly, for the bus IMHO. Like putting a Ferrari engine in a tricycle. Looks good, but how do you justify it?

In order to make the Blacknote DSS work better, I imagine that these guys are using some sort of custom I/O buffer. It probably works well, but it' got to be a hell of a lot cheaper to just use a good DAC with a word clock that supports S/P DIF.
chris74 OP
99 posts
 
Thanks Al for bringing that RAID link to my attention. I had originally thought a RAID setup would be ideal but then again, maybe not for music storage.
chris74 OP
99 posts
 
Ozzy, to answer your question, yes, high fidelity 2-channel playback is my primary reason for utilizing lossless digital conversion when transferring cd's to a hard drive. The term "lossless" means you will be making an exact bit for bit copy of the cd to the hard drive without any loss of data or degradation in sound quality. Hope this helps clarify things. Cheers, Chris
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