hey I'm a bit strapped for cash, but, I need more space, so.... I realize no one can predict the future, but I was wondering if now is a good time to buy hard disks? Pricewatch has the 48 GB travelstar for $362, but its been out for a little while, maybe if a new one comes out this price will drop? Or is this the best value I'll get for a while? Thanks,

John

30 GB - Mk2a (Rio Car) - BLUE / RED

Probably the best you'll get for a while; IBM havn't announced any bigger disks - and there's usually at least a 3 month gap between an announcement and actual shipping.

Toshiba do some 40GB ones which may be cheaper ($/GB) possibly.

Hugo

Fujitsu have announced 100Gb+ drives by the end of the year. Maybe you should wait and see what those do to the prices of the "smaller" models.

Riocar 58gig (48gig + 10gig IBM travelstar) S/N : 10101747 red

Yeah, but those are 3.5", IIRC. That won't have a great effect on the price of 2.5" disks.


-- roger

I just swapped my 12GB primary drive for a 30GB drive two days ago. It went flawlessly. Just read and re-read the FAQ and then follow it to the letter. Prices are always going to drop, but I really needed more capacity and the 30GB drive seemed to be the best $/MB out there. Whatever you do, don't buy a drive until you absolutely need one. And don't buy the biggest drive out there. They are always way more expensive in relation to other drives.

32GB Mk. II in a WRX
Detroit, MI USA
www.PfeifferBeer.com

And don't buy the biggest drive out there.

...unless you really need the space...

Paul G.
SN# 090000587 (96GB Smoke)
SN# 030103046 (10GB Blue - Emergency Spare)

Yeah, but those are 3.5", IIRC. That won't have a great effect on the price of 2.5" disks.

Nope, I WAS talking about 2.5" disks. See here and here

Riocar 58gig (48gig + 10gig IBM travelstar) S/N : 10101747 red

I remembered reading this article in Infoworld

Essentially, Fujitsu is saying they'll have 100+GB 2.5" notebook drives during the next year, but no real product announcement as yet.

Jim

Oooh, cool.

-- roger

Unless you already have a 30gb drive, I don't see the immediate point in getting a 48gb drive to upgrade. Unless you have 48gb worth or music to load at once. I got a 30gb drive, because even if I take a few cd's to work each day, it will still be a good few months before I fill it. Then, the 48gb drives should be way cheaper. (just like the 30gb drives are now compared to when I bought my 20gb drive.)

If you do have GB and GB's of music on a pc, just waiting for a home on your empeg, then buying all the capacity does make sense. IMHO

Yeah.. At some point the amount of tunes just gets so overwhelming... I bought a 18GB unit originally and added another 18GB drive recently. I'm about 70% full now and I've decided that if I get close to 100% I'm going to do an audit and start getting rid of what I might not listen to a lot... Well, maybe. :)

I'm about 70% full now and I've decided that if I get close to 100% I'm going to do an audit and start getting rid of what I might not listen to a lot...

My empeg is choke full and I plan to add a 30GB Travelstar RSN, but I prune only things that I positively dislike. For me, half of joy of listening to empeg is in 'discovering' music you barely knew you had. Now, mere 18GB is not enough for this to happen often, and hundreds of CDs are waiting their turn, so it will soon be time to give a friend who sells PC-related stuff a call....

I have a 10 and a 20 and need more space. I have about 60 GB on my computer's hard drive right now (almost all full albums) and even though there are many songs that I've never heard, part of the fun for me is randomly having my passenger's favorite album or tune on my empeg. That's part of the reason why I think its so cool. Then I use playlists to separate out the stuff I listen to frequently. More space will allow me to put more "other stuff" on. I think I'm going to try to wait until the next generation of hard disks come out though, so that prices have dropped. Thanks for everyone's help,

John

Bonzi: "I prune only things that I positively dislike. For me, half of joy of listening to empeg is in 'discovering' music you barely knew you had."

