BIG storage without breaking the bank !..

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

I think I understand what you're up to...and of course what's causing your humongous storage needs is that you're transferring the music in uncompressed/lossless formats...which makes each file/song huge.

You could simply try using lots of USB external hard drives (as large as you can get). This may help get the job done...without "breaking the bank"!

- Nick

You can get a Hitachi 1TB drive for $79.99..youll need your own box to put it in.

You could simply try using lots of USB external hard drives (as large as you can get).

Click to expand...

I agree with Nick.

Currently I have three WD 2TB Studio Edition drives. The drives are extremely easy to configure and quiet. Currently I have one connected to my Mac mini via Firewire and the other two connected to my Airport Extreme Base Station (AEBS) via the external USB connection. The nice thing about the AEBS connection is that I don't have to have a machine running to host the drives. I tend to keep most of my iTunes content on these devices.

As for the RAID question, currently I have two of the drives configured in RAID 5 (took about 2 minutes to setup) so I have redundancy in case one of the drives goes down.

Noise is a huge factor for me as well as ease of use so the external drive option seemed to fit better for my needs.

Keep in mind that for the sheer amount of data that you need to store, you are not really going to get out of this on the cheap. Some solutions may be less pricey than others, but your going to have to shell out some money to accommodate the amount of material you have.

hi guys !
thanks for the input & sorry for my late answer - have to check my profile settings since i didn't get any notices...
anyway , the Airport Extreme Base Station suggestion introduced a twist in this equation that i find MOST interesting & sounds totally feasible, specially since partnered with my Logitech powered USB hubs ( they work flawlessly.. ) i could ''pile on'' almost as many drives as needed - & then if i had them in RAID 0 ( mirrored.. ) it would be almost completely fail proof - most definitely something to look into !!
regarding the compressed vs uncompressed, i'm not a snob in any way but i did a test on my hi-fi & i did ( as did everybody else i brought over to listen to it.. ) hear a BIG difference so considering the worth of my music collection + countless hours/labour of getting it into iTunes versus the cost of hard drives, is it REALLY worth it ? i don't think so....you know what i mean ?
as for the Mac SK 1TB drive suggestions, thanks but i do have a total of 4TB & it's not enough...
will go look at the Airport thing...
cheers
N