joessportster Posted January 5, 2014 Share Posted January 5, 2014 OK I'll try to word this so I don't sound completely lost. I downloaded all my disc's to hard drive in lossless WAV, I've been reading (big mistake) about how FLAC files are lossless but take up half the drive space, So I've figured out how to convert files (songs) but I'm thinking FLAC wont store as albums (IE...1 file as a whole album, click on that file and the tracks come up) In wave on windows media player or media monkey, I can brouse albums then go to individual songs. if i can't do this in FLAC Im going to leave my music as it is in WAV I hope someone here knows what im trying to get at thanks Joe Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thaddeus Smith Posted January 5, 2014 Share Posted January 5, 2014 You can store entire albums as one big FLAC file, or you can store individual songs as individual FLAC files. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joessportster Posted January 5, 2014 Author Share Posted January 5, 2014 OK Thanks for that now I have to figure out how to do that Joe Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
muel Posted January 5, 2014 Share Posted January 5, 2014 I don't quite get why you would want to combine them but Foobar2000 will do that for you. In Foobar2000 select all the files you want to convert, right click, select convert, in "destinations" you can select "merge all tracks to a single output file" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Taz Posted January 5, 2014 Share Posted January 5, 2014 After my hard drive was within megabits of being full I put them all on an external hard drive. How many Terabits music you got? Some fairly large external hard drives for reasonable $$$. Especially if you find them on sale. I first ripped at lower quality. Then deleted and re-ripped to WMA loss-less on external drive and still have lots of room for music. I only store music on that dedicated external hard drive. I have managed to put most of my music on thumb drives for the car. But forgot how I did it. Later I put a terabit hard drive in the laptop. (well I had it done for me) John Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joessportster Posted January 5, 2014 Author Share Posted January 5, 2014 ive been looking at external hard drives but have no idea what a good one would be. When you look at all the customer reviews it seems like 10% are horror storries about a failed drive which results in lost data. The internet isnt much help in this area. Which external hard drives are you using, and how have they held up Joe Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wrinkles Posted January 5, 2014 Share Posted January 5, 2014 Joe, I use the 2 Terabyte Western Digital Elements models. The ones I have are USB 2.0 but I would recommend getting the USB 3.0 as they are coming down in price and are much faster for transfer of files. I have about 5 Western Digital harddrives I use around the houae some of which are 5 years old and I have had no failures. One of them I carry with me everyday to work and has four years of service. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Turbox Posted January 5, 2014 Share Posted January 5, 2014 If you store all your music on an external drive, i would suggest having two drives, a mirror image of one another. I have had external drives "crap" out on me. Luckily, i have two 1TB drives, side by side, one is a mirror image of the other. I just cant afford to lose it all. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joessportster Posted January 5, 2014 Author Share Posted January 5, 2014 that was my plan (to buy 2 external drives and have 2 copies), i have close to 10,000 songs and it took forever to load them on my hard drive, not something i want to do again right now it like 400 to 450 gb of data Ive been looking at wd drives they seem to have a good reputation, i think i will buy local incase theres a problem Joe Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete H Posted January 5, 2014 Share Posted January 5, 2014 Do you have room in your tower to add another hard drive that would act as your mirror drive and then just add 1 external? You should be able to transfer the back up on an internal faster than an external and then just run your backup routine to the external as needed if you keep adding to your library of music, pictures or documents. For as cheap as big hard drives are, I wouldn't worry about file conversion to FLAC but if you transfer your music to other portable devices for playback that don't have a lot of storage you might want to batch convert them to a decent quality lossy format and have the WAV files as well as MP3. TigerDirect has WD 2 TB Black SATA 6 7200 RPM internal drives for $160.00 and 2TB USB 3's for around $140, which is really a small investment to protect that large of a collection IMO. Do you currently have any form of back up? If you don't, Vice Versa is a great program that I use to back up all of my machines at the office as well as at home. