I'm relatively new to the forum, but not new to MP3 audio. I'm getting interested in the idea of doing a (pseudo) once-and-for-all backup of my music collection utilizing lossless compression (most likely Monkey's Audio).

The lynchpin, since I don't have tons of space to store hundreds of CD-R discs with only two albums apiece, and I can't afford extra 100gb hard drives, would be getting a DVD-R drive and burning the losslessly compressed audio to multi-gig discs. Theoretically, my 150 CD-Rs of MP3s would shrink to ~60 DVDs of losslessly compressed audio.

So what I'm wondering is, does anyone have any experience burning their collection to DVD? Any drive suggestions? Any thoughts on the feasability/wisdom of this concept in the first place?

it may be me but arent hard drives cheaper?? i mean you can get 100 gig hard drives under $200 , but dvd recorders are around $500 if im not mistaken.

After shipping, the cheapest 100gig HDs are just over $200. I have ~800 CDs; assuming ~650mb Audio for each CD, 650 x 800 = 520000. Assuming ~50% lossless compression, that's 260gigs.

2 160gb HDs = $550. ...or... 3 100gb HDs = $420.

1 Pioneer DVR-A03 DVD-RW drive = $360
+ roughly 300gigs worth of 4.7gb DVD-r media would cost ~320

...so you're right, the HD solution would be cheaper.

However, it might make sense then to do a RAID setup to ensure the data, which would require buying at least one extra HD. The DVDs could get scratched, but somehow having ROM discs as backup just feels safer than having hard drives full of data.

The DVD idea also have the ability to be stretched out, financially. I can get a couple of discs each month instead of spending all the money at once.. It would take me quite some time to copy all of my music again anyway, so...

I'll most likely stick with my current MP3 alt-preset standard method, just because, but there's a certain attraction to having my music all losslessly digitally backed up "forever", and hard drives, though a little cheaper, just don't have that "forever" feel to them, nor are they as portable or tradeable

With the DVD option you could also get around ~700 MP3s per disc. Does anyone make an portable MP3 player that can read DVDs If so, would be a nice added extra.

sure, many many more MP3s/OGGs/MPCs/etc per disc with DVD, but that would kinda defeat the purpose

I could store my whole music collection in MP3 on my current HD - in fact, I mostly do - an extra HD for backup would be much cheaper in that case, though with the CD-RW i already have, it's not really worth it then, either.

If I stick with MP3s, I may as well stick with my current hardware and not spend any money at all

Yeah agree. Just the idea of having a few DVDs with everything for your travils might swing it

I do this because I have a lot of blank DVDs lying around. It is less convenient than a hard drive solution, but for me it is cheaper.

Another thing to consider when thinking of backing up to DVD - if a DVD becomes unreadable, you're out a few albums. If the drive fails, you're out quite a few more albums.

This is exacly what I do.

Rip (multiple CD's) to WAV
Batch encode to FLAC (tags are done at the same time)
Apply ReplayGain using album mode
Make an MD5 checksum of all the files
Burn to DVD
Use MPEG Audio Collection to catalog the DVD's

I can then batch encode the FLAC files from the DVD's over and over again, to multiple formats, without ever re-ripping, using Foobar2000.

I use an NEC 1300A DVD-Burner. No coasters yet.

I would like to have all of these on hard drive, but I'm already at 200GB, and I'm not close to being done yet. When drives get cheap enough for me, I will be able to just copy the data over.

It's not the right method for eveyone, but it's worked very well for me.

Edit: Currently, for online access I'm primarily using MPC. I'm kind of torn between MPC and AAC right now. MP3 is used for portables.

Holy freaking thread resurrection!!!!

Good grief... You're right. I didn't scroll up and see the earlier dates.