i currently have my iTunes files stored on a 1tb hard drive, however, given my recent drobo adventure, and given that my music library is approaching 12,000 songs, i am a little nervous about all that being on 1 drive, i already had a drive failure once years ago when it was half the size, and it would be a monumental task to download and upload from cd all that again, can anyone recommend a 2 bay system to protect against a drive failure?? i believe this is raid 0 ??
Netgear ReadyNAS and Qnap are also good brands. If you want real data protection, go for RAID-5 and a minimum of four drives.
This got a bit long winded but... I agree with Dennis that RAID 1 does not give great data protection. The problem with a simple RAID 1 mirror is that when one drive dies, its likely the same age as the other and chances are the surviving drive isnt far behind. When you pop in the replacement for the first casualty, you could lose the other drive in the set while the array rebuilds, leaving you with whatever you may have been lucky enough to copy to the new drive. However RAID 5 still can only tolerate a single drive failure. My mission critical stuff at work goes on a RAID 6 array which will tolerate a failure of any two disks, but its not a feasible solution for a home user. I think we paid about $17k for our 12 disk array several years ago. For a home user that can tolerate some down time during a restore the best protection is a decent backup strategy. With music, you probably are not adding much content on a regular basis. Whenever you add new content, run a fresh backup to an inexpensive external drive. If you really want to be extra safe, buy two inexpensive external drives and run the backup twice, once to each drive. You say iTunes, not sure that means you are using a Mac computer, but if so here is a link on how this works with Time Machine: https://www.lifewire.com/time-machine-multiple-drives-how-to-use-2260099 Another option, since you are on iTunes, is to use the cloud. Not sure if you have heard about the iTunes Match service, but for $25 a year Apple will maintain your entire music collection, up to 100,000 songs, in their cloud. Any content you may have purchased from iTunes does not count towards that limit. This also gives you streaming access to your content from anywhere. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204146 If you have a Verizon unlimited data plan other than their most basic plan, it includes Apple Music for free, which is like iTunes Match but also includes Apples library of 50 million songs. We just switched to the Verizon unlimited plan. I am using Apple Music and really enjoy it. And speaking of Verizon, I assume everyone has heard about the free year of Disney+ you get with any of the Verizon Unlimited plans: https://www.verizonwireless.com/solutions-and-services/disneyplus/
And I already signed up for 3 years, now waiting to see how they handle that with me already being a Verizon person. Its my understanding that I will either get a refund on a year or extend it another year.
oh the iTunes match service sounds very much like what i need, considering it is almost 12,000 songs, and i do buy an average of 5 cd's month, currently completing my leon redbone library
According to the FAQ on the Verizon site: If I pre-purchased Disney+, am I eligible for the Disney+ on us offer? Yes, Verizon customers who have already pre-purchased through Disney+ are eligible for Disney+ on us.* * Your pre-purchase will be paused and resume after the Verizon promo period. If you pre-purchased a monthly subscription through Disney, or a monthly or annual subscription through a third party, the Verizon promotional offer will begin when you enroll through Verizon, but will not automatically replace your pre-purchased subscription. After you enroll and complete the account setup, you will be sent an email with information about how to manage your pre-purchased subscription.
I don't know much about Leon Redbone but below is what I have available to me based on a search of Apple Music. I would be interested to know how much is missing from Apple's library compared to what's actually available on CD. If they have it all, spending $10 a month on Apple Music is a lot cheaper and easier than purchasing and ripping 5 CDs a month. But I do understand that its not the same as owning the content yourself and having a bookshelf full of CDs. And of course it all goes away if you cancel the subscription. Personally, I'm trying to get away from the clutter of CDs and DVDs and the technical time suck of maintaining a home network to store all that content. I'm not there yet but Apple Music is a start. @jbwolffiv might notice the elf soundtrack in there, which has a few songs by Leon Redbone. I think thats John's favorite movie...
My philosophy is that, as long as I have a working CD reader, I can rip my CDs directly to the digitial format du jour. That gives me longevity. But I am running out of places to stick new CDs. At least they take up less space than LPs.
i have many digital only purchases, particularly regional bluegrass bands that can't or won't process the 10,000 cd burns that the major plants want for a run, and a lot of live stuff in very thin cardboard sleeves, the last few years a lot of the bands at rhythm & roots festival have allowed their set to be recorded and its available an hour or so afterwards, so my friend kevin and i take turns purchasing them, we came home with 6 from this years festival, my 3, roddy romero and the hub city all stars, jeffrey broussard and the creole cowboys, & the traveling mccourys, kevin got hot club of cowtown/dustbowl revival doing a combined songs of the band set, dustbowl revival in their own set and joe craven & the sometimers, garcia songbook set
that looks like a pretty complete redbone discography, in my case where i am so interested in an artist i would probably just purchase individual songs off the compilation stuff, and the whole artist cd's as digital downloads, i have most if not all of his releases, and only 2 on actual physical cd, so the space issue is moot mostly for me. but i do feel i need to protect this fine collection of mine against physical loss, i mean what happens if i lose my only copy of tuvan throat singing?? or my 2 cd's of sardinian folk songs by various artists, digital download only,
