hi everyone !
computer ''newb'' here & have decided to put my music/photos/video onto HDD.
i have 10.000 albums ( 35 years of collecting CD's & LP's, plus 400 DVD's ..) & started fiddling around with some W.D. My Book USB drives to ''test the waters'' : so far i have 2 X 1TB drives plus 1 x 2TB drive almost full & haven't ''scratched the surface'' of it ....but am happy w/ the results !
transferring my music in uncompressed/lossless formats - i realize i need a massive capacity external storage unit, complete with back-ups + ''unplugged/stashed elsewhere'' further back-ups for it to be SAFE ( redundancy ?.. )
not having endless funds & being a silversmith w/ excellent fabricating skills & all necessary tools, i'm ready to build something to keep it all, my idea being :
for iTunes/music - 8TB+back-ups, for iPhoto/pics - 2TB+back-ups, for my video - 4TB+back-ups : in one box, two boxes , several ??
googled up the subject & i'm overwhelmed by the vast amount of info & how it branches into related matters : RAID 1, 2, 5, 6, 10 /non RAID, NAS, JBOD, concatenated, spanned, the list is endless !! still, i'm decided & would like to retain the W.D. plug'n play/no fuss simplicity, coupled with the big capacity i need, my computer being a 1 year old alu iMac, i guess either USB or FireWire would do - the My Books play flawlessly through plain USB ...
my ''cry for help'' is that i'ld REALLY need someone to provide me like a parts list of compatible/proven components or point me in the right direction ( a ''how to'' book, DIY Kits, manufacturer site ?.. ) to get the info needed/job done - so far all i've come up with are commercially built NAS boxes people seem to consider not ''so hot'' for what they cost, home built NAS boxes, up to 2, 3, maximum 4TB capacity, but apparently not Mac compatible...
i AM feeling a bit lost here & ANY help would be GREATLY appreciated, thanks in advance
best wishes
Nuno

if my math is right, with 3tb's done so far you would only have about 7,000 albums to go. using a lossless compression such as flac would save you about 10%, not a lot, but over 10tb of data it adds up to a full tb in space savings.

afaik a raid system is the only way you can get past the 4tb limit, but thats with pc (Win) hardware, dont know how a raid would work with a Mac.

thanks for your input !
& yes, your math is right !
i guess i have to keep doing some research into this . maybe i'll just contact the hardware manufacturers for answers, they most likely will know how to go about it
cheers
N