Selecting And Setting Up A USB Music Library Drive: Factors To Consider

[jeromeharris]

As part of my Touch-based system, I'm planning to buy a large-capacity USB hard drive to hold my entire digital music collection (currently about 2000 CDs, plus a small number of downloaded files; the number of both will slowly grow. I figure that at this point I have c. 1.5TB of data to store, and that a 3TB drive should be enough "future-proofing" capacity).

I will get a small silent computer to run LMS (probably one of the "fit-PC" models); the computer and hard drive can sit next to my Airport Extreme router in my apartment's hallway. The server computer will be Ethernet-cabled to the router, and I don't need the hard drive to be bus-powered--a power supply is fine.

I have a few questions regarding choosing from among the brands and models of 3TB USB drives available, and configuring the drive for best operation (I suspect I know some of the answers, but I want to check)--also, one question about the OS for the server computer.


Drive Choice:

-- Does platter speed matter? I doubt that it would, but since I see at least one 7200 RPM drive among many drives selling for under $200 (I'm in metro NYC; I haven't even yet looked at online-only sellers), I would lean towards a 7200 RPM drive unless there's a reason not to--is there?;

-- For future flexibility (say, speed of copying all that data to a backup drive), would it make sense to favor a drive with additional interfaces (USB 3.0, FireWire 400/800, eSATA), over a "plain vanilla" USB 2.0 drive?;


Drive Configuration:

-- Does the drive format matter? My various laptop and external drives are all NTFS (I transitioned from FAT32 some years back--as you can probably tell, I'm a ol' Wintel guy; my wife is firmly in the Apple camp ;->);

-- Since enclosed drives often come with various types of pre-loaded software, I'd be inclined to delete every bit of that stuff from a drive intended only for storing the music library; is that okay? The only exception that occurs to me is software possibly necessary for drive management functions, especially for implementing standby mode/wakeup functions--but wouldn't the host server computer's OS handle that? Is there any utility software that I should leave on the library drive?;

-- The entire drive should be set up as one partition, right?


Server Computer OS:

-- I have zero experience with Linux--and, BTW, only trivial experience with Mac OS; I currently use Windows XP--I expect to be forced to migrate to Windows 7 or 8 (I accept but resent having to climb learning curves that sometimes accompany new OSes, and the time and money costs of buying new computers, finding and installing new hardware drivers, etc., unless there's clear benefits...okay, rant over!). The price difference between Linux-equipped and Win7 Pro-equipped models of fit-PCs is over $200 (sigh). Since I may soon be heading towards Win7/8 on my non-server machines, I may just take this server purchase as an opportunity to "get on board"--but if I was willing to learn about setting up and maintaining a Linux-based server, I could save the price of a 3TB drive. My intuition leans towards buying the Win7 machine, cursing the expense under my breath; thoughts?

By the way, my sincere thanks to garym, guidof, aubuti and JohnSwenson for your answers to my "SBT system architecture" questions--really helpful to me, and hopefully useful to others moving along this path.

[pallfreeman]

Since I'm a 99% UNIX guy and it's tough to argue with intuition, I'll keep my turd of wisdom focussed on hardware.

Fit-PCs are good. But for something like a little LMS server a cheaper Zotac or DinoPC is good enough. Slightly larger, and slightly noisier. And much cheaper. If you're happy to self-build (and I get the impression you won't run away screaming at the thought) you can get a barebones unit, from a whole bunch of manufacturers, very much cheaper.

I own 1*fit-pc2 acting as a router/NAT box and 2*DinoPCs mostly doing XMBC.

[rayman1701]

As part of my Touch-based system, I'm planning to buy a large-capacity USB hard drive to hold my entire digital music collection (currently about 2000 CDs, plus a small number of downloaded files; the number of both will slowly grow. I figure that at this point I have c. 1.5TB of data to store, and that a 3TB drive should be enough "future-proofing" capacity).

I will get a small silent computer to run LMS (probably one of the "fit-PC" models); the computer and hard drive can sit next to my Airport Extreme router in my apartment's hallway. The server computer will be Ethernet-cabled to the router, and I don't need the hard drive to be bus-powered--a power supply is fine.

I have a few questions regarding choosing from among the brands and models of 3TB USB drives available, and configuring the drive for best operation (I suspect I know some of the answers, but I want to check)--also, one question about the OS for the server computer.


