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Been there (lost ~120G, 50k songs), done that (music on RAID1 + backup drive). Current stats: My "sorted" folder is what I sometimes listen to, and music that

Been there (lost ~120G, 50k songs), done that (music on RAID1 + backup drive). Current stats: My "sorted" folder is what I sometimes listen to, and music that I collected or assimilated out of my own interest. That's 139G, containing ~18k files in ~2k folders. This includes about 500 flacs, the gross remainder is mp3. I try to get 256 to 320kbps these days, true stereo. My old collection started in the days of slow internet and 128kbps joint stereo (and sometimes even 96kbps), hence the massive difference in size. My "unsorted" folder is an additional 266G with 35k files (60 flacs) in 4400 folders. This is mainly collections I got from friends and contains stuff I don't regularly listen to, and for which I have not yet checked the quality. Probably also a bunch of duplicates. 1TB sounds fair, though I'd go with a RAID1 of 2TB drives just to be sure. I wouldn't bother with SSDs, but if physical size matters check out 2.5" HDDs. TBH, most of the time I just use tidal; unless I want a something that's not on there (or some specific version).

trasz 4y ago
One problem with RAID is that it doesn't help with software failures (from filesystem meltdown to ransomware). It's also not geographically distributed, so will go down in a house fire or robbery. Occasionally synced SSD kept at parents/friends' house solves both. In the old times it was (somewhat) costly and (somewhat) clunky, but with 1TB M.2 drives I'd consider both problems to be solved - and drives are only getting cheaper. Also: let's not pretend that cloud services are more reliable than something you own. They aren't. iTunes sometimes stops playback midway with some "URL not found" error; songs disappear due to copyright reasons, and let's not pretend iTunes - or any other service - will not get phased out eventually, taking your entire library with it.

trasz 4y ago

One problem with RAID is that it doesn't help with software failures (from filesystem meltdown to ransomware). It's also not geographically distributed, so will go down in a house fire or robbery. Occasionally synced SSD kept at parents/friends' house solves both. In the old times it was (somewhat) costly and (somewhat) clunky, but with 1TB M.2 drives I'd consider both problems to be solved - and drives are only getting cheaper. Also: let's not pretend that cloud services are more reliable than something you own. They aren't. iTunes sometimes stops playback midway with some "URL not found" error; songs disappear due to copyright reasons, and let's not pretend iTunes - or any other service - will not get phased out eventually, taking your entire library with it.