Soon to be Touch owner

[DubMarc]

OK, thanks guys, hopefully light is starting to go on. While my main concern is all the audio files, I'd like to incorporate my wife's files in the mix, and we have some shared ones. So, if I install VB on the computer I have, could I pretty easily incorporate the other content into it? I'd like to set up some redundancy for files at home, with periodic backups of the backups to be stored offsite.

The audio stuff will dominate in terms of quantity, but not having a backup for all the family photos and videos my wife took has already caused a lot of heartache and expense. So it's important for me to get something in place for her as well.

Thanks for the continuing info/patience!

[saeyedoc]

I just set up a Touch last week. Installed LMS on an imac that already had some music in itunes. Using a 2TB HD filled with 50k Flac songs mostly, but set up LMS to index the itunes files also. I copied the best stuff to the internal drive on the imac and then used XLD to transcode most of that into MP3 on another macbook to download into my phone. I'm controlling the Touch with ipeng on an ipad.
My point is that this system has a lot of flexibility and you can run LMS on any computer you have around that's on your network. By setting up drive shares, it's easy to back up and transcode files for other uses. Vortexbox is an option, but you don't have to tie up an entire computer to run LMS if you don't want to.

[tusken]

OK, thanks guys, hopefully light is starting to go on. While my main concern is all the audio files, I'd like to incorporate my wife's files in the mix, and we have some shared ones. So, if I install VB on the computer I have, could I pretty easily incorporate the other content into it? I'd like to set up some redundancy for files at home, with periodic backups of the backups to be stored offsite.

The audio stuff will dominate in terms of quantity, but not having a backup for all the family photos and videos my wife took has already caused a lot of heartache and expense. So it's important for me to get something in place for her as well.

Thanks for the continuing info/patience!

i run VB on an HP proliant microserver and fully recommend that option, as others in this thread have also pointed out. ive never run a NAS, such as a synology, but in my view running VB on your old PC is going to be a more powerful server than the synology. you will notice this mostly when scanning for new music. there is nothing worse than an underpwered NAS to run LMS and it will drive you crazy.

updating the VB, which is a simple process, automatically installs the latest version of LMS - so its even easier than updating LMS on the synology

You can easily copy all your existing content ,over your network (wired or wireless, although it may take many hours if you have a lot) - to the VB. VB has a file folder structure which includes photos and movies - so you can just put those in there.

VB has an easy to use backup function - just connect a USB hard drive to the VB and hit backup. its incremental so when you do a second backup it just adds the new content. make several backups, keep one offsite and one in the home.

if ,when you want to use your squeezebox ,you want to only see "your" content, and your wife only to see hers, then that is more complicated and others will need to help you with that.

[aubuti]

Not sure what the best solution is, given I already have a large external HD. Perhaps use that as a backup for the backup, keeping it mostly at my office.

That is a _very_ good idea. As you subsequently noted, losing your photos (not to mention the time spent ripping and tagging your audio files) is a big loss. And any reliable backup system really should include an offsite copy, because many of the disasters that can happen to the originals can also happen to backups that are under the same roof (fire, theft, lightning strike or other power surge, flood, locusts, etc.).

[garym]

OK, thanks guys, hopefully light is starting to go on. While my main concern is all the audio files, I'd like to incorporate my wife's files in the mix, and we have some shared ones. So, if I install VB on the computer I have, could I pretty easily incorporate the other content into it? I'd like to set up some redundancy for files at home, with periodic backups of the backups to be stored offsite.

The audio stuff will dominate in terms of quantity, but not having a backup for all the family photos and videos my wife took has already caused a lot of heartache and expense. So it's important for me to get something in place for her as well.

Thanks for the continuing info/patience!

as noted by others, easy to copy your existing files over to vortexbox across your network. I use my VB to store not only my music, but pictures, backup files, etc. Also easy to keep backups (done incrementally) on attached USB drives.

In terms of your wife's music and yours. If you simply want to keep the FILE STRUCTURE separate, that's easy. under your music/flac directory you could have:

music/flac/husbandmusic/artist/album/tracks

and

music/flac/wifemusic/artist/album/tracks

and LMS on the VB is pointed at music/flac, so it would pickup up both subdirectories and incorporate the audio files in your LMS music database. If you instead want LMS to present you with an entirely different library depending on the user, then one can use erland's multilibrary plugin. Or simpler, you could simply add a second genre tag for your wife's music, and then search in LMS via genre when she'd looking for stuff.

[DubMarc]

Well, for a couple reasons, I opted to get the NAS, although I think that I still may set up a VB. I've now got everything except the new HDDs. If I start off putting LMS on the NAS and set up the vortexbox later, I assume that will be no problem (other than time).

If the music files actually reside on the NAS, could I run LMS on both the NAS and the vortexbox, independently? I would use the vortexbox for everything at home, and the NAS for remote access.

Back to the file structure, I don't care that much about keeping our music separated (if I did, it would be more to keep the kids' separate from ours!). I currently use playlists most of the time, based partly on Genre that I've tagged, so it amounts to one of garym's suggestions.

[garym]

One can run Lms on different machines with no issues. Just give each a unique music library name so it is clear which is which. I have 4 different Lms instances at home. Two different vba, windows laptop, and second windows machine.

Ps. I'm using the 6tb vba 99% of the time.

[aubuti]

If I start off putting LMS on the NAS and set up the vortexbox later, I assume that will be no problem (other than time).

And even the time is minor, given that LMS is pre-installed in Vortexbox. All you will need to do is adjust any settings that you may wish to be something other than the LMS defaults.

[garym]

And even the time is minor, given that LMS is pre-installed in Vortexbox. All you will need to do is adjust any settings that you may wish to be something other than the LMS defaults.

And if your nas is powerful enough, you may not need anything else.