[Peter J]

A word of caution for those who rip their discs to some sort of storage for server playback. I recently had my remote case mounted music hard drive fail. I can hear it making noise, but the server doesn't see it. Fortunately, I have an identical archive drive that I've always ripped discs in tandem with the failed one. Having a clone of it was helpful in troubleshooting the problem. It would be an absolute PIA to redo all that.

Now for the question. For the time being I'm just getting a new hard drive to install in the case, but I've never transferred all the data from one drive to another. Perhaps that's a rudimentary query, but I'm asking anyway...

 Looks like there's lots of software out there, some free, that accomplishes this kind of transfer, although I wonder if I even need that? What's the simplest way to copy all the info from archive drive onto new drive.

[aldcoll]

Drive Mirroring is what you are looking for.  It is faster and more accurate.  I  use a free one called Direct Sync.
Don't have the PC in front of me now at the beach

[ClefChef]

Drive Mirroring is what you are looking for.  It is faster and more accurate.  I  use a free one called Direct Sync.
Don't have the PC in front of me now at the beach

Having a server makes sense only if using RAID 1 configuration - HD mirroring, otherwise you are risking loosing all your data in one instance. A "server" with only one HD is not really a server, just an external HD.

In addition to the redundant server config one should always back up files on an external drive to be kept in a safe location in case of theft or fire - believe me - these things do happen.

For file transfers from external drive to the server use free FastCopy tool https://ipmsg.org/tools/fastcopy.html.en, it prevents FLAC file corruption that happens a lot when using regular Windows file copy command.

I highly recommend Synology DiskStation servers for home use.

[Peter J]

Thanks for the info. I should clarify.

 Both music and archive drives are external. The music library is the only one connected to a dedicated CAPS server which has it's own SSD for OS and JRiver. The archive is connected to nothing except when ripping discs to both. It lives in a different room. I do run a RAID 1 system on my desktop system but really didn't think it was necessary for the music system but perhaps I'm wrong.

I've considered a NAS, but just didn't  think it made sense as there just isn't a need for sharing between devices on the network at this point. If it isn't apparent, my knowledge doesn't run all that deep in this arena.