Question about a music server

That exactly what I have done. I use Mac-Mini with 1TB drive on firewire bus. I keep second 1TB backup at work in case of fire, burglary etc. I use free program MAX that ripps exact copies, gets covers and puts it into Itunes in Apple Lossless format. Each CD holds about 500MB on average. Compression is about 2x so you need 700x250MB=175GB - possibly slightly more beacuase of metadata and covers. My 1TB Fantom drives were $100-120 and you won't save much by going to smaller sizes.

I started my music server about a year ago. I seldom use my CD player anymore. I usually take time to rip a CD to disk first prior to listening. Sometimes, I'll just carve out a chunk of time (often while listening to my system concurrently) and use it to rip a bunch of titles to disk in advance all at one time.

I recently picked up a 1.5 Tb Seagate USb drive that has been just what the doctor ordered. Cost: $140 at Best Buy. Incredible! I'm coming up on about 5000 tracks ripped, which equates to few hundred discs I'd say (still a few hundred to go), and the 1.5Tb disk is only slightly used.

I plan to pick up another of the same 1.5 Tb drives soon to keep a backup on in that the other 500Gb backup drive I have will be filled at some point.

Interesting. I know Olive has stand alone server and I had thought about getting a mac mini just for the purpose.
Thanks!

Also MusicVault has a stand alone server that runs windows home server and can be hooked into your home network and used to back up all files automatically. It has built-in mirrored drives for music b/u and comes w squeezecenter software on it. Neal will give you a great deal on a server plus logitech transporter or touch player.

I use the MAC Book Pro computer as my music server. The MAC has 4 GB RAM and the 120GB solid state drive. I am using the Seaport Free Agent Go Pro 500GB external hard drive (for the MAC) to store my music files (a 2nd one for backup). I have about 200 CD's loaded into my MAC Book Pro computer and more to go. It takes between 3 to 5+ minutes per CD using the AIFF format. The space for each CD is between 400k to 750k. For estimating purposes, I suggest an average size of 500k. My MAC Book Pro computer is connected to the Furman AC-215 power conditioner. The Furman is required so the MAC does not interfere with the audio components. See www.furmansound.com/product.ph.

Everyone I spoke to recommended the MAC computer and iTunes to manage the music. Ayre recommended I put my music on an external hard drive. It sounds better if it is on a different controller than the DAC, which means a FireWire hard drive. I used a portable external drive that has a 2.5" drive inside it. The advantage of this over a bigger external hard drive with a 3.5" drive is that it will be much quieter and it will run off the power provided by the bus.