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Taz Posted January 5, 2014 Share Posted January 5, 2014 I just happen to be using a Seagate 1.5 Terabit that powers off the computer. I have another Seagate that is 2 terabit if I remember right. It requires a separate plug in power source that I just never use. I can't say they are the best as I don't know what is best. The 1.5 Terabit is so much easier. Just plug it into the computer and go. Another one to use as back up is a good idea. John Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joessportster Posted January 5, 2014 Author Share Posted January 5, 2014 i have my music on my laptop (i dont have a desk top setup) im still trying to keep everything mobile not knowing if or when ill ever be allowed / able to go back to work. I looked on line and saw a 1tb WD my passport with over 5500 reviews and it has a 4.7 or so rating out of 5 for 80.00 so i just got back from best buy with it going to see how it does Funny side note though i asked about the return policy on them the lady said 15 days on electronics, I told her i wanted to know because according to most internet reviews by customers there is a 10 percent bad comments / failures. She acted supprised, so i asked about the store extended warranty (you know the one they offer on everything you buy from video game discs, to televisions) Big surprise they dont offer an extended warranty on hard drives That speaks volumes to me............... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mallette Posted January 6, 2014 Share Posted January 6, 2014 Guys, as I've been in computers since most people hadn't seen one I'm anal to the core. Each place I use music has an external, local drive that is kept in sync with my music server by Mirrorfolder. The music server is backed up as well to a local, mirrored drive. Once you get a couple of terabytes you don't really want to start over, and the costs really aren't that great. As to wav to FLAC, drive space is dirt cheap and wav is the most universal format. Transcoding is a nuisance. I just keep it all in wav. Dave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joessportster Posted January 6, 2014 Author Share Posted January 6, 2014 I'm doing just that. keeping everything in WAV the new drive is in the middle of copying 14,000 songs from 1 folder, looks like another late night for me........i started letting the brive back up the whole computer but 4 hours later it looked like no progress, so now im manually moving only the files that matter to me. music, photos, video's after this drive proves itself a little i will buy another and make a mirror copy thanks for all the advice it is appreciated, Joe Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Taz Posted January 6, 2014 Share Posted January 6, 2014 (edited) I believe Costco has 30 day return on electronics. I may be mistaken though. My bad, just looked up their policy. "The new policy, which the company quietly noted on its Web site, will give customers only 90 days to return televisions, computers, cameras, camcorders, portable music players and cell phones." When the hard drive on my laptop went out I was able to have 1 terabit hard drive put in. John Edited January 6, 2014 by Taz Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mallette Posted January 6, 2014 Share Posted January 6, 2014 I'm doing just that. keeping everything in WAV the new drive is in the middle of copying 14,000 songs from 1 folder, looks like another late night for me........i started letting the brive back up the whole computer but 4 hours later it looked like no progress, so now im manually moving only the files that matter to me. music, photos, video's If you mean "back up the whole computer" you mean operating system...DON'T. These days there is precisely one and only one way to securely back up the OS. Clone it to another drive, and keep an image as well on another drive. Never mix data and OS as Windows WILL destroy it eventually. As to it being slow, that will depend on the manner of connection. Unless you have at least a gig Ethernet connection network drives will be slow. That is one reason I keep local drives for actual playback use that are mirrored from the NAS. The NAS is best mirrored to a RAID or mirrored drive set directly via at least USB 3.0 or external SATA connection. I set Mirrorfolder to do those backups in real time...that is, the moment a file is save to the source drive it is mirrored to the BU. Again, may sound like overkill but loss of these files would be devastating as many are not replaceable. How much is it worth? Dave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joessportster Posted January 6, 2014 Author Share Posted January 6, 2014 I figure the only things i needed to back up were files i care about so I manually moved those, If my laptop dies i wont be to devastated with the music and pics saved in a couple other places i figure get another laptop and move copies off the external and im back to start. I dont keep important work bits or anything like that on computers Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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