Couple of questions from a soon to be Touch owner

[krochat]

An explanation of why may be in order... Squeezebox Server running on the Touch will store its library database and its resized artwork (also a database) on the drive itself. So leave some room for these files. This is kind of a nice feature, as each drive can be considered to be an autonomous 'library'. Changing libraries is as simple as swapping disk drives.

I was assuming that if you switched drives that the Touch would rescan everything on the "new" drive, causing delays and extra drive wear.

If switching drives really works without excessive overhead and music on the new drive is available in a few seconds, I may just do that with my current USB enclosures rather than trying to build that 3.0TB USB disk array I was asking about on another thread.

Thanks,
Kim

[JJZolx]

I was assuming that if you switched drives that the Touch would rescan everything on the "new" drive, causing delays and extra drive wear.

It does rescan when you plug in the drive, but it only looks for changes so is pretty fast when there are no or few changes. I don't think it delays the availability of the server very much. If you plug in a drive that doesn't have a library database on it yet then it does have to do an in-depth scan of all the audio files. I think maybe the library can begin to be used, though, while it's still scanning.

[craiglester]

Maybe I am not understanding your question. Are you looking for drives powered off the USB port?

I have a 320 GB, 500GB, and 640GB Toshiba USB powered USB drive and all three work fine with the Touch. These Toshiba drives do not have external power, they are powered off the Touch's USB port per the USB spec. They now have a 1TB Toshiba Canvio™ Portable Hard Drive for $159 which would make a great USB powered drive for Touch.

Yes, I was referring to a drive powered by the USB port alone. I got the impression that the Wiki about the limitations was implying that usb powered drives would NOT work without a powered hub, and I didnt want a jumble of wires back there.. but if like you say a 2.5" Toshiba drive works then I shall probably invest in one of those.

as for why I have anything at -8.. well back in the day, drive space wasnt so cheap.. I'll probably just re-encode all the FLAC at -5 in a batch job.

Thanks for the answers people.

Any idea on the superdatetime.. any plans for adding that to a screensaver maybe? just a local weather forecast perhaps.

Oh and please add Picasa to the pic services

[erland]

Any idea on the superdatetime.. any plans for adding that to a screensaver maybe? just a local weather forecast perhaps.

There is another third party weather applet available already:
http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=73827