[TriLUG] Music Files

[Joel Ebel]

The most important thing for you to do if this is the only copy of them 
all, is set up RAID.  You should read the software RAID Howto. 
(http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Software-RAID-HOWTO.html)   For such a large 
volume of data, you'll want to use RAID 5.  You can use 3 250 GB disks 
and have it be really tight, or you can have some room for expansion and 
use 4 disks of 180 GB or more.  Make sure you read and understand the 
HOWTO so you know how it all works.  You'll want to make sure each drive 
in the array is on a separate bus if you're using IDE.  If two drives 
are connected to the same IDE cable and one drive goes down, it will 
likely take down the other drive connected to that cable as well.  RAID 
5 can't handle the loss of multiple disks, so you would have a hard time 
recovering your data.  Most computers with just one IDE bus will require 
a separate IDE controller card to make a quality RAID 5 array.  Many 
distributions will help you automate the process of setting up a RAID, 
but you should understand what's going on so you can properly set it up, 
monitor it, and recover from it if something happens.  I don't think the 
automatic RAID tools account for things like the IDE bus issue mentioned 
above which is why you need to understand what you're doing.

I don't know much about mp3 applications.  I find that a well organized 
directory structure and a good set of playlists is the most useful 
management of my music collection, but it doesn't come close to 
approaching the size of yours, so perhaps some additional management may 
be necessary.

Good luck,
Joel

Mark Freeze wrote:
> I am trying to get all of the music I downloaded from Napster a couple
> of years ago and all of my CD's that I am ripping to my hard drive
> onto one computer that I can use as a media server for my home.  After
> all is said and done I'll have approximately 500GB of music files. 
> I'd like to hear everyones opinion on the best hardware configuration
> to use to prevent losing everything. (Keeping in mind that I'm not
> rolling in cash.)  I know that a good backup system for this is either
> too expensive for me or too time consuming. (switching tapes, etc...) 
> I'd also like to know what mp3 app would be the best to handle this
> kind of volume that I could also use for playing, cataloging, ripping,
> etc...
> 
> Thanks,
> Mark.