The shape of things to come?

reliability of hdd's is governed by the quality of the design that the hdd is integrated into + any mfg risk + customer handling risk.

There is no reason why a hdd should not last >10 years - the hdd naysayers are relying on:
a) personal experience from applications that dont mitigate any of the risks.
b) urban myths.

rgds //lamboy

 

I agree with Graig, I still have 1 HDD thats 8 years old used every day no probs.
I also have 3/4 tarrabyte for music storage, no problems either.

 

Hard disks didn't used to break down all the time.. I still have some 20mb, 250mb, 1GB and 6GB drives that were got when they were state of the art and are still in working order now! I think in trying to make computers cheaper we have lost quality quite a bit. Myself, my brother and my dad have each had a hard disk breakdown in the last 6 months.

 

HDD 'quality' (ie, reliability) has continued to increase even as capacitys have increased. This also is the same for memory, processors, mobos. Not sure for DVD spinners, PSUs, chassis.

hard disc breakdown? What happened?

No spin?
Whirring?
Screeching?
Data screwed?
Not seen in windoze?

Which brands/capacity?

 

I suppose that all depends on your budget and expectations.

The technology is coming together to provide all this functionality, but at the moment there is no one-box-solution that would keep an audiophile happy - and I don't think there ever will be. Not even if each top HiFi brand were to develop its own product. The purists would still claim that a dedicated 2ch system is sonically superior. It's likely they'd be right, but then it becomes more a matter of personal taste.

If I were starting to rebuild my system today I'd keep all of my sources but perhaps change the TAG AV32R for a Roksan Caspian AV pre-amp. It's got less bells and whistles but knows how to groove. Ultimately I'd love to find a way to integrate a Sugden A21a for music only. Then I could keep the TAG which is outstanding for movies.

Everything else I'm happy with. I use my PC for video editing as well as managing my music for the portable. The SL300i let's me play my own movies and music files, see digital camera stills. I can stream video from the net and listen to internet radio. All this is done through a wireless router.

 

It is possible to make a backup of the HDD with some of the server systems.

 

You can even purchase server space which is 'guranteed' - good for personal info as it is usually also very secure.

 

Mods: suggest that this move to hifi forum

 

When "x-aMOunt of songs" is mentioned, I take it that refers to compressed files.

What would be a realistic aMOunt of storage space for high quality rips of say 1000 albums. Is there a way of working it out by time? For instance 1000 albums being 1000 hours, so thus needing storage capacity of......

 

About 600GB in wav form.

 

My understanding is that MP3 compressed to 320kbps is generally considered to be the equal of WAV then - I have a mix I initially exported as WAV @ 723,413 MB which is about 1 hr 10 mins long.

When exported as MP3 (320kbps) this amounted to 131,233 MB. If my memory is correct about the compression level of the MP3 in question (its possible I exported it as 256 kbps) then by the same ratio 600 GB of WAV files could be stored as 108.84 GB of MP3 320 kbps.

 

A typical uncompressed album stored in WAV is roughly 20mb but if you use FLAC the size is reduced by upto 60% so 1300 albums can take up as little as 270mb

 

An album as WAV only 20MB? Not my experience. How long is the album?

 

Oops :shame: Ok, Gardiner's version of Beethoven 9 weighs in at 600mb WAV or 140mb FLAC for 60 minutes playing time

 

Are you sure about that? On average I've found a half decent mp3 is usually about 3-5MB. So even a 10 track album of that would be over 20MB

oops, forgot to refresh before replying, so missed the update...

Is FLAC lossless?

 

Flac stands for Free Lossless Audio Compression. It's a bit like Winzip for music

 

Oh, I get it, you made a mistake, and now feel the need to point out my stupidity :shame:

(edited to add)

So, erm..... how much does FLAC cost?

 

Err... Free

 

Now I'm unsure if you failed to pick up on the fact I was joking, or if i'm failing to pick up on the fact that you picked up that I was joking, and are now making a joke yourself! eek!

 

It's a larf innit!