[JimJ]

So I think instead of buying another pair of speakers that I don't really need, I should get my music computer (Dell Poweredge 600SC) to where I want it. That means a 22" or so LCD, and a big hard drive...in the 750GB to 1TB range.

What brands of monitors have you guys had success with? I was thinking Samsung...

As for hard drives, my mobo doesn't have SATA support, but I guess I could add a card for it. Seagate makes a 750GB EIDE drive I was looking at...

[ctviggen]

I think I tossed my SATA card, or I'd send it to you.  It was nice, as it supported flavors of RAID (which my new motherboard is supposed to support, but I couldn't get RAID to work).  What do you mean by "success" for monitors?  I have a Viewsonic which is fairly nice (compared to my previous CRT, the blacks aren't nearly as black, which has implications like sometimes it's hard to see the slider on the right side of a window).  It's also not one of the faster refresh rate monitors, but I rarely play games on it.  It has zero blown pixels and I bought it from Newegg for a good price.

[bpape]

I'd agree with a RAID system.  If your mobo doesn't have SATA, you can get a card.  If you have a lot of music, I'd recommend a RAID 5 implementation.

Your call on the monitor.  I've had good luck with the Samsungs - but on a music server, IMO, the monitor is not terribly important.  I have mine piggy-backed through a KVM to share with another PC to save cost and real estate.

Bryan

[mcgsxr]

I recently bought (and documented the initial issues I had with video card driver incompatibility) a BenQ 22 widescreen (CDN $270) and am very pleased.

Is it perfect?  No, it does leak some light around the edges (visible when the screensaver is on, and most of the screen is black) but for the $$, it is a great unit.

I intend to use it as my music server portal too, in the future, once I buy my wife a laptop, and can move the 5 year old PC to the basement forever...

[machine]

24" Dell LCD widescreen is highly recommended!

[Brad]

Most of the 22" LCDs use interpolation to provide 16.2 million colors.
To ME, they look pretty good, but I'm not as picky about that as my sound 

We have had good luck with Samsung, Viewsonic, and Hanns G

As far as the big hard drive, I would recommend a couple of things.

1 - store your data on a separate physical drive from the Operating system and applications.
2 - back up your data to an external drive, daily.  There are a lot of good programs to automate this for you.
3 - Once you're doing the second one, then consider RAID.  I would do a mirror of 750 or 1Tb drives.  That will protect you from a single drive failure, but not from accidental deletion of data (that's what the external drive is for)   The read performance boost you'd get from RAID 5 isn't really needed to stream music.  For HD video, it might make a difference

Agreed on the 24" Dell - that's a nice monitor

[brj]

Recent threads on this topic:

Current LCD monitor options
LCD Monitors for photography?

[JEaton]

So I think instead of buying another pair of speakers that I don't really need, I should get my music computer (Dell Poweredge 600SC) to where I want it. That means a 22" or so LCD, and a big hard drive...in the 750GB to 1TB range.

What brands of monitors have you guys had success with? I was thinking Samsung...

I love Samsung monitors.  I just can't stand their recent trend toward highly polished bezels.  Very distracting, to the point that I'd consider looking at other brands.  Dell sells some nice monitors, although the better ones are a little pricey.

As for hard drives, my mobo doesn't have SATA support, but I guess I could add a card for it. Seagate makes a 750GB EIDE drive I was looking at...

Probably worth adding the SATA controller card so you're not limited to a handful of hard drive choices and so that you'll be able to use the drive in the next PC.

Skip RAID and get a 2nd hard drive in an external enclosure and do regular backups.  I'd do backups in accordance with how much new data you add to the drive.  No need to do daily backups if you're not adding new data daily.  If at first you do a lot of CD ripping, it makes sense to do frequent backups.  Nowadays, though, I add maybe 3 to 5 albums per week to my server, so a weekly or every other week backup is sufficient.

[bpape]

The reason I recommended RAID 5 was not a performance issue.  It's a size and cost issue.  When you mirror a 1TB drive, you pay double and get 1TB.  When you buy 3 500GB drives, you get 1TB with full redundancy, the ability to hot swap and rebuild on the fly, etc.  If you need more, you add another 500GB drive and have 1.5TB with the same bennies.  No swapping, no copying, etc. - just make the array bigger and it will do the rest.  The performance is a bonus that I'll agree, really isn't necessary for this kind of machine.

If you do a 750GB in RAID 1 and need more space, you need to buy 2 more drives or switch to RAID 5 then.  Compare the price of 2 750GB drives to 3 500GB:

1 750GB internal and 1 750GB external - $460 for 750GB, single drive and external backup
2 WD 750GB drives - $320 for 750GB in RAID 1
3 WD 500GB drives - $300 for 1TB in RAID 5



External backups are fine - they just take a LOT of time to do and maintain - not to mention how much time they take to restore if you actually need to.  With the RAID, you shut off the machine, replace the drive, boot back up and tell it to rebuild.  No need to spend time every day backing up, etc.  Running across the SATA bus instead of restoring over a USB connection is probably at least twice as fast (and cheaper). 