Drive Choice:

-- Does platter speed matter? I doubt that it would, but since I see at least one 7200 RPM drive among many drives selling for under $200 (I'm in metro NYC; I haven't even yet looked at online-only sellers), I would lean towards a 7200 RPM drive unless there's a reason not to--is there?;

-- For future flexibility (say, speed of copying all that data to a backup drive), would it make sense to favor a drive with additional interfaces (USB 3.0, FireWire 400/800, eSATA), over a "plain vanilla" USB 2.0 drive?;


Drive Configuration:

-- Does the drive format matter? My various laptop and external drives are all NTFS (I transitioned from FAT32 some years back--as you can probably tell, I'm a ol' Wintel guy; my wife is firmly in the Apple camp ;->);

-- Since enclosed drives often come with various types of pre-loaded software, I'd be inclined to delete every bit of that stuff from a drive intended only for storing the music library; is that okay? The only exception that occurs to me is software possibly necessary for drive management functions, especially for implementing standby mode/wakeup functions--but wouldn't the host server computer's OS handle that? Is there any utility software that I should leave on the library drive?;

-- The entire drive should be set up as one partition, right?


Server Computer OS:

-- I have zero experience with Linux--and, BTW, only trivial experience with Mac OS; I currently use Windows XP--I expect to be forced to migrate to Windows 7 or 8 (I accept but resent having to climb learning curves that sometimes accompany new OSes, and the time and money costs of buying new computers, finding and installing new hardware drivers, etc., unless there's clear benefits...okay, rant over!). The price difference between Linux-equipped and Win7 Pro-equipped models of fit-PCs is over $200 (sigh). Since I may soon be heading towards Win7/8 on my non-server machines, I may just take this server purchase as an opportunity to "get on board"--but if I was willing to learn about setting up and maintaining a Linux-based server, I could save the price of a 3TB drive. My intuition leans towards buying the Win7 machine, cursing the expense under my breath; thoughts?

By the way, my sincere thanks to garym, guidof, aubuti and JohnSwenson for your answers to my "SBT system architecture" questions--really helpful to me, and hopefully useful to others moving along this path.

Here's how I set mine up. I have 3 USB hard drives, you need at least one extra for back-up and 2 is better than one with the second one preferably off site. You don't want to have to rip everything again, so don't buy just the 1 drive for the server, get a back-up.

I got a laptop that is exclusively for the server, it's Win 7 64 bit. Way overpowered, but I got a good deal and it can be used for other things as well if needed. It is left on 24/7 with WOL (Wake On Lan) enabled it goes to sleep when nothing is playing and wakes up when I hit play on the Touch's remote. It's easy to set up with Windows.

On the USB drives, yes remove ALL software also make sure that they don't have some Auto Sleep function, I know I had issues with Seagate drives having this, and it can cause problems if the drive wants to shut down while you're listening, yes I've seen that happen.

Doesn't matter about NTFS or FAT, but I've got all mine as NTFS just because Windows seems to like it a bit better and I don't have the "file name too long" issue that I've had in the past. And the USB 2.0/3.0/ eSATA/Firewire speed, it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. Sure faster will help with the initial loading and stuff, but that's something you'll have to decide, "how much is your time worth" type thing. I haven't had any issues with USB 2, but that's what my laptop has and I'm not gonna try to change that with a laptop. But yeah that initial copying of 1.5 TB of data can take around a day, its not something you'll have to do very often. And the speed isn't an issue while playing music, even Hi-Res.

Hope that covers most of your questions. I still don't know how I coped before the Touch. I mean 400 disc changers just don't work the same way.

[aubuti]

Here's my two cents.

First, how do you figure you have 1.5 TB of data? If you rip to FLAC then I expect 2000 CDs would require 0.75-1 TB of disk space. Don't get me wrong -- futureproofing is a good idea and drive prices are ridiculously cheap. But the drives could very well die before you get anywhere near 3TB.

Speaking of dying drives, I fully support rayman1701's suggestion for 3 drives, and especially for keeping one drive off-site. I keep one backup on a NAS on-site and a second backup on a USB drive (that has all my home files, not only my music) that I keep at my workplace. Don't think about the CDs themselves as a backup, except maybe as a last-resort backup. If you value your time spent ripping and tagging at all, proper backups on a hard drive are a no-brainer.

Platter speed really doesn't matter. Additional interfaces may be convenient, but I wouldn't pay extra for them. Okay, I take that back -- at least a little. When buying a new drive for my offsite backup I paid a little extra for USB 3.0. I don't believe I have connected it to another USB 3.0 device in the 1-2 years that I have had it.

