Backing Up a Large CD Accumulation

[Teasing the Korean]

I've accumulated enough CDs now that I'm starting to give serious thought to backing up my entire accumulation.

I am technologically challenged to begin with, and technology changes very quickly these days, so bear with me.

I have a number of questions. If you can answer any of these, your responses will be greatly appreciated.

1) I used to have Roxio Toast on a previous computer, and I've been thinking of downloading a more recent version for my current computer(s). Is this still a good CD copying/burning program? If not, which do you recommend? I do not want to rely on iTunes or Windows Media, based on previous problems with both.

2) Is WAV the best overall format to extract with?

3) What is a good external drive that will store a lot of albums (I'm talking thousands) in high rez formats?

4) I have a Mac at home and a PC at work. Are there any external drives that are formatted to work with both, so that I can back up stuff from either computer onto a single hard drive?

5) What do you think of third-party backup providers such as Carbonite?

6) Even if I have top shelf audio extracting/burning software, are there limits to the optical drives in standard Macs and/or PCs, i.e. Is there any reason to consider a freestanding CD burner? (The more things change...)

7) On a related note, I am a Mac person. I have been thinking of buying a Mac laptop, but have found that the latest models do not include an optical reader (for CDs), although they are allegedly equipped to easily interface with optical readers. Do I want to avoid these, or is this still a worthwhile option when you weigh quality and cost of the needed components?

I've asked a lot of questions, some of which are probably stupid. Thanks in advance.

Your beloved TTK

Edited November 1, 2011 by Teasing the Korean

[Chuck Nessa]

Buy doubles and store them with your dealer.

[Hardbopjazz]

Here are some answers to your 7 questions.

I've done this. I've converted over 7600 CDs to external drives. I have been using Weston Digital dirves. Either the 1.5 tb or 2 tb. The last one I bought, a 2 tb drive cost $98. The price seems to have gone up a bit. You may also want to look at doing RAID with external drives. This will give you protection if one of the drive dies. The files exist else where which makes recovering possible. You would need a RAID controler in you MAC.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136471

I also coverted the files from WAV to FLAC. FLAC works on MACS. By converting to FLAC I cut the size of the file in half and without any compression that happens with MP3. You can always go back to WAV. You can even listen to FLAC files with programs such as WinAmp.

As far as software for doing the conversion, if what you have works, why replace it?

I can't see using a thrd party backup provider. Tomorrow they can go belly up and where's my data. When I bought a computer for my wife, it came with a years online storage up to 10 gb for free. That vendor doesn't exist anymore.

The limitation of optical drives, I haven't notice with the one built into my Dell computer. It handled the workload just fine.

[Brute]

I recommend FLAC for sure. I am currently streaming CD quality FLAC files (16 bit 44k) on my home WI-FI using a Logitech Squeezebox Touch that is attached to my home stereo (i also have the squeezebox radio to move around the house & property with). I have about 20,000 FLAC files ripped from my CD collection and stored on a 1TB drive (backed up to a second 2 TB drive) attached to my computer in the basement. It is networked to my AT&T gateway which streams the info around the house. Sounds as good as a CD and much more convenient. The thing that sealed the deal for me was the free ipad and Android apps that can control it on the network.

[golfcrazy1984]

This might not help as much as previous posters, but I use a MacPro with two 1 TB hard drives, and copy each CD to iTunes. I've done A/B sessions and CDs played from a Rega Cd player and those off of iTunes amount to a negligible sound difference. I haven't A/B'ed SACD vs. iTunes yet...

I have friends that have had good luck with the Western Digital external hard drives.

It's a long process to convert CD's into to .WAV (or other sound files) but the convenance REALLY pays off. Especially if you don't want to listen to the whole album, or want to make customized playlists.

[Larry Kart]

For the opposite of this, Pops recommended Swiss Kriss.

[Big Wheel]

How many CDs do you have? I haven't done the math in a while but a FLAC is typically about 30 MB for a 5 minute song, right? That means if each CD has 10 songs (300 MB), you will fill up a 1 TB hard drive with 3300 CDs.

