> My current plan (once my EMPEG shows up) is to go out and buy...
>
> - a Plextor PlexWriter (available SCSI or ATAPI -- the new ATAPI one is $305 at CDW)
> - an IBM 75GB drive (enough space to eventually rip all 1000 of my CDs, $620 at CDW)

If you're using Linux, as you say you are, you're missing an opportunity to get better performance for less money. Buy 2 or more cheaper disks and RAID them using software-RAID. The best value disks I can see at the moment are the Maxtor 30Gb disks. 2 of these will cost you probably half what the 75Gb disk will cost, and in a RAID-0 configuration will near enough fit your 1000 CDs, and easily outperform any single disk in terms of I/O speed. Better still, get 3 or 4 of the things and join them in a RAID-5 to still give good read speed and added security.

I've had this running for a year and a half on my home server (root on RAID-5, MP3 storage on RAID-0) and I can happily have a couple of workstations ripping/encoding to the server, whilst listening to a third.

By the way, what backup are you going to use for 75Gb? I've got a 10/20Gb Travan drive (not the best performance, I know, but easily the cheapest option for the capacity), and backing up my MP3s (only 35Gb of them currently) is extremely tedious.

Cheers,

Bruno
[email protected]