[thewatcher101]

I want to start collecting HQ digital tracks that are like 5GB per song. I won't exactly have a large collection maybe 20+CD and will grow very slowly.
 
What is the best way to store these tracks, in terms of simplify, and future upgrade.
 
The best idea I currently have is a dell xps 15. It has a standard HD, that I can upgrade to 2TB.
 
I can just plug and play and I have a laptop to use.

 

[Music Alchemist]

Storing in multiple places is best. So you could have the files on a laptop, then an external hard drive, then perhaps an additional online backup. SSD drives are probably the safest choice.

 

[chrismini]

I'm afraid I have to disagree. If and regular HD goes down, the data can be recovered by any computer repair tech. If a SSD fails, the data is lost forever. SSD drives work well as the primary drive feeding your DAC, but as an emergency backup, not so much.

 

[chrismini]

5 GB per song? Are you sure? I have 170GB of music in either ALAC and/or AIFF and I have close to 7000 songs. A 5 GB song in WAV. or AIFF, files that are not compressed at all would last 2 days. I have a CD that has well over an hour of music in the AIFF codec and it takes up 790MB.

 

[Music Alchemist]

  I'm afraid I have to disagree. If and regular HD goes down, the data can be recovered by any computer repair tech. If a SSD fails, the data is lost forever. SSD drives work well as the primary drive feeding your DAC, but as an emergency backup, not so much.

 
http://www.networkworld.com/article/2873551/data-center/debunking-ssd-myths.html
 
There are many factors involved in the reliability of each type. You may be right about HDDs being better overall for storage. It's always best to have multiple backups, so using both SSDs and HDDs is a good idea in my book.
 
I'm really bummed out that the 12 TB external hard drive array I spent $1,100 on became super slow after a few years. I have no idea how to fix it. I tried for many days on end to defragment it with almost no progress.

 

[FFBookman]

Have 2 copies of it on different media. 
 
I personally keep 300gb of MicroSD cards with me, and have it all backed up to a traditional hard drive at home.
 
1 will fail before the other, and you still have a copy.

 

[wuwhere]

I have 2 1-tb 2.5" hdds in USB3 enclosures, 1 Seagate and 1 Western Digital. Both have my identical music library and data data files.
Redundant backup. Both are connected to a USB3 Plugable hub with its power adapter so both hdds are continously powered even
if I turn off my laptop. The hub is connected to my laptop's USB3.
 
BTW, USB2 is half-duplex while USB3 is full-duplex.
 
May have to upgrade to USB3.1 in the not too distant future.

 

[hogger129]

Buy a couple Western Digital USB 3.0 external hard drives and store your stuff on them.  I generally avoid Seagate at all costs because they constantly score the lowest on reliability tests.
 
 

  Storing in multiple places is best. So you could have the files on a laptop, then an external hard drive, then perhaps an additional online backup. SSD drives are probably the safest choice.

 
I have not had an SSD fail - yet.  But I would recommend against this because price/storage space is going to be far cheaper with an external HDD.  An SSD is used in computers mainly because read/write speed is far faster so you can boot the operating system much quicker than an HDD.

 

[Music Alchemist]

  Buy a couple Western Digital USB 3.0 external hard drives and store your stuff on them.  I generally avoid Seagate at all costs because they constantly score the lowest on reliability tests.
 
I have not had an SSD fail - yet.  But I would recommend against this because price/storage space is going to be far cheaper with an external HDD.  An SSD is used in computers mainly because read/write speed is far faster so you can boot the operating system much quicker than an HDD.

 
Well, I guess it's best to have multiple backups either way.
 
I just started a thread about a problem I'm having, in case anyone here wants to help me out:
http://www.head-fi.org/t/820106/external-hard-drive-array-is-a-hundred-times-slower-now

 

[chrismini]

As soon as I get paid I'm going to invest in a WD 1TB external HD to backup all 7000 songs I have on my laptop's HD. Do any of you guys use File History as a way to send your files to your backup drives or just drag your music to them?

 

[Music Alchemist]

  As soon as I get paid I'm going to invest in a WD 1TB external HD to backup all 7000 songs I have on my laptop's HD. Do any of you guys use File History as a way to send your files to your backup drives or just drag your music to them?

 
I always back up and organize everything manually, but you can use software to have everything back up automatically.

 

[LikesSlowCars]

The larger the file, the more likely data will corrupt over time. I have had the best results with ZFS file format using a linux operating system called FreeNAS.
 
You can use backblaze reports to find the most reliable drives at the cheapest cost per GB. I personally chose 4x HGST NAS 6TB drives. In RAID 10 for 12 TB of usable space. For the past 2 years, I had one drive error, 5 minutes later ZFS recovered it, since that one instance, not a single problem. (The drive was fine.) And none of the files that I know of have gotten corrupted while stored on the system.
 
Some common RAID modes.
 
RAID 0 - All drives striped, meaning 4x 4TB drives = 16 TB of space. (There's no redundancy, one drive error = all data lost.)
RAID 1 - All drives mirror each others, meaning 4x 4TB drives = 4TB of space. (Lots of redundancy, with 3 drives destroyed, still have the data.)
RAID 10 - Does mirroring over stripe, or stripe over mirror. Meaning 4x 4TB drives = 8TB of space. (Some redundancy, as long as mirror is maintained.)
 
There are other raid modes like RAID 5 which do something similar to RAID 10. However, there's a fault tolerance to RAID 5 where the size of drives make it possible to have a second drive die during replication, meaning there's a chance you can lose all data similar to the RAID 1 scenario. I prefer intel's DMI protocol because SMART hard drive data is exposed for up to 8 drives on most motherboards, but I also like LSI cards because they tend to be more reliable than highpoint and adaptec cards.
 
There is also a speed difference between different RAID modes, but that's based on the software/hardware layers supporting those improvements.
 
Ref: https://www.google.com/search?q=raid+modes
Ref: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-reliability-stats-q1-2016/
 
You can also opt to use a online service like Dropbox, Back Blaze, etc. But I've found transporting data back and forth too restrictive when your talking about large files.

 

[chrismini]

Yeah but I have the majority of my music I want to save on my laptops HD and it's less than 200GB. 70% ALAC the rest AIFF. I started collecting music years ago when I had an iMac hence the Apple orientated files. So if I backed my music onto a 2TB HD that would be a bit redundant.

 

[wuwhere]

I backed up my music library in 2 separate 1 TB 2.5" HDD. But for listening I have them in an SSD. No mechanical noise and faster access.