Whatever you do, I would find an online cloud player to sync up all your files with as you rip to a hard drive. Most of them compress the files I think but you might as well start uploading. If you can use a work or university network to do much of the uploading it will go much faster, accomplishing in hours what it took me about two weeks to do for a modest-sized collection.

[John L]

In addition to what people have written, make sure and back up your back up to another external drive. External drives fail often, and all will eventually fail with use, sometimes without warning. Although you would still have your music on CD in that case, it would still be a time consuming pain to rip them all up again. Besides, most of us now store some music files that we don't have on CD.

While some recommend a 1 TB drives, you might consider 2 TB drives. They don't cost much more now, and are almost as compact. You won't have to worry about space for a long time. And by that time, there will be 5 TB drives even cheaper and more compact to move to.

Edited November 1, 2011 by John L

[Teasing the Korean]

Thanks all for the replies.

Two questions:

Are any of these external drives formatted to work with both Macs and PCs?

What kind of software do you use to extract? I have had issues with both iTunes and Windows Media, and would like to use something better.

[John L]

Most external drives work for Macs, but there are models "optimized for Macs" that work faster and more efficiently. The Apple Store carries them.

[Brute]

I'm not sure about dual format drives. However, there are numerous free ripping & converting programs out there. I use fre:ac.

I have ripped and converted 20,000 songs since May and have only encountered a handful of bad tracks so far. I believe those were a result of scratched CDs.

EDIT: Forgot to add that I have been using Western Digital hard drives with no issues.

Edited November 1, 2011 by Brute

[Teasing the Korean]

OK, here's an update:

I got a 1 TB drive for $89, and it is compatible with either Macs or Windows.

It will make the most sense for me to do this at work on Windows, and I can't download any software, so, I'm stuck with using Windows Media.

Two final questions, for now:

Other than storage, any big difference between extracting as WAV or with Windows Lossless (forget the exact name)?

If is use Windows Lossless (or whatever it's called), would I ever be able to convert those files for use on a Mac?

Again, thanks in advance.

[Pete C]

FAT32 is a drive format system that works with both PC and Mac. For PC, I think NTSF is more efficient, but it's not Mac-compatible. I don't know what the file system for Mac is called, but I'm pretty sure you can buy a FAT32 drive and then reformat it when it's connected to your Mac. I've reformatted FAT32 to NTSF on a PC. But, of course, you don't want to reformat it if you need to move between operating systems.

Here's a page on how to convert wma (Windows) to m4a (Mac)

http://www.ehow.com/how_5118571_convert-wma-ma.html

Keep all your digital files on two different external drives so you'll always have a backup if one drive fails. If possible, use drives dedicated to just those files. I'd recommend using a portable USB-powered drive as one of the backups. I have mine on a portable as well as an AC-powered one. The portable goes into a Western Digital WD-TV media player hooked into my stereo system and TV. I think Western Digital has a portable at 1.5 TB, the max available in that architecture. Portables are almost twice as expensive as AC-powered ones, though.

Edited November 2, 2011 by Pete C

[Brute]

The only other advice I'll add is that I strongly urge you to rip and convert to a lossless codec. If you're going to put in the time to convert a large collection it makes sense to do it once. I ripped my entire CD collection to the compressed Apple Audio Codec for ipod about 5-6 years ago and then had to re-rip & convert it a second time for FLAC. Giant pain in the ass. I would have gone the FLAC route the first time but storage was too expensive at the time. With FLAC or other lossless codecs you can always change it back to .WAV file without losing anything. However, this can't happen when you compress to mp3 or aac etc.

Edited November 3, 2011 by Brute

[.:.impossible]

Brute, why no vortex box?

http://vortexbox.org/

[AmirBagachelles]

Use FLAC and get the tagging right, check it and make sure it's the format you want. I like dbPowerAmp for ripping.

Use good quality production drives with modular, redundant features. Someday you will probably store video and other precious things with your music, so I would approach this as infrastructure for your home/life.