Lets build a 1TB SSD fw or usb setup.

[LumbermanSVO]

OK, so I drive a big truck and like having my whole music collection at my fingertips while driving. In the past what I've done it trap my Macbook Pro to the passenger seat and use my remote and FrontRow to change tracks. This worked pretty well except that the rough roads and rough ride of the truck kills regular hard drives fairly quickly. Replacing the drives every 6 months gets old.

I need at least 1TB of storage for my iTunes media, I do not want to split it up to different drives. The drives used need to be SSD's to handle the 130k+ miles of abuse a year. The bumps don't seem to effect the computers main drive, either because of the motion sensor or iTunes being able to run in memory and not need the drive to spin up.

I was thinking of using a Drobo with 2.5" drive adapters. If anyone has any better suggestions for an enclosure I'm all ears.

I'm not concerned about speed with the drives, just reliability. None of these drives will ever be used as a system drive, just media storage and playback.

What drives would you guys recommend? Would this be possible for under $1500?

Any other suggestions for such a project?

Thanks.

 

[Croatian]

OK, so I drive a big truck and like having my whole music collection at my fingertips while driving. In the past what I've done it trap my Macbook Pro to the passenger seat and use my remote and FrontRow to change tracks. This worked pretty well except that the rough roads and rough ride of the truck kills regular hard drives fairly quickly. Replacing the drives every 6 months gets old.

I need at least 1TB of storage for my iTunes media, I do not want to split it up to different drives. The drives used need to be SSD's to handle the 130k+ miles of abuse a year. The bumps don't seem to effect the computers main drive, either because of the motion sensor or iTunes being able to run in memory and not need the drive to spin up.

I was thinking of using a Drobo with 2.5" drive adapters. If anyone has any better suggestions for an enclosure I'm all ears.

I'm not concerned about speed with the drives, just reliability. None of these drives will ever be used as a system drive, just media storage and playback.

What drives would you guys recommend? Would this be possible for under $1500?

Any other suggestions for such a project?

Thanks.

Where do you plan on plugging this Drives into?

It cannot be done for under $1500 even with the lowest speed SSD Drive.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820609379 it is an SUPER TALENT MasterDrive OX FTM56GL25H 2.5" 256GB SATA II Internal Solid state disk (SSD) = $479.00 (Read: 150 MB/sec - Write: 100 MB/sec) LOWEST PRICE x 4 = $1916.00

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817198028 is an ICY DOCK MB561US-4S 4 Bay 3.5” SATA to eSATA Port Multiplier & USB 2.0 Removable Aluminum External Hard Drive Enclosure for Mac & PC = $289.99

so your looking at the total of $2205.99 thats if u went the lowest route (i am sure if u get crappier case u can save $100) but i figure if u have $2k to spend u can afford another $100 and if u go with Drobo your looking for a lot more money to spend

I don't know anyone personally that has 4x 256MB SSD Drives in a Enclosure cuz that is very expensive but then again there are those rich people out there.

 

[LumbermanSVO]

Where do you plan on plugging this Drives into?

A pure sine wave power inverter.

It cannot be done for under $1500 even with the lowest speed SSD Drive.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820609379 it is an SUPER TALENT MasterDrive OX FTM56GL25H 2.5" 256GB SATA II Internal Solid state disk (SSD) = $479.00 (Read: 150 MB/sec - Write: 100 MB/sec) LOWEST PRICE x 4 = $1916.00

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817198028 is an ICY DOCK MB561US-4S 4 Bay 3.5” SATA to eSATA Port Multiplier & USB 2.0 Removable Aluminum External Hard Drive Enclosure for Mac & PC = $289.99

so your looking at the total of $2205.99 thats if u went the lowest route (i am sure if u get crappier case u can save $100) but i figure if u have $2k to spend u can afford another $100 and if u go with Drobo your looking for a lot more money to spend

The reason I was thinking Drobo was for the same reason most people look at one: easily expandable. So, $1916 + $449 = $2365 I'll have to think more about it.

I don't know anyone personally that has 4x 256MB SSD Drives in a Enclosure cuz that is very expensive but then again there are those rich people out there.

Well, I'm not rich, but I can spend the money without too much worry, and I wouldn't be replacing the drives all the time anymore. I'd still use a regular HDD to backup the mobile one when I get home, as I do now.

 

[FX120]

You'd be better off just buying a collection of 1TB drives for $100 each, replacing them when they fail, and coming up with a good way to shock mount them so in the mean time you'll have a longer life span.

Also keep in mind that with a Drobo the sum of all drives does not equal your total available storage, and that for 1TB of storage you'd need more like 1.5TB of SSD drives.

 

[chrisandersen]

You could get a bunch of 120Gb Ipods for that!

 

[pprior]

I've not driven a big rig before, but I think it would be far more economical and easy to rig some sort of vibration isolator than go to the expense of that much SSD space.

I mean I carry around a laptop walking and jarring it all day long and have never had a problem - the drives auto-park with vibration. I would think even a foam pillow under a laptop would protect it enough that you shouldn't be having drive failure that often.

Maybe I'm underestimating how much beating you take driving, but I would think you've got bigger problems if that's the case.

 

[Aegelward]

Or you could go for another crazy solution.. use a 3G modem to access your music via the internet and stream it.

Of course the data bill will quite likely exceed $1500..

Though, do you truly need every song you own on hand? 1Tb of music is a pretty excessive amount.

 

[LumbermanSVO]

Or you could go for another crazy solution.. use a 3G modem to access your music via the internet and stream it.

Of course the data bill will quite likely exceed $1500..

Though, do you truly need every song you own on hand? 1Tb of music is a pretty excessive amount.

Well, I do have a 3G modem, but out west, in the mountains, get a lot of dropped connections. Plus, if the machine at home would need any attention then I would have to have some VERY computer illiterate people tend to it, and they have never touched a Mac.

Do I NEED every song on tap? No. It sure is nice when you want to hear that one song or CD though. I have thought of doing something with an AppleTV but there are some other problems that go with that.

 

[Gregintosh]

You could also compress the songs to 128kbps or whatever (maybe even less, like 96). Unless your car system is totally pro and your truck is silent you probably won't hear the difference and it will save you a lot of space (if you have any uncompressed or really high bitrate music).

If you are going to buy SSD's in bulk, like 4 or 5 or more, you can probably contact some places and get a bulk discount. Perhaps try eBay as well for the drives. Good deals are to be had over there in some cases.