You should answer the OS question before you decide on the drive format. For the OS, I'd say your choices are (a) bend over and pay the extra $200 for Win XP, (b) install an "easy" Linux like Ubuntu, or (c) install Vortexbox. Even friendly Linux distributions take some getting used to, so if you don't think you have the patience for it, then go with (a). If you'd like to play around a bit and learn some Linux, go with (b). Or if you plan to use the box only for serving music, and possibly other file serving, look at (c). Vortexbox is a specialized Linux distribution (based on Fedora) that works straight out of the box for running LMS, providing shared storage on Windows networks, and running some other media software. It has a custom graphical user interface so that you never have to see the Linux guts working in the background. And of course, it costs $200 less than the WinXP option.

[garym]

Here's my two cents.

First, how do you figure you have 1.5 TB of data? If you rip to FLAC then I expect 2000 CDs would require 0.75-1 TB of disk space. Don't get me wrong -- futureproofing is a good idea and drive prices are ridiculously cheap. But the drives could very well die before you get anywhere near 3TB.

Speaking of dying drives, I fully support rayman1701's suggestion for 3 drives, and especially for keeping one drive off-site. I keep one backup on a NAS on-site and a second backup on a USB drive (that has all my home files, not only my music) that I keep at my workplace. Don't think about the CDs themselves as a backup, except maybe as a last-resort backup. If you value your time spent ripping and tagging at all, proper backups on a hard drive are a no-brainer.

Platter speed really doesn't matter. Additional interfaces may be convenient, but I wouldn't pay extra for them. Okay, I take that back -- at least a little. When buying a new drive for my offsite backup I paid a little extra for USB 3.0. I don't believe I have connected it to another USB 3.0 device in the 1-2 years that I have had it.

You should answer the OS question before you decide on the drive format. For the OS, I'd say your choices are (a) bend over and pay the extra $200 for Win XP, (b) install an "easy" Linux like Ubuntu, or (c) install Vortexbox. Even friendly Linux distributions take some getting used to, so if you don't think you have the patience for it, then go with (a). If you'd like to play around a bit and learn some Linux, go with (b). Or if you plan to use the box only for serving music, and possibly other file serving, look at (c). Vortexbox is a specialized Linux distribution (based on Fedora) that works straight out of the box for running LMS, providing shared storage on Windows networks, and running some other media software. It has a custom graphical user interface so that you never have to see the Linux guts working in the background. And of course, it costs $200 less than the WinXP option.


I agree with all the points made here. Obviously, I'm using vortexbox (see signature info, and I know nothing about linux) but I have lots of USB drives (mostly usb2.0 1TB and 2TB models, different makes, etc.). In my opinion, almost nothing matters about the USB drives (platters, speed, etc. as long as at least USB 2.0). I've used about every brand (and many brands have the same owner anyhow). I use NTFS on all my drives. I do have some usb/esata drives at work and they are certainly fast for copying files, but this is essentially irrelevant for use with LMS and music server.

Don't over invest in your drives or over think which drives to buy, as over time you'll want to rotate old ones out and replace with new ones. USB Drives are like underwear--better to replace every so often. ;-) All drives will go bad eventually (and never at a good time). Best approach is to have lots of backups. In addition to my vortexbox setups at home and the weekend place, and eSATA drive connected to my work machine (where I run LMS on a win7 desktop), I have 6 other USB drives containing complete backup of my about 70,000, mostly FLAC files. And these are stored at 3 different locations (and not connected to anything except when I'm using to backup). USB drives are cheap. My time in ripping and tagging file is NOT cheap (to me).

The nice thing about the vortexbox setup, is that I can plugin a USB drive, click on backup and it will do an INCREMENTAL backup. So other than the initial backup which took hours, the
incremental backup may only take a few minutes.

[jeromeharris]

First, how do you figure you have 1.5 TB of data? If you rip to FLAC then I expect 2000 CDs would require 0.75-1 TB of disk space. Don't get me wrong -- futureproofing is a good idea and drive prices are ridiculously cheap. But the drives could very well die before you get anywhere near 3TB.

You're probably quite correct. My 1.5 TB figure is based on knowing that a commercial CD will fit onto a CD-R (700 MB capacity); 700 MB x 2000 CDs = 1.335 TB. Of course, commercial CDs are seldom holding the maximum capacity of data, but I've never looked for an actual average figure--plus I tend to be conservative about that sort of thing, especially when the price differences are small (the local retailer I often use has 2 TB drives for $120-c. $200, depending on features; they sell 3 TB drives for $140-c. $270).


Speaking of dying drives, I fully support rayman1701's suggestion for 3 drives, and especially for keeping one drive off-site. <snip> If you value your time spent ripping and tagging at all, proper backups on a hard drive are a no-brainer.

