External hard drive for expanding iTunes library?

Late to the table but here is my 2 cents. In the pro photo world, the g drive is THE standard. And trust me losing a 200,000 dollar job is alot worse than losing cd's that have been burned. Hope that helps.

I'll disagree with a previous poster's suggestion about a NAS device. They're relatively expensive (you can build a fileserver with similar capabilities cheaper), and they're SLOW.

For music files speed doesn't matter. Even 10Mbps is fast enough to rip and play discs and with RAID the backup is done in the background. Besides, how can a gigabit transfer rate be slower than USB? Please explain.

If a Buffalo TB NAS can be had for $600 how can you build it cheaper? How do you get a TB of drives, RAID controller, interface with USB ports, and a case with power supply for less than $600?

Better still, build your own fileserver with 2 drives running in RAID 1 (full redundancy) for well under $500. Then get an external hard drive to back up the fileserver

More details please. It sounds interesting but I can't figure out how to pull it off.

What volume of storage will you get for your $500? To equal a TB in RAID 5 (about 700 gig) with only 2 disks in RAID 1 would take the Seagate 750 gig drives which are over $300 each. So thats $600+ and you have to add the rest.

What enclosure do you use for the drives?
Is the RAID hardware or software based?
Would this work with multiple drives? I have over a TB of files so need multiple drives.

Thanks

Regardless of what drive and configuration you choose, you should back up your data.

Hmm... Michael, isn't a terastation a "file server"? If you can put together a two drive RAID1 for $500, you are doing pretty well. But, your net cost is $2/GB--$500/250GB (this is assuming you are buying 250GB drives and using RAID1, which nets you 250GB of usable storage). My Terastation cost $600, but nets me 700GB of storage with the more efficient RAID5 spanning four drives--about $0.85/GB. So, in some ways, the Terastation is still cheaper. In further defense of the Terastation, I'd note that it can be operated as a USB drive, if that is what you want.

As far as speed goes, streaming 44.1/16 bit audio is about 1.4 mbps. I believe the Terastation's highest transfer rate is about 150 mbps (although there is a jumbo block mode that runs 450 mbps). Maybe that isn't 800 mbps firewire (which isn't, I believe, a sustained rate), but its fast enough by several orders of magnitude. There are those streaming 1080i and 720p content from terastations.

As far as the G-Drive goes, "pro photo" doesn't have the same goals as high end audio. I do image processing on my machine, and have an expensive WD Raptor drive that spins at 10K RPM for that. For image processing, fast is the end all be all, which means they are looking for high RPM drives configured in striped arrays. Think xServe RAID set up as RAID 0+1.

Bottom line is that for image processing, I'd prioritize transfer speed over redundancy, and use DVD ROM as a backup. For audio, I'd prioritize redundancy over transfer speed.

Edesilva,

I used to think that a NAS was equivalent to a fileserver until I actually got one (Thecus N4100). I have a couple friends with other manufacturer's products, and we compared notes. They're all slow (the best gets around 12 Mbps, nowhere near the 150 Mbps that you're quoting). Despite having a gigabit ethernet interface and 4 decent drives running RAID 5, it lags substantially compared to my 9 year old fileserver (Dell PowerEdge running an ancient version of Linux).

I put all my audio data on it because the data outgrew my fileserver. Unfortunately, the whole process of ripping CD's, organizing the data, and extracting select pieces to transfer to a portable device is now much more time consuming. Don't underestimate the desire for better speed with audio data, as well.

You can construct a fileserver fairly inexpensively. Just skimp on the processor, memory, and video card while getting decent drives and network card. It won't need a monitor or keyboard once you get it up and running; you can administer it remotely from there on. One such example is https://secure.newegg.com/NewVersion/Wishlist/PublicWishDetail.asp?WishListNumber=3894685&WishListTitle=Cost%2Deffective+fileserver.

Just get your favorite distribution of Linux (you can download many for free, or pay a few dollars for a DVD). I would run this in RAID 0 because you'll have an external backup unit. This example system would have 800 GB, and would be flexible enough to allow other types of services (ie, you could also use it as a webserver and print server). This is my current recommendation for people needing substantial storage, and use the NAS devices (or just an external hard drive) as backups.

To answer Howell's original question, I think the G-Drive will probably work great for you. Just make sure you have a separate backup unit and you're fine. Many good drives are available in the $100ish range that have 5 year warranties, so I don't think you need to go overboard. As long as you have a good backup, you can fix even a catastrophic drive failure easily and inexpensively. That's just the point that I've been trying to get across.

Michael