External Hard Drive

bridgedino

My wife and I have been thinking about transferring our CD collection ( 200 discs ) onto a hard drive and then stashing the original CDs in the loft. Trying to cut down on space. I'm looking for some info, maybe some pros and cons. For example how can I play then from the hard drive? Do I need to buy speakers etc. we have a Windows Vista laptop and an iPad, neither of which we want to fill up with music. Just looking for a storage and playback system. Thanks

googler

Do you have any form of playback system at the moment?

If not, how much do you want to spend on the exercise?

There's a variety of solutions available from a number of HiFi manufacturers, likely to be more user friendly than fiddling with drives and PCs.... The obvious one being the Brennan -

https://www.brennan.co.uk

Avoriaz

google and research

FLAC

Vortexbox

Squeezebox

FLAC is a Free Lossless Audio Codec that will take an exact copy of your CD and store it. It compresses the file size but it is lossless, unlike mp3 etc. It does not suffer from quality loss.

Vortexbox is software that will file, display and play FLAC files. You can install it on a PC or on a separate dedicated box.

Squeezebox can act as a front end to Vortexbox. Sonos is an expensive alternative.

If your budget doesn’t run to the several hundred pound the above would cost there are plenty of low cost mp3 based storage rippers and player around. Windows Media Player may be on your PC already or you can download it for free.

Fifer will probably be along soon to give you advice. He knows more about this stuff than I do.

BuntyB

Thanks guys, was wanting to spend around £100.

BuntyB

The Brennan looks awsome, perfect gadget, shame about he price

googler

You'll struggle to get a decent-size hard drive and some playback gear for £100.

Much will depend on how critical you are, quality-wise. If you're not too critical, an mp3 player and dock might suffice.

yangptangkipperbang

£80 will get you a good ext HDD.
£20 will get a pair of cheap, but quite acceptable, externally powered PC speakers.

Download iTunes player and load all your CDs into that.

closed

rip to mp3 in windows media player, burn them to 2 or 3 dvd's, leave mp3s on laptop, total cost, about 40pence, then you can play through tv/laptop/mobile phone, anything that supports mp3, and if you dont want to use dvd's they'll probably fit on a 16-32GB flash drive

Fifer

bridgedino wrote: »

My wife and I have been thinking about transferring our CD collection ( 200 discs ) onto a hard drive and then stashing the original CDs in the loft. Trying to cut down on space. I'm looking for some info, maybe some pros and cons. For example how can I play then from the hard drive? Do I need to buy speakers etc. we have a Windows Vista laptop and an iPad, neither of which we want to fill up with music. Just looking for a storage and playback system. Thanks

What equipment do you use currently to play and listen to your CDs?

bridgedino

We currently use a wee midi hifi to play our CDs on.

googler

bridgedino wrote: »

We currently use a wee midi hifi to play our CDs on.

Does it have any Aux or Line inputs?

What make/model is it?