The CD player is dead.......

I like the ease of a cd and the feel of having the media and a player. This was one helluva thread...

08-06-10: Mlsstl
I'm sorry you've had problems with hard drive crashes. I don't view it as anything more than a maintenance item, rather like periodically needing new tires for your car.

What does that mean? Replacing a hard drive every so often?

If so, I don't see the advantage to that scenario over the ease of placing a CD into a CD player.

...a simple off-premises hard drive backup solves that problem without the need to repurchase music when they finally get around to this hobby again.

I understand some people find this to be a positive, but I am not one of them. To me, cloud based back-up (I assume that's what you're referring to...apologies if it's not) is subject to security breach issues, in my opinion. I suppose if all one is backing up is music files, then the security issue is less important. For me, the less of my personal business is out on someone else's server the better. Cloud based back-up incurs a fee correct?

Mlsstl, you are clearly facile with computers, drives, and everything else that goes with the world of computer audio. I understand that for you, computer based audio is a no-brainer decision. I wish you good listening with your choice.

For me, there is no weak point to the scenario of taking a CD out of its jewel case, inserting it into the player, and pressing play. On the other hand, there are many more weak points to computer audio that at the present time outweigh the advantages, and are enough to prevent me from discarding the CD playback system.

I do in fact have a Transporter and use it to play a number of "radio" services...Pandora, ParadiseRadio.com, etc, so I'm not against the concept of computer audio, but even the Transporter can be prone to stop playing for a number of reasons which require troubleshooting, so CD remains the reliable fall back.

When computer audio gets to the point of simplicity and reliability of CD playback, then I'm all in.

How long does it take for a cloud based backup service to back up 1Tb worth of files I wonder?

Also, how long to restore 1 Tb of files as well if needed, I wonder? I would think it would take a long time.

If it has to go over wireless G it would take forever I think. A hard wired network connection would be better.

Bottom line is I suspect many might find restoring there files from a remote service on the internet to be a lot harder and time consuming than might be expected.

My solution is two 1.5 Gb+ Seagate USB drives and using the backup software that comes with the drives from Seagate which reliably backs up any new files in target locations using the backup schedule you set up.

I have had other drives/backup software that was not able to accomplish this quickly and reliably and I dumped that pretty quickly.

Bottom line is setting up backups may not always be a slam dunk if you have to set it up from scratch first time.

WHoops, I meant to say I use two 1.5 Tb+ USB drives, not 1.5Gb+. 1.5 Gb would only buy you about 3 CDs or so I believe whereas 1.5Tb should hold 1000X as much or about 3000 CDs.

Tvad: What does that mean? Replacing a hard drive every so often?

Sure. Why not. Its a mechanical device. Drives are cheap. I replace them about ever 4 years or so. Duplicate the old drive to the new one and you're off and running. Perhaps the schedules are different, but my turntables, open reels, cassette decks and the like also require periodic maintenance.

Tvad: To me, cloud based back-up (I assume that's what you're referring to...apologies if it's not)

Nope, that's not what I do. I keep an off premises USB drive backup and bring it home about every week to two to catch up. The drive can be at work, at your parents or anywhere else away from your home.

It could be cloud based, but that's hardly a requirement. Transfer time would be a bigger issue for this than security. It's not like we're talking about your banking records.

If nothing else, backups are an option that is extremely impractical for LP and CD collections. If you have a large collection, buying or creating duplicates and storing them off premises is not even a possibility for most people.

I've simply not had the problems with a music server that you keep coming back to. I have a substantial and extremely eclectic collection (49,000 songs) and I love the ability to easily and rapidly search and access material in a manner that would simply be impossible with a LP or CD collection. That's important to me.

If you go back to my very first post in this thread, I concluded my comments with: "The nice thing about this hobby is people can pursue it in whatever fashion makes them happy. I've found what works for me and have no urge to go back."