Jump to content

How many albums can you store on a 1TB Hard drive?


Recommended Posts

I have been considering backing up our CD collection on to a external hard drive and wondered how many hours of uncompressed music would a 1 TB hard drive store when I came across a website with this info on it.

 

My question is, is this information correct? I have several external Seagate hard drives, up to 4 TB each, that we no longer use at work so thought I might use one or more of them.

 

cheers Terry

 

 

image.jpeg

Edited by TerryO
Link to comment
Share on other sites



That's a how long is a  piece of string question, all depends how they are ripped and what format, FLAC, WAV, HiRes 24 bit 96 or 192. I have 1075 albums at 618G but they are a mixture of FLAC 16/44.4 at the lowest and up to 24/192 at the highest.

 

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi

 

I have been slowly ripping my CD's to 16 / 48 a mix of flac and wav files and looking at what I have done since the beginning of May 2017, 621 CD's take up a little under 300GB, but that also depends on  the length of each song and how many songs are on an album.

 

A better example can be found below for 5 minutes of stereo of differing formats:

 

Format

Sampling frequency

Quantification

Size

DSF

5.6  MHz

2.8  MHz

1 bits

1 bits

403 MB

201 MB

DSDIFF

5.6  MHz

2.8  MHz

1 bits

1 bits

403 MB

201 MB

WAV

192 kHz

96 kHz

88.2 kHz

48 kHz

44.1 kHz

44.1 kHz

24 bits

24 bits

24 bits

24 bits

24 bits

16 bits

329 MB

164 MB

151 MB

82.4 MB

75.7 MB

50.4 MB

FLAC

note: Sizes of FLAC files can vary greatly depending on music dynamics, conversion tool used, what format the file was converted from and Level of compression used.  The information here is general and currently being revised for more accuracy.

192 kHz

176.4 kHz

96 kHz

88.2 kHz

48 kHz

44.1 kHz

44.1 kHz

24 bits

24 bits

24 bits

24 bits

24 bits

24 bits

16 bits

195 MB

170 MB

61.3 MB

56.3 MB

30.8 MB

27.9 MB

6.69 MB

MP3

44.1 kHz

44.1 kHz

44.1 kHz

44.1 kHz

44.1 kHz

320 kbps

256 kbps

192 kbps

128 kbps

92 kbps

11.4 MB

9.15 MB

6.86 MB

4.57 MB

3.43 MB

 

Thanks to DSD-Guide.com

 

Hope this helps

 

JJ

Edited by Janjuc
  • Like 5
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Terry,

using a slightly conservative NTFS disc usage of 10.5 MB per minute of LPCM/Wav @ 16/44 (Redbook CD) my calculations give app 1600 Hrs per TB so no the figures quoted are not correct (or I messed up :) )

For a more practical measure, a folder in my music library that is all 16/44 .wav and contains 168 CDs takes up 100 GB almost exactly.

 

 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites



Another question if you guys don't mind please. What is the best format to store music in that doesn't down grade sq when played?

 

Good quality hard drives are pretty cheap now so Im not wanting to squeeze everything onto one hard drive at the expense of sq.

 

cheers Terry

Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 minutes ago, TerryO said:

Another question if you guys don't mind please. What is the best format to store music in that doesn't down grade sq when played?

 

I stick with WAV, 100% lossless.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 minutes ago, betocool said:

@TerryO, whatever format, have a backup. Mirror the main drive and update the secondary whenever you put something new into the first one.

 

 

+1.  You only ever make the mistake of not creating a back-up once.  I have 2 back-ups...

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites



Guest scumbag
7 minutes ago, betocool said:

@TerryO, whatever format, have a backup. Mirror the main drive and update the secondary whenever you put something new into the first one.

I have to agree. A NAS with a Raid 1 configuration will give you piece of mind. NAS units are getting cheaper too as are hard drives. I have 2 2tB drives in my NAS. I also have everything on an external drive too. Belts and braces. Then I keep really crucial stuff on Dropbox and Google Drive (tax stuff etc). Belts and braces and braces.

