external hard drive

[RayP]

Now that I am retired and travelling for quite a few months each year, I would like to have almost my entire classical music collection available to me while I travel. I've been thinking about copying my CDs (mostly classical) to a light weight external hard drive. I suspect 1.5  to 2 tb will be enough if I use FLAC or some other lossless format. I do have some questions.

Are any particular brands better than others in terms of reliability?

Considering the ripping effort involved (1000+ CDs), do people usually buy two drives for backup?

I've been playing with JRiver for the organization of the music. It is barely adequate as far as I am concerned but still superior to anything else so far that I have found. Is there any better?

I'm not overly interested in the quality of sound etc in the short term, just the availability of music I love. I'll probably just hook up the external drive to my netbook and just listen on earbuds which I use when I travel because they are light weight.

I might move to a music server eventually for home use so I do follow the other threads with interest.

ray

 

[earwaxxer]

Hi Ray - Ripping those CD's to hard drive is the way to go IMO. I have about 1000 CD's ripped to date. You might as well rip to WAV. Its about 400GB for almost 1000 CD's. Peanuts these days. You can always convert to FLAC. I would use DbPoweramp or EAC. Rip once and forget about it. You can organize them later. They will be tagged according to genre, name etc. And yes the music 'server' is very much the way to get access to it. Many options. I like squeezebox. Last thing - of course you want a backup drive! These big drives die without warning!

 

[vanofmonks]

Yeah 300-400 gigs per 1000 at most for flac.  If it were me I would go ahead and rip to flac because it would be a pain when you want to do a bulk conversion later for some reason, and flac is lossless so you save space with no loss of quality.

If you are concerned about your time, get a backup drive.  If you are only concerned with having a copy of the data, you will already have a backup in the original CD's. 

 

[randy@matrixq.com]

Ray, do plan on a backup of some form.  If your collection is like mine, it will start with CDs but then grow with FLAC downloads from band sites, online downloads of various sources (HDtracks, etc.), and "other acquisitions".  While it may be possible to rebuild from scratch, it's worth the cost of another drive just to save you the hassle.  1000 CDs will take you quite a while to rip. 

Plus, you'll find yourself spending quite a bit of time editing your database.  Disc tracks (especially double CDs) will not always number right and sometimes your software will mesh up two discs.  Gracenote will recognize almost all of your CDs but some of my "local artist/coffee shop" Cds had to be hand entered.  You really don't want to re-do all of this work. 

Oh, and album art is another item that doesn't always get setup right automatically.  You will find yourself doing a lot of work updating that part of the database.  Many albums have several versions of artwork.  These can be for re-released, re-mastered, or other countries.  The automatic may not use the album art that you want to associate with the album.  You can fix this by hand but it takes time.

Wow, just realized I'm sounding negative about this project.  Here's the positive:  Ripping is worth all the time and energy you will put into it.  Just make a good backup and save yourself from repeating all that hard work.

I back up my whole collection quite often.  At least once a week and after any additions are made.  I use "Goodsync" and back up to a drive on the network.  This way the source and backup are at least in different rooms.  Ideally, I'd have another copy "offsite" but I haven't worked that out yet.

 

[RayP]

So if I am reading between the lines correctly from the recommendations, the brand of drive is not really important. Just presume one will fail and get two of them. And of course, reverting to my former career of IT, keep one copy offsite when possible.

ray

 

[Doc B]

I've been having good luck so far with a WD Elements external drive.

 

[Noskipallwd]

Just picked up a 1TB WD Elements portable from Tiger Direct for $99 on sale. http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2300667&CatId=2420 it has a bunch of software I didn't need and comes in OEM packaging but is a pretty good deal.

Cheers,
Shawn

 

[dgb]

since you mentioned it's for "on the go" , the western digital 2.5 hd with usb 3.0 support and bus power is pretty sweet http://www.storagereview.com/2tb_western_digital_my_passport_portable_hard_drive_review

 

[HF9]

Western Digital seems to do the best on Newegg in terms of reliability, at least for the past few years. They cost a little more than the others due to the flooding in Thailand which seems to have affected them the most of all the manufacturers.

