Best external hard drive to store PC ripped music

I'm not sure what your question is. Hard drives by themselves don't have a user interface independent of the directory structure of the operating system you're using or the music server application.

Are you asking what application you should use to manage your music?

Sfar, My Hitachi HD does have back up software. I'm not a big fan of how they decided to organize files on the Hitachi.

That's why I'm wondering if some other brand does it well or better.

I want one that put all the music into one area, regardless of date.

So, if I update the HD drive every week, I don't want files for dates of back up like the Hitachi does, I just want the music files to go into the same folder for all music regardless of date entered.

One big pool of music.

or maybe a HD brand that may cater to music back up, or be more friendly for it. I don't know?

Mcgarick, if you're using a PC then why not use the Windows Backup utility? You can select the files that you want backed up and the schedule you want them backed up with. All versions of Windows 7 can back up to an external HD attached with USB, eSATA, or Firewire. (Only the Professional and Ultimate version can backup to an NAS.)

And I wouldn't micromanage how the backup software organizes your files on the backup drive. As long as it can restore them when needed, I wouldn't judge it on how it's stored.

In my opinion, simplicity of backups is an area where the Macintosh is superior. The Time Machine in Mac OS X is brilliant, useful, zero-maintenence, and utterly simple. But you have a PC so I won't won't say any more about that.

As for physical external drives, I have been extremely happy with the OWC's Mercury Elite-AL Pro. See macsales.com. I have several of them and none has had any problems. They are well-constructed and support all possible interfaces (USB, Firewire, and eSATA). They are marketed towards the Mac user but work just fine on Windows (just format them with NTFS).

Hope that helps.

Michael

Hi Sufentanil (Michael),

I've got a Mac Mini with a 2TB drive nearly filled up, largely with uncompressed music. I've got a couple 1.5 TB drives hanging around, and would like to use one for backup with Time Machine. Will Time Machine compress things down so a 2TB drive of mostly uncompressed music will likely fit on a 1.5 TB drive?

Thanks.

Software designed to back up and restore the files on your hard drive is a different thing from software designed to organize your music collection, and both are independent of the brand of hard drive you use.

If what you're interested in is having easy access to your music files then software like iTunes or J.River would let you manage those files easily.