looking for a 4tb solution

[lazydays]

I currently have 3tb but I want to plan for the future. I'd like to buy a 4tb solution and I want it to appear as one large drive to house my ever expanding itunes library. I was looking on owc's website but it looks like the cost would be $770 which is more than I would like to spend. Speed isn't really an issue. Thanks for any suggestions.

[mattkime]

readynas nv+ would be in that range and completely worth it.

what do you want? a usb enclosure? a nas? something for $20?

[C(-)ris]

Drobo might work nice for that, not sure how that fits for cost. You do realize that the drives alone are going to cost somewhere between $320(4x1TB) and $450(2x2TB) just by themselves. The 4 drive system is going to cost a lot to setup a bunch of enclosures and software RAID them together to get a large drive. The 2x2 setup would only need a case that supports striped RAID. Cheapest cases are probably around $100. Puts you right around $550 for the dirt cheapest configuration you could find.

[lazydays]

HEH, $20 sounds perfect!!! I was hoping for something in the $400-500 range but it appears the bare 2tb drives have not come down in price yet. I see the 2tb drives are about $250 each still...

[lazydays]

HMM, I found this for $550 http://www.buy.com/prod/western-digital-...90835.html

What prompted this is a little scare I had last night. Before going to bed I checked my email and noticed itunes was bouncing up and down. It had an error message saying my index was corrupt. Needless to say I about had a heart attack but fortunately itunes had made a backup library a few days prior. So I only had to add a few items back to my library. Made me think I could sure use some redundancy for the 3tb of storage I have so far. If I could find a nice solution I'd make it my primary storage and the individual drives I have now would become the backup.

[mattkime]

if you can stretch your budget i'd definitely go for the readynas. it might be expensive but after you spend 15 minutes setting it up you almost literally never think about the thing again. backing up your data to a striped drive enclosure makes little sense if longevity is important to you since you have 2x drive mechanisms to fail.

[Will Collier]

Three of the Dell 1.5TBs would get you 4.5 total for $300. Buy a used motherboard on eBay (I got a perfectly good Pentium III board with CPU for $30 three years ago), a little RAM, a cheap controller card ($15 or so from NewEgg), and a cheap Ethernet card, if necessary. Load up Linux or an old copy of XP and you've got a 4.5TB server for under $400.

[wurm]

I'm still trying to even comprehend 4tb of iTunes (or even 3 or 2..or 1)

[Carnos Jax]

LOL...me too wurm. But if he's like my bro, he probably rips his stuff uncompressed (and compressed) or lossless.

[lazydays]

My music is ripped at 320kbps and I have filled a 1tb drive with nothing but music. The second and third 1tb drives have tv shows and movies on them. I have about 1/2 tb left right now. I love having everything available to me at any time.

It sounds like I either need to loosen my purse strings or wait for prices to come down a bit. The linux box sounds interesting but I really want a ready made, simple, and quiet (if possible) solution. Hopefully there will be a sale soon and I can jump onto the hard drive bandwagon.