Help with a personal storage solution

[wxrocks]

I am looking at creating a music library on my computer of the hundreds of CD I own. My first question is what should I be using for quality? I know I should use the 320 for archiving, but I am not sure I need the archives with the CDs still available if needed. Just looking for opinions on music storage -- especially with the conversion to more digital formats.

Next, since I will be filling my hard drive with music, along with pictures of my new baby -- what sort of solutions do I need to think about for storage? I won't really need the pictures after a short while since I have some printed via shutterfly and such...but I obviously want to keep the orginial files for future use "in case." Currently I just backup my "My documents" folder (with the music, pictures, and my other docs) onto an external HD. But, as my own internal fills up, I'd like to be able to access these as needed, and have at least two lasting copies. I am wondering how people are keeping track of large amounts of information -- have easy access -- and yet make sure I have backups of all of it to. I need both hardware suggestions as well as organizational suggestions. I am pretty computer literate -- so feel free to give me geeky answers.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

I don't see why it's any more difficult than buying another external HD (maybe 1TB?) and storing the music in folder on there. Rip your CDs to MP3 at 192kb/s or above. Was there a different approach you wanted to take?

For photos, you can just store on the external HD or burn to a DVD.

 

[wxrocks]

It is more on the lines of how to keep track of my backups. The problem is I won't be able to keep all of my music on my internal HD, so it means keeping track of 2 external HDs (and also buying them). So I guess I can do that -- So-- I wonder if the TB HDs are going to come down any more in price!

 

[vociferous]

I prefer VBR high quality MP3 using LAME.

Why would you need two external HDD? You can buy and external hard drive of two terabytes or more.

 

[wxrocks]

I want a copy to use and a backup so that I don't have to "re-rip" all of the songs if one drive crashes.

 

[vociferous]

You could set up a RAID solution using either RAID 1, RAID 0+1, or RAID 5.

 

[Hippo]

Upload them onto a paid-subscription Online Server like these:

http://mozy.com

http://www.box.net

http://www.allmydata.com


Of course it cost money but if your PC crashes or if it gets stolen then you're in trouble. So might as well consider looking into these options and the good thing is you can access your files from anywhere in the world as long as you have Internet connection. Its also cheaper than buying a whole new drive too.