Absolutely! Half the time I just select the root Playlist in shuffle mode. Once in a while something will come up that I jot down a note to delete. Hmmmm. One of the good things about getting Empeg #2 (Fedex currently shows it on the ramp in Oakland!) is that I'm going to really tweak ID3 tags and directories then resynch everything to the new Empeg while I'm away on a trip. The bad thing? No 2nd hard drive if I want to keep warranty while I burn Empeg #2 in.

Oh, well. I can get ready for hard drive #2. One winter project is to sort through about 4 feet of vinyl and selectively rip some titles. I know I can *get* "The Resurrection of Pigboy Crabshaw" on CD now, but will it sound the same?? Some CD reissues I've sprung for -- Jethro Tull "Stand Up" comes to mind -- are real stinkers compared to the original.

If I can wait until Fujitsu actually ships a 100GB, then I can snatch up a 48GB Travelstar or two. Maybe by then I'll get through all the vinyl.

Jim

If I can wait until Fujitsu actually ships a 100GB, then I can snatch up a 48GB Travelstar or two. Maybe by then I'll get through all the vinyl.

You guys amaze me. I can't imagine having so much music that a pair of 48 GB drives wouldn't be enough.

I have a single 18 GB drive, it is only a bit more than half full, and I almost never add anything to it any more. (This is because Mozart and Beethoven have not released any new hits in quite a while now...) Keep in mind, also, that my "Rock/Favorites" playlist has a total of 11 songs in it.

But even with my "limited" 160 hour collection, I still play almost exclusively shuffled from root, and am constantly delighted to hear music I had forgotten I'd had.

And... here is a sneak preview of a 2.00 Beta 4 feature that Dan Zimmerman and I lobbied for and got over the objections of most of the rest of the alpha testers and a lot of the guys@empeg too. I guess we just wore them down. Thanks, Roger, for putting this in. I've tested it, and it works as promised.

We now have the ability to turn off the deletion of duplicates when a playlist is shuffled. (It requires a tweak to the config.ini file to do this)

Why would anyone want to do this? Especially since the deletion of duplicates was a feature that they added to the player software at the request of the users? Think of this scenario: I have a "Favorites" playlist with 141 tracks in it. I can now add (either insert or append) this playlist to my root playlist -- do it multiple times even -- then reshuffle, and my "favorite" songs come up on average once out of every four plays. It greatly elevates the quality of a fully shuffled root playlist without overdoing the favorites, and still lets me hear the songs I had forgotten I had. I love it.

tanstaafl.

Greetings!

Trust me. It is possible to fill (well, almost fill) 2 x 48GB travelstars and still need (well, want) more space.

Granted, I don't normally play everything I have loaded. I keep a playlist of favorite artists and tracks that I listen to. But there are times when I just want to hear something different or specific that I do not normally listen to. The empeg UI makes this very easy to do.

With displayserver, it also becomes a music server that I can have connected to the office or home network. I can easily see someone who is DJing, or using it for parties having the entire thing loaded. It is very convenient to have the entire music / audio collection in one place that I can take wherever I go, plug in and enjoy.

The one wishlist item I would like (and I think I posted it there a while back) was to have the search features toggle between current playlist and root playlist. This way, you could append / replace / insert (thank you!!!) any loaded track into your running list at any time.

Also, empeg taxi functionality is always handy for storing those files that I seem to need moved from box to box. Or to store all of the various tools, utilities, linux distributions, etc. I don't use it much, but it is very handy for getting that 100MB of files off a laptop with no network link and only a floppy as removable storage.

Lastly, with different formats becoming available, such as wave, it allows for the extra space to store uncompressed files. You mentioned pink noise in a post a little while back. All of the test tracks, calibration tracks, etc. can be stored uncompressed and used as needed without having to move music off to fit them.

You can never have too much disk space.

Interesting thought about the removing duplicates. I know that with the new random functions, you have a lot more control. Hmm... I would have to try it, and see how it works out...