things like Amazon MP3 or iTunes Music Store sound really really good,
I had over 500 albums on my hard drive from many sources
(CDs, digital downloads etc etc) and maany maany bootlegs on the other one.

two weekends ago I went on holidays, took my notebook and those two external hard drives.
one day I dropped them on the floor accidentaly and both are broken.
I went to 2 computer services and asked a couple of friends
who know a bit about recovering data and they all said
there ain't no good and cheap way to recover that.

I've lost 80% of my music and almost all bootlegs.
I've got many Stones and other various albums on CDs
which I'm gonna rip pretty soon on my hard drive
but amount of lost music really overwhelms me and I'm depressed.

I'm telling you this to command:
GO AND BACK UP ALL YOUR MUSIC NOW! you never know what can happen.
JUST DO IT NOW. buy external hard drive and copy everything there...
it'll save you more money you think!

I do not store any music on harddisks at all (you saw yourself what can happen...). I burn everything on CDs (audio CDs, not flac or mp3 files) and keep them in a dark place. Until now they are all still playable even when they are more than 10 years old. I don't have a good feeling with magnetic storage (= harddisks).

Sorry to hear that.

A couple of months ago I bought an external hard disk that's
sorrounded with a thick rubber cover and it has like a shock
absorber. It's supposed to withstand a fall. But I think that
I should have and additional back up source. I believe that
DVD's hold more info than CD's.

Amused - sorry to hear about your loss. I went through that whole scenario TWICE. I do like midrambler: keep everything on disc too.

Ditto midnrambler and Palace. Right now I'm in the process of transfering all my videos onto Delkin Archival DVD-R gold discs. After that I'll be transfering my audio collection onto CD-R gold discs. The disc's will be stored in slimline cd clam shell cases. The gold dvd-r's are a bit expensive, about $2.00 each, but some of the stuff I've collected over the years would be very hard replace if lost. Delkin and MFSL make gold cd-r's. Use a high quality media. Stay away from the cheap 'cake tray' dvd/cd-r's. For burning copies of dvd's for freinds, I use Fuji dvd-r's. For music I use Fuji, Sony or Veratim cd-r's. I've never had a problem with these manufactures. Again, STAY AWAY FROM CHEAP MEDIA. I can't stress that enough. If you have alot to transfer, think about buying a stand alone duplicator. They're about $120 - $140 on eBay. They come with many functions. They can analyze your masters for defects and do 'bit to bit' comparisons of your master and target disc once the transfer is completed to verify a good transfer. Hope this helps.

Scotty



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2009-08-12 03:17 by micknkeef@cox.net.

I use the cake tray DVDr's and let me tell you they hold up.

I started backing stuff up on to the DVDrs (music mp3s) in late 2004 and just now finally put the stuff (what I could fit) on a 320 gb hard drive... well all the DVDrs - many different brands but all cake tray- were read just fine....

My problem is I have so much music.. probably about 1 TB.... I can't see buying a 1 TB hard drive at this point

Lock it all in ya Rock'n'Roll heart ....



ROCKMAN

if you are going to take external hard drives along with you to places, i would like to make a suggestion. for about 60 dollars at walmart you can get a 250 gig that is the size of an ipod and uses no power supply other than your computer. if there's no walmart near you i'm sure there's other places to find them reasonable.