[jnug]

 
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How do you guys store your lossless files? I have just been experimenting using some things that I have available to me now. So I ripped a couple CD's using Apple Lossless and my itunes library. I did expect the file sizes to be larger. They turned out to be about 7x the size of the compressed files. 
 
I suppose I could store files on an external hard drive. I have one attached to my Macbook now.
 
It almost begs a dedicated drive or maybe SD cards if they work OK for this purpose. The files take up so much space at 7x that I almost don't want to use any kind of drive or disk that I am using for any other purpose. 
 
Anyway, what do people tend to do here to store these lossless audio files? Just to cover the possible question, I really do not play music from my computer. I am using an Itouch or an Ipod and now have a CLAS as well and they become the devices that I play from since these are portable solutions for me. So it is purely an issue of storing the lossless files and not an issue of playing them from the computer. When I did a search just now looking for an answer without posting a question the responses were all about playing music from the stored files on the computer.
 
They are so large or will be so large with any sort of a library that I just think it best to keep it segregated somehow.
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[Modo]

Now you know why Apple offers the 160GB iPod Classic. This may have enough room for your entire collection either as FLAC, or as high-bitrate (256 or 320 KBps) AAC. On smaller devices, you might be better served with lowering the rip bitrate instead of lugging around extra equipment. A 160KBps AAC rip can be good enough on the go (i.e. with outside noise).

 

[Elysian]

If you feel comfortable installing internal hard drives into your Mac, I'd mirror your data on a quality SATA hard drive like the Western Digital Caviar Black.  Otherwise, there are a lot of cheap external USB 3.0 hard drive options.  I'm not a big fan of the external solution, though, as SATA transfer rates are much faster than USB 3.0.

 

[jnug]

Ah,install an internal SATA.....good idea! I think I could pull that off. Thanks for the help folks.
 
 

 

[Elysian]

Internal SATA is the cheapest and highest performance (if not necessary the most portable) solution!  I'm partial to the WD Caviar Blacks, but there are lots of people who prefer Seagates.
 
If you have a lot of media, you may want to consider 2 drives.  You'd access your media on one drive, and use the other drive to backup the first drive.  Storage is so cheap now that there's no reason not to backup, and it can save you a lot of time if a power surge damages your computer or your first drive ends up getting bad sectors, which isn't uncommon with how high density is these days.