Media Storage/ server ideas?

[Chuck]

I'm starting to look into putting all my music on one storage system. Can someone point me to the best options for doing that?
I have racks and racks of CD's and I'd like to back them all up and access the songs & albums on a network in my home.

One thing I am really worried about is what happens if that storage drive gets corrupt? I'd have to re-rip all the CD's again.

Any advice will be appreciated.

[Jimna]

I built a HTPC (home theater PC) that is also a server jammed full of drives. 

Backup is the only guaranty against a drive corruption.  HDD space is cheap enough these days....

[OFOTD]

http://taperssection.com/index.php?topic=140784.0

Several different solutions/ideas have been discussed recently.

[rastasean]

Yeah, the thread OFOTD linked to is a great place to start looking.


Like everything else with this hobby, it is dependent on how much money you want to spend. All the operating systems that I am interested in are completely free but the hardware will cost a little money unless you already have a machine you want to dedicate as the media server.

Backups are also good in case accidentally delete files or overwrite them.

[Chuck]

Thanks for the links guys. Lots of great info.

Is there a software program that tracks and displays the albums and songs you have? I wonder if there is a program or system that can keep the album art etc... too.

[dnsacks]

j river media center should do all that you want quite well (imho) (www.jriver.com)

I'm currently using a raid5 array to store my music (4 x 2tb hard drives hold a total of 6tb of music -- if any one of the drives fails, the built in redundancy will allow the array to rebuild the lost data from the other 3 drives).  I periodically back this up onto other drives as well (which I keep offline) so that a power spike/etc. won't send me back to square one.  The raid5 array is attached to my main (always on) media center server and is available to my network.

[audBall]

Is there a software program that tracks and displays the albums and songs you have? I wonder if there is a program or system that can keep the album art etc... too.

Foobar works pretty well for all of this. 

edit - woops, read that too quickly last night.  Foobar won't store your art.   

[OFOTD]

Is there a software program that tracks and displays the albums and songs you have? I wonder if there is a program or system that can keep the album art etc... too.

XBMC - xbmc.org

A version for whatever OS platform you prefer.

[sparkey]

Is there a software program that tracks and displays the albums and songs you have? I wonder if there is a program or system that can keep the album art etc... too.

XBMC - xbmc.org

A version for whatever OS platform you prefer.

I use an excel spreadsheet.  Tape Tracker used to be free, but I can't find a link to download it....

[OFOTD]

XMBC is free as well.   Not only multiple OS support (Win, mac, 'nix) but they also offer Live CD versions as well as mobile versions (j/b iOS). 

The built-in scrapers can add not only album info and covers but lyrics and other configurable options if so needed.    Nice to have one program scan your directories, automatically add info, sort and they allow you to playblack all from one program/interface and for free.

[Chuck]

Is there a software program that tracks and displays the albums and songs you have? I wonder if there is a program or system that can keep the album art etc... too.

XBMC - xbmc.org

A version for whatever OS platform you prefer.

I got a chance to try XBMC over the weekend.
I think it's going to be great for what I want to do. Thanks for the link.
I opened some random CD's I had with it and it recognized the individual songs every time. It even recognized the limited run KBCO studio CD's that I have.

So, how have you all gotten the songs ripped from CD's and tagged for your media servers?
Is Exact Audio copy overkill for doing that?

Any advice or suggestions on how to efficiently copy all of my music would be appreciated, as I am going to start building the server soon.

[Lil Kim Jong-Il]

So, how have you all gotten the songs ripped from CD's and tagged for your media servers?
Is Exact Audio copy overkill for doing that?

Any advice or suggestions on how to efficiently copy all of my music would be appreciated, as I am going to start building the server soon.

I used XBMC to rip commercial discs and DVDs to my server drive.  It worked great and just took care of everything including artwork. EAC seemed like overkill and I'm getting basically lazy so didn't want the extra step for something that large that I'm not going to back up.  I consider the commercial CDs and DVDs in the closet are my backups of that material. 

I didn't start tagging my flacs until recently so metadata for my personal recordings had to be entered manually.  Amateur video I entered manually too.

[Brian Skalinder]

So, how have you all gotten the songs ripped from CD's and tagged for your media servers?
Is Exact Audio copy overkill for doing that?

I used EAC and its FreeDB feature to tag all my commercial CDs as I ripped them.  Worked great.  Ran into an occasional hiccup with poorly defined tags in FreeDB, or misidentified discs...but not very many.  I can't remember if I still had EAC properly configured for offsets when I did my ripping, but I definitely remember turning off secure ripping -- i.e. used the fastest ripping option (the one that doesn't compare ripped WAV v. CD WAV) which made ripping MUCH faster.  I only turned on the secure ripping option if I encountered a disc with problems.

[Chuck]

Good information. Thanks a lot guys.

I'm thinking about getting an external USB Hard drive. I'll probably start with 2T, since I have a gift certificate from Best Buy that's burning a hole in my wallet.
That'll easily hold my commercial CD collection and give me some room to start loading my live stereo recordings too.

I assume you guys rip to 44.1kHz, 16 bit WAVs or FLACs? Does XMBC do no gap playback of WAVs and FLACs?

[Lil Kim Jong-Il]

IIRC, flac is the default storage format used by XBMC but you can check the settings to ensure that lossless is the preferred format.

I recall gapless playback on my system.