 

[Grainger49]

I saw a WD 1TB outboard drive for $100 about 1.5 years back.  I asked my "computer guy" about it and he said that WD had recently had some problems.  Also that WD had fixed any problems but were selling below market price.  

I bought then.  I would expect that they are a good company today.

 

[RayP]

I've picked up a WD 1TB 2.5 inch USB 2 drive for $99 and will try it out. If it works ok, I will get another.

Thanks for all the advice.

ray

 

[Natural Sound]

I think all hard drive companies have had trouble with manufacturing at one time or another. When you consider how hard drive technology has progressed over the years its not surprising. For internal drives I usually go for Western Digital or Seagate. I had a gripe with WD about a year ago regarding one of their external USB drives I purchased at Costco. WD had installed some windows utility programs on the drive for backup and such. I don't use windows so I deleted the programs to reclaim the drive space. After powering down the unit and then back on again the files returned to the hard drive. So I formatted the drive hoping that I would delete any remaining traces of the program. After the next power cycle the utility files were back again. WTF! I called tech support and after talking to several people I found out what was going on. Apparently WD had embedded the software into the firmware. Every time the disc powered up it looked to see if the utilities were on the drive. If they weren't they would be reloaded. There was no way around it, so I returned the drive and bought something else. I'm not sure if WD still does this. I bought a 1T Phantom Drive and opened it up one day. It had a WD drive inside. And it allowed me to use the entire drive. This may not be an issue for some but it was for me.

 

[rif]

I don't know much about hard drives and audio. But I do use a WD drive "tuned" for DVR use in my TiVo.

Other items I think I may know:
I don't think wav files support tags. FLAC does.
I have heard, anecdotally, that ripping that many CDs on a laptop CD drive will destroy it.
I have read, possibly at EAC or dbpoweramp websites that some CD drives are better than others. There is a list somewhere...

I haven't ripped many CDs myself, so factor that into what I have said. I can say, that ripping with a full size CD drive in an external USB case is faster and generally more accurate than my laptop drive.

 

[Yoder]

I don't know much about hard drives and audio. But I do use a WD drive "tuned" for DVR use in my TiVo.

Other items I think I may know:
I don't think wav files support tags. FLAC does.
I have heard, anecdotally, that ripping that many CDs on a laptop CD drive will destroy it.
I have read, possibly at EAC or dbpoweramp websites that some CD drives are better than others. There is a list somewhere...

I haven't ripped many CDs myself, so factor that into what I have said. I can say, that ripping with a full size CD drive in an external USB case is faster and generally more accurate than my laptop drive.

1) By tags, I am assuming you mean the metadata? If that is the case then your statement is true. AIFF also supports metadata. FLAC is great for downloading large files, but once I get them I convert them to AIFF. I also burn all of my CDs to AIFF since storage is so cheap anymore.
2) You rip enough CDs on any drive and it will wear out. Personally, I do not like the Apple Superdrive since it is so slow and use an external drive to burn everything. The best thing Apple did was pull the Superdrive out of the Mac mini...much rather have an extra hd.
3) Yes, some drives are better in that they are faster and of a higher quality...just compare the specs.

If you are using a Mac then your USB drive will blow away your laptop CD drive.

 

[earwaxxer]

I'm also a photographer and I have close to a TB of photos and music. My experience as of late has been that none of the drives can be 'trusted'. Plan on one going down with no notice, at any time. Back ups are key. I use 'Second Copy' software.
Quick and easy. I have 3 back-up drives. One in a fire proof box. You cant be too careful. I had a 750GB drive 'give up' without warning. Your stomach sinks, until you realize its all backed up. Then you just toss it!

 

[Noskipallwd]

2) You rip enough CDs on any drive and it will wear out. Personally, I do not like the Apple Superdrive since it is so slow and use an external drive to burn everything. The best thing Apple did was pull the Superdrive out of the Mac mini...much rather have an extra hd.
3) Yes, some drives are better in that they are faster and of a higher quality...just compare the specs.

If you are using a Mac then your USB drive will blow away your laptop CD drive.

I agree, I have a 27" IMac and a Macbook Pro. I took the superdrive out of the macbook pro and installed a ssd in it's place. I bought a high quality firewire enabled external optical drive I use for both macs. Faster and more reliable. As far as external HDs I am using an OWC external ssd for my squeezebox, very happy with it, when I add to my library the rescans take no time at all. They are expensive but IMHO worth it.

