This blog is going to be a call of sorts for people to chime in better ways to manage large libraries of music. I am an iPod aficionado with a very large, 55,000 track, MP3 library. I use iTunes to manage my music and it works wonderfully. Recently a drive in my RAID array started failing and as it was a simple software based spanned array, I had to move all of my music off of my server, spread it across several machines on the network, and remove the drive from my array. This got me to thinking about music management in the future.
My iTunes XML file had already topped 60MB and connecting to the shared library from another machine in the home took a considerable amount of time to read the library. My basic questions are these:
- Is there a feasible solution for managing 50,000 – 100,000 songs?
- Is there a practical external RAID solution to give you data redundancy in a home environment?
- Is breaking your library into segments practical?
- Do the iTunes compatible Linux Servers work well?
- Is iTunes the best client for such large libraries?
I thought this would be a great post to get people talking and commenting to share ideas. Currently, at my disposal are a G4 Powermac Quicksilver with 1GB Ram, two 2.5Ghz P4s with 2GB Ram each, a 2.5Ghz Media Center with 1GB Ram and a 2Ghz Fedora Core Box with 1GB Ram. I didn’t mention the hard disk space because I am sure I will need an additional or external storage solution since the library already tips 300GB.
The previous solution, 2.5Ghz Windows Server with 2GB Ram and a 250, and two 120GB Hard drives in a software raid solution, worked relatively well until the library got so large that even having iTunes loaded but a heavy burden on the system.
I have looked at the Netgear external two drive solution but it is not Mac compatible and does not give any data security (a lesson learned after having to copy 300 GB of music across 5 systems to keep from losing it.) and it doesn’t give me any room to add more storage later.
I am thinking going to a stripe array with 3 250GB drives to start, and room to add drives later. But that still leaves the question, “Is iTunes the best solution?”
So please, chime in, tell me what you think. Any solution is possible, I am quite savvy on PC/Linux/OSX so there is no OS limitation and any reasonable storage solution is acceptable.
Your thoughts?
JB
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Sounds like you’ve got a handle on the underlying infrastructure. We use one of the Buffalo 1Tb NAS’s that’s RAIDed. (I/O is sufficient for music–i wouldn’t run it for transactional data.)
As to software–I’d invite you to try my company’s desktop application, the MusicIP Mixer.
A collection as large as yours presents 2 problems. One is a files-and-songs problem–simply handling huge numbers of tracks–having a responsive UI and so on.
The other problem is a musical problem. How do you actually find and listen to what you want with that many tracks? Our patented technology analyzes the musical characteristics of tracks–we’re up to 24 million–and relates them directly.
That means pick something that suits your mood–push the button–bang, instant playlist of compatible tracks from across your collection.
One of our beta testers has 300,000 tracks. We’ve tested the app against a ‘virtual collection’ of over a million. Give us a try, we’d love the feedback.
(Shameless shilling but I think you’ll love our product. Matthew Dunn, CEO)