korn, lossless music on an HD

[CarcerCityHood]

Hey, I'm still here, I've just been busy lately but the new iPods have sparked my interest to purchase an external hard drive like you recommended. My question is, how does it work? Like if I'm using iTunes, do I get a cord (I'm assuming USB) when I purchase an EHD and I just plug it in, my PC detects it, and I somehow save ripped songs to there rather than my iTunes library? I though about you saying that your disk drive wears out when ripping as it puts a lot of strain on it, and my mom is letting me use her computer so I thought I'd respect that and take care of it where I can, plus I can take my music with me this way.

I work at an electronics store, and we from 80gigs to 500gigs? What's a suitable size? There are usually two types of people. Those who rip entire albums when they enjoy only one or two tracks on it, or those that just ripped their favorites. I'm one of those that rip my favorite tracks only, so I don't need 500. Would 80 be alright or should I go to 100 or even 150? Also, is there a way to organize your HD and the music withing it like using folders or names or whatever? Also, lossless is all the same, correct? So using Apples lossless from, iTunes is the exact same from any other program out there?

I really apologize for all the questions, but I really do appreciate it and I need some help with this. Please, answer them when you can, even though you've answered enough for me already.

^_^

As always, thanks.
~ Carcer

[kornchild2002]

Welcome back. A external hard drive will work just like you think. You purchase the drive and it will come with a USB2.0 cord. Some may also come with a AC power adapter. It all depends on the hard drive capacity and the drive speed. A 7200RPM external hard drive will come with its own power adapter and use USB2.0 for information only while a 4500RPM or 5400RPM hard drive will more than likely just use USB2.0. It all depends on how portable you want things to be. Generally speaking, the external hard drives with their own AC adapters are better as they are faster.

As for capacity, that is all up to your budget. I purchased my 500GB external hard drive for $120. If you can find a deal like that then get it. It doesn't really matter if you will ever need 500GB but it is always best to have extra space. You don't hurt anything by having extra space, it beats carrying around two hard drives. Just to give you an example, a 4 minute song will take up about 26MB-35MB when using Apple lossless (it depends on how complex the songs is). This means that the average album will take up about 350MB-500MB depending on length and song complexity. When you think about it, 80GB will hold about 160 albums. That really isn't a whole lot so you have to plan wisely. As I said, it never hurts to have too much space.

You can organize your music on a external hard drive just how it is organized on your computer's internal hard drive. There isn't a difference between the two other than you are using the external hard drive for storage only.

Apple lossless should be the same as Apple lossless. Now you might be able to achieve better compression by using something else like FLAC. That compression difference won't be big though. For example, a Apple lossless file will be 35MB but that same song encoded with FLAC will take up 32MB. Not really worth it considering you are losing iPod/iTunes compatibility. But a ALAC (Apple lossless) file will be the same no matter where you store it.

[CarcerCityHood]

Thanks! I was already planning on paying $100 anyway, and if you found 500gigs for a bit over that, I see what you mean. I didn't know that some had an AC cord, interesting. We carry Western Digital brands, Seagates, etc. so I have plenty to choose from. Thanks again for the quick response. :)

[kornchild2002]

Oh, just to add. I purchased a MyBook external hard drive, I think those are made by Western Digital but I have a roommate who uses a 200GB external Seagate. So I have seen both major brands in action and I can recommend both. I preferred the look of the MyBook as the Seagate model has a orange stripe down it but as far as performance, both brands should do what you want. Just make sure to pick up a 7200RPM hard drive if you want fast transfer speeds. Those 5400RPM and 4500RPM hard drives are probably a little too slow whenever you are looking at managing 100+GB of data.