marksdad Posted September 20, 2007 Share Posted September 20, 2007 hi everyone, my question is if any of you have any experience with the SONOS system, i am considering the sonos system to handle my digital music, also for all you computer wise folks out there, i also do not trust my comp to handle my every growing library. i am afraid that if i cannot use an external drive i can and will lose 100 gigs of music. i have already lost 35 gigs once, i got a virus and had to do a recovery. i want 1 tera of storage, and i am told the best storage especially for secure, and restorable it to purchase an raid array? i have been trying to get info on the raid array over regular storage units and very little is available. also i am looking at the sonos z130 package my question is also for any of you with experience is ? the z100? is it a good receptor / amp? i will be auditioning this soon, and want some pre knowledge of its attributes prior to talking with the salesman. thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrWho Posted September 21, 2007 Share Posted September 21, 2007 If you use any kind of harddrive for your media storage, then your best move would be to partition it to its own drive. As you mention, an external drive is its own partition. If your previous 35GB was on the internal harddrive, but on a different partition, you could have reinstalled windows without losing any data. A RAID might be a bit overkill - especially considering the price, though it will certainly be more reliable. You can have an entire harddrive fail and still be able to recover your data. Based on the little experience I've had lately with external TB drives, I would probably encourage you to consider multiple 200GB drives. I know it's more expensive, but you lose less if you have a failure...every large capacity drive I've used has had a failure within 2 years so far. I used to be a huge fan of Lacie, but I won't go that route anymore. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kaiser SET say Posted September 21, 2007 Share Posted September 21, 2007 I agree with who on morror drives in case one fails but everything I have pushed to HD is in my media collection so even with a a mirror backup all I would be looking at is re-loading time[] Stop jinxing me Mike, I've been running these side by side LaCie 250's for about 2 1/2 years now[] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrWho Posted September 21, 2007 Share Posted September 21, 2007 The only problems I had with Lacie were on their 500+ GB drives. We still have a Lacie 250 running strong in the studio ever since it was installed... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daddy Dee Posted September 22, 2007 Share Posted September 22, 2007 If you use any kind of harddrive for your media storage, then your best move would be to partition it to its own drive. As you mention, an external drive is its own partition. If your previous 35GB was on the internal harddrive, but on a different partition, you could have reinstalled windows without losing any data.A RAID might be a bit overkill - especially considering the price, though it will certainly be more reliable. You can have an entire harddrive fail and still be able to recover your data.Based on the little experience I've had lately with external TB drives, I would probably encourage you to consider multiple 200GB drives. I know it's more expensive, but you lose less if you have a failure...every large capacity drive I've used has had a failure within 2 years so far. I used to be a huge fan of Lacie, but I won't go that route anymore. Mike, so what is a RAID? I'm among the really uninformed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jay481985 Posted September 22, 2007 Share Posted September 22, 2007 raid is a way to manage your hard drive. off the top of my head raid 0 is really not a raid. It combines 2 harddrives to make it look like one. Meaning you can have a really big looking hard drive. The catch is that if one hard drive fails the stuff is lost. Raid 1 is mirror. It uses 2 hard drives and basically mirror them. Even though you have two hard drives that are the same it must be the same size and if one fails you have the same thing on the other. Though you only have space of the one hard drive. Raid 5 I believe needs 4 hard drives. You basically assign the stuff you want to store on all 4 hard drives and then have back ups. So if one hard drive fails it actually can recover. If two hard drives fail though the array is lost. You can wikipedia it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daddy Dee Posted September 22, 2007 Share Posted September 22, 2007 Jay, Thanks. Most interesting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrWho Posted September 22, 2007 Share Posted September 22, 2007 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID I think nowadays you can just purchase preconfigured RAID boxes that connect over a network connection. If you're doing mass media storage, you will want to go with a level that provides some form of fault protection. Here, I won't be so lazy: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3151150&CatId=207 At a $1 per GB, you're talking around $3 for every DVD and like 75 cents for every CD if you don't do any form of compression. Lossless compressions will probably cut that in half. I bet cheaper solutions like this exist, but just thought I'd throw an example out there. I have had great success with other network drives in the past - in fact, they're easy enough to use that even my grandpa can do it. He runs all of his computers on a wireless network so the drive can just sit next to the router and everyone can access it from anywhere in the house. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jay481985 Posted September 23, 2007 Share Posted September 23, 2007 1 dollar a gig? woah???? it is about 110 dollars for a 500 gig hard drive Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flatgrass Posted October 1, 2007 Share Posted October 1, 2007 RAID - redundant array of independent disks. Most mainboards have a BIOS or other software implementation for one or two versions of RAID. Usually RAID 0 and 1. I am currently running my OS on the primary IDE channel, and have two SATA disks configured as a mirror for audio and video files. Not very efficient use of disk space, 50%, but if it is something you don't want to lose, may be worth it. Many newer boards can have four or six SATA channels. If not, you can add a SATA control card in one of your PCI slots. A simple two channel card can be found for around 25-35 bucks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrWho Posted October 1, 2007 Share Posted October 1, 2007 1 dollar a gig? woah???? it is about 110 dollars for a 500 gig hard driveRight, without a RAID controller...you're comparing apples to oranges. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jacksonbart Posted October 1, 2007 Share Posted October 1, 2007 Its a higher cost more quiet solution www.olive.us Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jay481985 Posted October 1, 2007 Share Posted October 1, 2007 1 dollar a gig? woah???? it is about 110 dollars for a 500 gig hard drive Right, without a RAID controller...you're comparing apples to oranges. use the built in motherboard or a raid card is not soo much Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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