Edited by scumbag
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I stick with WAV, 100% lossless

+1

dbpoweramp cd ripper & tag & rename can handle/create/modify metadata and store track info and album art in .wav files and foobar can read it so nothing is lost there either.

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest scumbag
5 minutes ago, Kaynin said:

 

I stick with WAV, 100% lossless.

WAV versus FLAC is one of those intractable audiophile debates. FLAC's are lossless but some argue that the act of inflating them is audible. As servers gain more power and RAM I can' only see any differences (if there are any) fading into obscurity.

Link to comment
Share on other sites



1 hour ago, powerav said:

Flac level 5

 

The only advantage of L5 over higher compression levels is the compression speed. There's not even discernible difference in decompression speed, and the final result is bit for bit identical.

Given the choice, I would always go for L8 and let the computer sweat a couple of seconds longer, resulting in a slightly smaller file size.

 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

most people cannot tell the quality difference above 192 kbps mp3. so yea theoretically higher the better 320 is great flac is better but you can't really hear it.. 

if someone claims , i'd invite them to a A B test and see how many times they can nail it blind folded :)

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest scumbag

 

8 hours ago, GhostCoast said:

most people cannot tell the quality difference above 192 kbps mp3. so yea theoretically higher the better 320 is great flac is better but you can't really hear it.. 

if someone claims , i'd invite them to a A B test and see how many times they can nail it blind folded :)

 

Congratulations, you get the prize for being the first to mention DBT in this thread!

Regardless of whether you can hear it under stringent DBT, once you've thrown away all that psycho-acoustic data, it's gone. On a practical level, you have no opportunity to change the file format without destroying it further. 

FLAC offers a reasonably sized file with no loss of data. And storage is cheap and obeys Moores Law so it's getting cheaper. Why would you eternally compromise your music collection for no good reason?

 

 

Edited by scumbag
Link to comment
Share on other sites



9 hours ago, GhostCoast said:

most people cannot tell the quality difference above 192 kbps mp3. so yea theoretically higher the better 320 is great flac is better but you can't really hear it.. 

if someone claims , i'd invite them to a A B test and see how many times they can nail it blind folded :)

 

How many 24/96 or 192 files do you have? Experience is king.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

wow..  :)

 

there is nothing wrong with flac or chasing higher bitrates.. it's cool if you have the resource and the space.. i' am basically saying 192 is good enough and "most" people can't hear the difference above it (fact) 

 

i have abundance of songs at various qualities from average to ultimate.. and extensive listening experience with variety of high to very high quality devices

i've seen many cases of flacs or 320kbps mp3's circulating around which are all were simply converted from youtube downloads that is 128kbps.. there are lots of pink balloons flying out there and people talk...

 

i watch people listen to digital from their mobile phones or portable whatever devices via awful distorted tiny speakers and talk of bitrate quality... well... 

i don't intend to start a long debate on this , many things in hifi planet is subjective, and  dependent on combinations of factors... some people claim they can see the magical celestial beings start flying around the room at ultimate bitrate qualities.. his mind, his facts.. neither he can prove it's true, nor i can that it isn't . 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest scumbag

 

32 minutes ago, GhostCoast said:

 

some people claim they can see the magical celestial beings start flying around the room at ultimate bitrate qualities.. his mind, his facts.

Sort of hard to tell whether that was meant as a barb or tongue in check. This is where emoticons are useful.

I don't consider 192khz, which I think most commercial FLAC's top out at, to be all that high. Not in the context of DSD and DXD. I personally rip FLAC's at the native bitrate that is on the CD for example. There's no point in wasting disc space to up-sample an original that was captured at a given bitrate and sampling rate. My whiz-bang direct stream junior DAC takes care of up-sampling to DSD rates for me and that's when the magical celestial being start to appear.......

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites



  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...
To Top