[omega52]

Zune 80 to be exact! I love my Zune 80 & one of the things that I love is not having to choose what music is on it. I haven't ripped my whole collection yet, but I am at about 45 GB. I also have a Sansa Clip 2GB & Toshiba T400 4GB. I want to start using the other two units again, but am struggling with how to pick & choose what to put on them or just what role they will play in my life. I am posting this to open a discussion on how you use your space challenged players. Some of my ideas are to use the Clip for my meditation & ambient albums & the T400 for my latest music that I am listening to for the first time or three. Oh I also have a Samsung S5 4GB that has the built in speakers, so maybe I'll use that for meditation when it's quiet so I won't have to wear phones. Anyway, just thought someone would like to talk about this.

Thanks
kev

 

[mule65]

Since they recharge on a computer anyways, it's easy to remove stuff you've grown tired of and add new stuff. I often put an entire album on then later remove all but 3-4 songs. Keeps the player fresh.

 

[Ricardo Dawkins]

Use autoplaylists and sync groups with the Zune software. done!

 

[tstarn06]

I have a Zune80, which has 65GB of music and video on it (most of my collection, but not all of it). Love it, for the reasons you state. But I also have an 8GB Sansa e270 (includes 2GB SD card), a 30GB ZVM, a 4B Sony and a 1GB Clip. I use WMP11 to manage all the music on everything but the Zune. On the clip, I create 1GB playlists (kick ass, mellow, jazz, etc.) and just add/remove them based on listening needs. On the Sony, I petty much keep the same mix, same for the e270. The ZVM has all 256k or higher tracks (most of my Zune is 192WMA).

Anyway, using playlists is the way to go, because you can create a gazillion of them, and with smaller capacity players, it takes 3 minutes to remove tracks and load a new playlist.

Hope that helps.

 

[omega52]

Thanks guys. Keep the ideas coming. I have not yet explored playlists, so that is an area that I can experiment with. Does WMP 11 show the size of each list? I think I will get a larger external drive so I can have more ripping options like lossless, FLAC & Vorbis, since the Zune, Clip & Samsung have added these codecs.
Thanks all

 

[tstarn06]

Quote:

Originally Posted by omega52 /img/forum/go_quote.gif Thanks guys. Keep the ideas coming. I have not yet explored playlists, so that is an area that I can experiment with. Does WMP 11 show the size of each list? I think I will get a larger external drive so I can have more ripping options like lossless, FLAC & Vorbis, since the Zune, Clip & Samsung have added these codecs. Thanks all

Unfortunately, WMP11 doesn't really give a GB count in playlist view (unless I am missing something), but if you highlight all the songs in the playlist, it will give you a hour total, total files, etc. I just figure on the bit rate, average size, etc., and figure out a song count for each playlist at 1 GB (the lowest number on any of my DAPs). Example, about 161 tracks fit on the Clip at 192-256k. About the best I can do.

I bought the MyBook 500 GB USB drive for something like $99. Indispensible for digital music collecting.

 

[mule65]

Quote:

Originally Posted by tstarn06 /img/forum/go_quote.gif I bought the MyBook 500 GB USB drive for something like $99. Indispensible for digital music collecting.

I gotta get one of those. Where do you research those gadgets? I paged through a bunch on Amazon but the reviews weren't very encouraging.

 

[tstarn06]

Went off to Amazon to read some feedback, and it seems people either give the MyBook 1 star or 4-5 stars. The former had their drives fail, some more than once. I have three drives here, an Iomega, an Apricorn and the Western Digital MyBook. I also have a 500GB drive on my new HP desktop, and my music, photos, etc, are on both the HP and the WD USB drive. So I think I am covered. But hey, you never know with these boxes. The only safe thing to do (and even that is vulnerable) is to burn a bunch of DVD-R discs with the data files (wma, mp3, etc.), as another set of backups. But man, that's a lot of work.

So to answer your question, not sure there is a foolproof external HD. Maybe the higher priced ones are more durable, not sure.

