I just purchased an external USB2 hard drive (750Gb, $119!) with the intention of copying all my digital audio files from several sources onto it, and to run it from a Win-XP desktop. Most of my files are currently residing on this very Win XP computer as well as on an external Windows (MS-DOS?) formatted HD. Some files are also on a Mac OSX client (Mac OS Extended (Journaled) - HFS): Has anybody successfully done this - I have many questions:

1) The files are currently organized in "iTunes" format - i.e. in nested folders by artist and then by album title (I'm not really crazy about how iTunes organizes music, but so be it): Should I just copy the files the way they are currently organized, or should I export them (somehow!) and have them reorganized on the new HD? Remember, I have three sources of audio files, some of which may be duplicates.

2) Should I stick to iTunes for my playback and organization software, or is there something better for my application?

3) How should I best format the new hard drive to make sure it talks to the source computers so I can copy the files over? Should I just copy the folders, or is there an application that would do the copying to better organize the files?

4) Does anyone know anything about mirroring an external HD, for example onto a second identical drive? Software recommendations that would automate this task?

Thanks

I started in MP3 long before iTunes existed. Long ago, I found organization and duplicates to be a real problem - and this was before operating systems even supported having several gigabytes of files in a single folder.

I eventually came up with a system that uses the file name itself as the key organizer, like a primary key in a database. If available, each filename should contain the following

Artist - Year - Album/Concert - Track Number - Title.mp3

The music can then be easily sorted into folders by genre, and each song will naturally be organized logically in the file list view. Utilities like "MP3 Renamer" are useful for extracting ID3 tag information and using it in the filename automatically.

I shy away from iTunes because you lose too much control over the organization, and who knows what other DRM and other stuff is inserted into your files, or will be in future versions. Open source everything, and simple players such as Winamp have been good to me.

Cataloging music this way is very labor intensive, but after you are done, you will know what you have. At least you don't have to store 100,000 vinyl albums. Even if you have the space and your floors support the weight, they are completely unsearchable and a fire hazard when you get that much music in one place.

My only comment is that you don't want to rely on any single hard drive to store all your hard won music folders. Organize your music on your PC hard drive and then occasionally copy it all over to your new external as a backup and as something you could take with you.

Also be aware that if any of your music was acquired through iTunes it may or may not be playable on a different computer. DRM is the work of the devil!

I'm currently in the same boat as far as cataloging goes but I've hedged my bets by ripping to AIF format (using iTunes) at lossless quality and setting my itunes library to a folder on my RAID 5 Buffalo Terastation. The Buffalo should be bullet proof... except maybe for actual bullets! And it lets me access the folder from my other systems around the house. I don't like the way iTunes organizes stuff either. I hate that it puts compiliations into a Compilations folder....

Anyway - best of luck!

NN, what did you finally do with this? As you noted in my thread I'm doing basically the same thing but I'm going to have two external hd's and sync and rotate them for backup. Did you stick with iTunes? I probably will but wanted to check to see if you did something different.

NN, what did you finally do with this? Did you stick with iTunes? Yes and no: The files were originally organized on internal hard drives the iTunes' "way" (which I don't particularly care for that much, BTW), so I decided to stay with iTunes for computer playback. However, for stereo system playback I use an application called Simplify Media (http://www.simplifymedia.com/) (I wrote about it in another thread that you posted to, so I assume you saw my post) that installs on both the "host" computer (Mac and Win compatible) and iPhone/Touch to stream the audio files from HD to my stereo via the iPhone/Touch as the bridge. Pandora/Internet radio works with the iPhone/Touch, too, of course.

Simplify Media doesn't care how you stored your files - iTunes or some other way - you just tell it where you have your audio files, it finds them (first time takes a wile - I have almost 40,000 now!), and streams them.

Ok I'll have to check out SM. So you are using the internal DAC in your Touch or does your doc do something different? Which doc are you using?

So you are using the internal DAC in your Touch? Yes, I do for the moment. Although not sonically optimal, a lot of my files are MP3s (I also listen to Pandora lot) in various bit rates, and there may be limited potential in upgrading the signal path a lot as long as the quality of the source material is sub-optimal.