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