Music storage

[Nonlinear Nonfiction]

I have a 150 Gb Lacie external hard drive. It has done wonders for me for over a year now but yesterday took a turn for the worst. Basically, I can just tell it is on the verge of crashing - it is operating very slowly and some files have been lost. I keep all my music on it (about 100 Gb of mp3s and m4as) and I burn all my backup files of wavs and flacs onto DVDs. I'm beginning to undrestand that even firewire 800 is NOT meant as constant access to my music files - I probably shouldn't have my iTunes library linked to an external hard drive. Or can I do it (without worrying about the disc crashing)? I use a Powerbook G4 and my 80 Gb internal drive is hardly enough to store all the music I want. My options are: get a new external (a better brand maybe?), a bigger internal hard drive, or find some other way to store my music collection.

 

Looking for suggestions...

[socbret]

Personally on my G5 I store all my music on my 160 gb drive, and then all my video on an external that gets moved around from a few machines and is backed up anyways. I feel a lot more comfortable having my music on an internal IDE connected drive, I have never had a problem with that. If it's not too much of a pain I would get a new internal drive, or at least a different brand of external drive. Everyone I know with Lacie drives has had them crash multiple times.

[Guest Speed Racer]

I've got a 300G Western Digital that I'm all about. Had it for a year and a half with no crashes. My iTunes library hasn't quite exceeded my internal yet, so I only use the external for video and lossless shows. I access it several times a week, and it's never so much as hummed loud.

[nicburto]

I have a 160 gig western digital external that I keep my itunes library on - it's linked for access via USB 2. It's working great so far. That would be my suggestion. I also have my files on my ipod which I can use to recover the files if, god forbid, something happens to the external

[c53x12]

There's really nothing special about Lacie drives that would cause them to crash more often. I've owned several for long periods of time (5+) years without incident. Lacie doesn't even build the drive mechanisms -- usually they are from one of the big mfrs like Hitachi, Western Digital, Quantum (my old Lacie's were Quantum), etc. And really, external drives aren't any less safe than internal drives, unless they get moved around or jostled a lot.

 

Any drive mechanism in any kind of enclosure can fail, and eventually will. Back up, back up, back up.

[dannygutters]

yeah there's nothing inherently worse about an external drive and a 150 firewire lacie is what I use for my itunes library. If it's clunking along you can just buy another external hard drive and use the freware clone program to copy it's contents rename it and you have your library.

 

Oh and if it dies (clunking) stick it in the freezer for a half hour or so, if you're lucky you should get a bit of time out of it after that.

 

Hard drives don't have a super long lifespan on average a few years is not too shabby since the manuafturing quality varies greatly with these guys.

[Smokestack Joe]

i had this happen to me earlier this year. my Lacie drive crashed but i was able to recover my songs off my iPod and recopied back onto a different ex drive. it was a long annoying process.

 

i need to get a bigger internal drive to store music and an ex drive to back up stuff. my computer and ex drive have both crashed so it makes me a worried man.

[Basil II]

I'm auld skool........CD-Rs all the way!!!!

 

 

 

-Robert.