Cheers,
Shawn

 

[2wo]

Hi Ray, Your biggest challenge is tagging and organizing Classical music. Most programs do a fair job with Pop, Jazz etc. but the data bases for Classical kind of suck. You need to decide whether to tag by composer or artist and be consistent or you'll never find what you are looking for and forgot about the album art, unless you want to do it manual. I have had a server for a few years now and I still don't have much Classical on it but I'm not much of a computer guy...John       

 

[Noskipallwd]

There are some good wikis on tagging classical as well as all other genre on the slim devices forum. Even if you do not have a squeeze device of some type they are very informative. I think the most important rule for tagging files is to remain consitent.

Cheers,
Shawn

 

[RayP]

I have been ripping and ripping with JRiver and have reached Bartok's Bluebeard Castle, (a real toe tapper that one). I must admit I did Schubert along the way as an experiment.

It's been interesting. I would say about 80% of my CDs have been identified but the other 20% have to be filled in. I believe I have been consistent and I seem to be able to find things using the composer, conductor, orchestra, artist and genre tags.

For the unknown CDs, I've found it useful to look up the CD on Amazon and if I find it, to copy and paste the track descriptions into JRiver. What really annoys me is where I have a few versions of let's say Schuberts Die schone Mullerin that aren't recognized. I've got to paste the same track stuff in every time unless there is a short cut that I don't know about.

ray

 

[RayP]

I've finally ripped my classical CDs to flac using the JRiver package and I thought I would give some feedback that might be helpful to others.

I've got a bit over 1000 of them and they take about 270 gb. 

I have backed them up on to an extra 1 tb hard drive. I have progressively copied the folder on the 1st hard drive to a 2nd 1tb hard drive and since there is plenty of space left over on the 2nd hard drive, I don't overwrite the old folder but simply create an additional folder each time. I take the position that either drive might die at any time. Now that I am finished, I can delete the older folders on the 2nd hard drive.

Since my hard drives are both the same model 1tb Western Digital, I have applied physical labels to them to make sure I don't mistake one for the the other.

With USB 2 connections, it takes about 11 hours to copy the lot.

There are a few CDs that my CD reader did not want to deal with. I'll try them on another reader sometime.

I found an awful lot of CDs that I forgot I have or haven't played in a long time.

You have to be physically organized to make sure those CDs you have ripped do not get mixed up with those still to rip. With a small collection, it wouldn't be a problem, but a medium to large collection takes up a fair amount of space.

A few comments now about JRiver for those thinking of using it.

When you get started, rip about 20 or so CDs to decide how you are going to do your tagging. I used  genre, composer, name of track, conductor, orchestra, soloists, artist, album and date (year of recording). Once you have ripped and tagged them see if you can efficiently find the piece(s) you are interested in and then play it.

As others have mentioned, try to be consistent. This is more difficult than it sounds since the JRiver program often starts ripping before you want it to and you have to enter your tags while it is ripping. On a CD with multiple composers and artists, this can be a challenge.

Expect to spend some time subsequently tidying up your tags, particularly the artist and album tags. I suspect this is a never ending process.

It's a pity that the JRiver CD track look up does not hook into Amazon. About 25% - 33% of my CDs needed to be entered manually. I would usually look for the CD on Amazon and then cut and paste the track information into the JRiver track fields.

I could never really predict when the JRiver database would not already have the CD track info already in it. Sometimes the info would be there for what I thought were obscure CDs and sometimes there would be nothing for what I thought were well known CDs.

Everybody seems to have a different way of entering the track information. I suspect that is something I will tidy up over time in my track tags. Incorrect spellings are common.

It's amazing how many classical CDs have 15 tracks.

You will be amazed at how many composers you have in your database that you have never heard of. For example, the obscure Russian composers on a CD of Russian Liturgical Music.

I never found a way to count my CDs in JRiver. I tried a script that listed only track 1, but I didn't find a counting feature.

This is no where near as easy as ripping popular CDs. You literally have to do some sort of tagging for each and every classical CD you rip. It's a huge task.

ray