And yes, it's a good idea if you can to have your music drives separate from the boot/OS/application drive(s).

Bryan

[JimJ]

Just curious, how much would I be looking at for a good RAID 5-capable controller? I may be holding off on the HD upgrade for now (haven't yet filled up my 250GB internal), but that sounds like the way to go in the future. My machine has three empty 3.5" drive spaces, plenty of room.

24" Dell LCD widescreen is highly recommended!

I think I'm going to end up with the 22" Dell...Samsung reviews show a lot of issues with backlight bleed, I don't know, kind of scares me away from those.

[mca]

Anyone know who makes the monitors for Dell?

[JimJ]

I should probably know that, we're using Dell a lot as case studies for my global operations class

[bpape]

Just curious, how much would I be looking at for a good RAID 5-capable controller? I may be holding off on the HD upgrade for now (haven't yet filled up my 250GB internal), but that sounds like the way to go in the future. My machine has three empty 3.5" drive spaces, plenty of room.

You can get a Promise that will do RAID 1 or RAID 5 in a PCI-E slot for about $140.  If you want to rebuild the machine and upgrade it at the same time, you can get a new motherboard that has a controller on it for around $200.

Bryan

[Spidey9534]

Most of the 22" LCDs use interpolation to provide 16.2 million colors.
To ME, they look pretty good, but I'm not as picky about that as my sound 

We have had good luck with Samsung, Viewsonic, and Hanns G

As far as the big hard drive, I would recommend a couple of things.

1 - store your data on a separate physical drive from the Operating system and applications.
2 - back up your data to an external drive, daily.  There are a lot of good programs to automate this for you.
3 - Once you're doing the second one, then consider RAID.  I would do a mirror of 750 or 1Tb drives.  That will protect you from a single drive failure, but not from accidental deletion of data (that's what the external drive is for)   The read performance boost you'd get from RAID 5 isn't really needed to stream music.  For HD video, it might make a difference

Agreed on the 24" Dell - that's a nice monitor

+1 on Viewsonic. I like to check out Tom's Hardware for reviews. The site has become a little busy with ads, but he is a pretty straightforward reviewer and calls it like it is. Formally, viewsonic got a bad rap, but they have really stepped up in the LCD market.

[Bob in St. Louis]

I've been lurking in this thread as I'm in the market for an additional harddrive for music storage and was looking for more recommendations on hardware.
Was hoping the thread wasn't going to die so soon.

Jim, these aren't recommendation, just things I've found:

External USB2.0 1TB for $219:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822204068

or another External USB2.0 1TB for $229:
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8355497&type=product&id=1177112455081

A question of ignorance
Is it safe to assume with a USB drive the installation is:
- plug into 110 volts
- plug in USB
- install drivers
That about it? Nothing funky.

Bob

[bpape]

Yup.  That's about it Bob.  110v and USB and drivers.  Plug it in and go.  The only thing with an external drive is to watch the heat.  If you're going to turn it on and off all the time it won't be an issue.  If like me, the PC is on all the time, I prefer an internal drive or a better separate drive/enclosure with better cooling.

Bryan

[Bob in St. Louis]

Cool Bryan, thanks. An external USB drive with a power switch might be a good idea too.

Anybody know of any places to shop other than Newegg or BestBuy (for good prices)?

Bob

[Brad]

Newegg will usually have close to the lowest price and is a very good source of computer gear.
Excellent service if you need it.

You can also check out www.techbargains.com for daily tech deals

Also, most newer drives should be recognized automatically if you're using a somewhat modern OS.
A lot of them will come with their own backup utilities that you may or may not want to use.

Bryan is right about the heat on an external drive.  Antec makes a nice enclosure with a very quiet fan that is pretty reasonable.
(I'm sure there are numerous others out there too)

[WGH]

Cool Bryan, thanks. An external USB drive with a power switch might be a good idea too.

Anybody know of any places to shop other than Newegg or BestBuy (for good prices)?

Bob

Mwave has great prices and service.

Some external enclosures have fans to keep the hd cooler. You can also buy the enclosure and hd separately, that way you get the enclosure you like and the right capacity hd for all your stuff.

[bpape]

A 2nd nod for mwave.com.  That's about the only place I buy any more.  Other places may be a buck or 2 cheaper on this or that and higher on other things.  When I build a PC, overall, they have the lowest prices coupled with great selection and excellent customer service.

Bryan