Getting serious about storage

[ggking7]

I play all of my music on a desktop system attached to a DAC and speakers. I also want to be able to take this music with me when traveling for playback via my laptop. Right now all of the music is stored on the desktop's internal drive and I copy it across the network to the laptop before I go on a trip.

 

It's somewhat inconvenient this way, but I also worry about losing the data. What would you recommend for a real storage setup that is relatively safe and flexible?

 

[Innertuber]

Seems if your going to take your laptop, and you have more music than will fit on something like a flash drive your doing the best thing. The question to me would seem what's the best way to do all the transferring and where should the "master" library of music reside?

 

Am I missing something?

 

[ggking7]

I guess the problem is I'm running out of space on both systems. The desktop is no problem, just add another (unbelievably cheap) internal hard drive, but the laptop is trickier.

 

I guess I could add an external hard drive to the desktop along with another internal one and sync the music on the external drive and internal drive daily. That would protect me in the case of one of them failing, plus I could just take the external drive along with my laptop whenever I travel. Thoughts?

 

[Innertuber]

What file format are you using when you rip? Can you shrink a bit and store it on the laptop to avoid dragging around another drive? Dragging an extra drive sounds like a pain to me if you're on the go much.

 

If you're trying to just have the portable music, then I would think compress it a bit to fit on the laptop unless you need larger files for whatever reason.

 

If you're after the backup, adding another drive in the box and sync sounds economical. You can probably tell Win to do that automatically I would think, mirror your drive somehow, tho I've never tried.

 

If you could drag around (and choose to) an external drive that could become a backup for what's on the box and the source for the laptop. Gonna have to set up some libraries I would think ...

 

The easiest so far, I think, is consolidate from the box to the laptop and set the file to something smaller so they fit, or just take some rather than all.

 

 

 

[ggking7]

I think you're right about dragging around another device. I can change things around a bit and make it work on the laptop's internal drive. Thanks for your help.