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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
acurus
140 posts
 
many programs will read FLAC so you dont have to convert it. If you need to convert, check out dbpoweramp.....it is an incredible program. You may have to re-load artwork, but all tags should remain.
zowie
68 posts
 
What's preferable to use, AIFF or FLAC? iPods don't read FLAC do they? Which provides greater levels of compression?
mightyburner
30 posts
 
For some reason a backup HD I purchased never worked properly (or I just never set it up properly). As an interim solution and also to keep a copy offsite (to protect against fire, theft, etc), I use Carbonite to backup my music collection. I know nothing about computers and such but if my CDs are ripped in FLAC and I use Carbonite, isn't that the same if not better than using a RAID?
zowie
68 posts
 
Allow me to ask another question. If you've got 700 cds you can fit them on a terebite drive without any compression and still have room for hundreds more. So why deal with compression? Unless you buy new music at a truly maniacal pace, by the time you outgrow the drive space, drives will be bigger and cheaper. Your time is probably worth more than the drive space you'll save.
Ag insider logo xs@2x
jopagi
7 posts
 
Zowie:
It's a valid question for sure. Why not save everything as .wav (uncompressed) files?

There are a couple of reasons besides saving space that I use flac:
- The wav format doesn't have any set of agreed-upon ways to store metadata. I always seem to lose metadata whenever I convert from one format to another, or switch from one player to another when I use it. That's not an issue for flac or aiff or wma.

- I think Squeezebox transmits everything in flac format, so it's helpful to have it already compressed so it doesn't have to compress it while streaming.

- Drives are getting cheaper, but bandwidth is not necessarily keeping up. I use a small Passport USB drive at work which at 500Gb can hold all my CDs for now. My music skips a bit if I do anything else that accesses that drive while I'm listening. Using flac cuts the data rate in half or so versus .WAV files, which lowers the USB contention on my laptop, and makes my drive happier.

Regards,
Jonathan
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