 

[mule65]

Yea, they're definitely love'em hate'em devices. I would be furious to lose 500gb to the blue screen of death so I guess I'll stick with boxes of CD's for the time being. Thanks.

 

[spookygonk]

I've got mine on an external HDD and have also backed them up onto DVDs, as FLAC compression (over Wavs) allows you to get more albums on a disc. That way if the drive goes belly up I've still got the music without having to re-encode it again.

 

[omega52]

Was just thinking about the possibility of loosing a drive & a collection of music & realized that if I lost a drive & then synced my Zune 80 without knowing that the external drive (Zune collection folder) was toast, would I loose the files on my device? (Double insult) It is currently set to sync when the Zune software is started. I will disconnect the ext. drive & see what the Zune collection does. Be right back................................ OK with the external drive disconnected, the Zune software still has the collection in-tact. OK that's a relief. I think, just to be safe, I will set my software to sync only on command,............ Well after checking, that is not an option. Only choice is "let me choose" what gets synced. Oh well, that's OK, because when my Zune 80 was empty, I wanted everything loaded on it, but now that I can see the end of the storage nearing, I need to start to be more selective with what is synced. Like what you first got that huge hard drive in the PC & just filled it with junk & had to eventually learn to do some housekeeping. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted!
ciao

 

[tstarn06]

Good plan (re spookygonk's post), and someday I will have to convert my CDs (again) to FLAC or other lossless format for storage. But too daunting a task right now. And of course, much of my collection was at the hands of lower bitrate download services (192WMA, most of it). Not much I can do about that.

But I figure for now, keeping one set of the music on my PC's HD (a new HP) another set on one USB HD and a third set on another USB HD should be enough redundancy. For the value of something like this, and with storage prices falling, it makes sense to purchase a new external HD every year or so, and copy your collection to it. No harm, considering the time and effort (not to mention the cost) if all of a sudden you lost it all. I even keep one at my mom's house, in case of something really bad, like a fire.

 

[tstarn06]

Do you have your collection both on your HD and an external HD? Or in just one place?

I needed a new desktop, so I got a large HD on it, with the idea that I would sync my Zune to it directly, and just use the USB external drive as backup. As I said in my other post, no harm in picking up a new HD every year or so, a smart investment considering the value of a music collection. Sure Western Digital would love to hear that.

Quote:

Originally Posted by omega52 /img/forum/go_quote.gif Was just thinking about the possibility of loosing a drive & a collection of music & realized that if I lost a drive & then synced my Zune 80 without knowing that the external drive (Zune collection folder) was toast, would I loose the files on my device? (Double insult) It is currently set to sync when the Zune software is started. I will disconnect the ext. drive & see what the Zune collection does. Be right back................................ OK with the external drive disconnected, the Zune software still has the collection in-tact. OK that's a relief. I think, just to be safe, I will set my software to sync only on command,............ Well after checking, that is not an option. Only choice is "let me choose" what gets synced. Oh well, that's OK, because when my Zune 80 was empty, I wanted everything loaded on it, but now that I can see the end of the storage nearing, I need to start to be more selective with what is synced. Like what you first got that huge hard drive in the PC & just filled it with junk & had to eventually learn to do some housekeeping. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted! ciao

 

[omega52]

Quote:

Originally Posted by tstarn06 /img/forum/go_quote.gif Do you have your collection both on your HD and an external HD? Or in just one place? snip

I have it on an external HDD only. I just ordered a WD 500GB My Book for $$ 99 shipped from Newegg, so I will be making some changes with all this in mind. I have another system on my network with 2 large drives, so I may transport the USB drive to it for archiving. It will just take some thought to set it up so it can be maintained easily. Thanks for all the input. I am not looking forward to ripping all of my collection to a lossless format or FLAC or Vorbis anytime soon.

 

[tstarn06]

Found this today. Might help someone in a buying decision for external HD

External Hard Drives Buyer's Guide -- Storage -- InformationWeek