I do value my time. I have been definitely planning on two drives; I hadn't considered three. I'm not sure what offsite storage location would make sense for me (perhaps a relative's home)--I'll think about it.


Platter speed really doesn't matter. Additional interfaces may be convenient, but I wouldn't pay extra for them.

Again, the price differences may be small enough to lean me in the direction of "spend $50 or less to save a few tenths of a second, and gain possible future flexibility? Why not?". I'll take your point as I total up the overall cost and allocate my spending on the various pieces of gear.


You should answer the OS question before you decide on the drive format. For the OS, I'd say your choices are (a) bend over and pay the extra $200 for Win XP, (b) install an "easy" Linux like Ubuntu, or (c) install Vortexbox. Even friendly Linux distributions take some getting used to, so if you don't think you have the patience for it, then go with (a). If you'd like to play around a bit and learn some Linux, go with (b). Or if you plan to use the box only for serving music, and possibly other file serving, look at (c).

I plan to use this computer only for serving music. I'll look at VortexBox, but since the days of Microsoft's support for WinXP are literally numbered--and since I don't foresee my adopting Linux for my non-server computing, I am leaning towards the Windows option, pricey though it is.

By the way, that's $200 for *Win 7*--not XP, it's two-versions-earlier predecessor. I'm trying to verify the details for upgrading to Win 8, which is coming along soon.

Also, one reason for settling the drive issue before the OS issue is that as soon as I have a drive I can start ripping and tagging, before I have a server PC (if I want to listen to files as I g,o I can use a laptop which I've installed LMS on--my Touch found that computer and an external drive connected to it, so the concept has been proven in situ).

[aubuti]

You're probably quite correct. My 1.5 TB figure is based on knowing that a commercial CD will fit onto a CD-R (700 MB capacity); 700 MB x 2000 CDs = 1.335 TB. Of course, commercial CDs are seldom holding the maximum capacity of data, but I've never looked for an actual average figure--plus I tend to be conservative about that sort of thing, especially when the price differences are small (the local retailer I often use has 2 TB drives for $120-c. $200, depending on features; they sell 3 TB drives for $140-c. $270).
It's partly about unused space on the CD, but almost certainly a larger factor is that C in FLAC: Free Lossless Audio Compression. A FLAC file about half the space of its WAV or CD counterpart, sometimes even less. I find that 3 CD discs encoded to FLAC average about 1GB.


I do value my time. I have been definitely planning on two drives; I hadn't considered three. I'm not sure what offsite storage location would make sense for me (perhaps a relative's home)--I'll think about it.
Do think about it, because an on-site backup protects you against drive failure, but it doesn't protect you against covariate risks such as electricity surge, theft, fire, flood, and what not.


I plan to use this computer only for serving music. I'll look at VortexBox, but since the days of Microsoft's support for WinXP are literally numbered--and since I don't foresee my adopting Linux for my non-server computing, I am leaning towards the Windows option, pricey though it is.

By the way, that's $200 for *Win 7*--not XP, it's two-versions-earlier predecessor. I'm trying to verify the details for upgrading to Win 8, which is coming along soon.

Also, one reason for settling the drive issue before the OS issue is that as soon as I have a drive I can start ripping and tagging, before I have a server PC (if I want to listen to files as I g,o I can use a laptop which I've installed LMS on--my Touch found that computer and an external drive connected to it, so the concept has been proven in situ).
Sorry, my mistake re what the $200 was for. Either way, it's $200. And note that using Linux on your server really has no implications for your non-server computing. Linux and Windows play together happily on a network. Almost all of my computing is on Windows, but I'll go for Linux every time for tasks such as running LMS. But if the familiar Win environment is worth $200 of comfort to you, then that's a good choice, too (I'd just waste the $200 on comforts like music and good booze...). The system requirements for Win 7 are considerably higher than for Linux -- because you can run Linux without a GUI, which I don't believe is possible for Win 7 -- but if you choose a Fit-PC it should still have the horsepower you need for Win 7.

Fair point on getting ripping before you have the server pc. If that's the case, then I suggest going with NTFS, as that will work fine under either Windows or Linux.

[garym]

By the way, have you ripped your CDs to FLAC yet? If not, you should definitely choose a secure ripper and preferably one that uses the ACCURATERIP database. I use dbpoweramp (the ver 14 refererence version $38). Not free, but very good metadata and artwork access and automatically uses ACCURATERIP data if available and if not falls back to a very secure ripping method. Helpful forum as well.

http://www.dbpoweramp.com/dmc-power-register.htm