Lossless Size and External Library

I want to upload most of my music now that I finally have a way to enjoy it, and I want to upload properly.

How big of a size difference is there between 192 encoding, which I've used so far, and lossless in terms of space? I have about 1/4 of my collection right now and it comes to around 17gb. How much would that inflate to under lossless, just in a rough estimate?

What I want to know in conjunction with this, is would my best bet be to get an external hd with fw800 and load the library on there instead? Or would I notice a slowdown or loss in quality significant enough to want to just keep it on my powerbooks hd?

Now that I think about it, is there any device that would serve this basic purpose better? It would all be hooked up to my receiver and headphone amp anyways, so is there a device that would fit in well that I don't know of? Like a squeezebox? I actually have no idea what a squeezebox does, so this is just a good excuse to find out.

Hope I made sense, thanks for help.

 

Alright, thanks.

So at around a few hundred gigs, would my best bet be to go with a fw800 external? Is there any major downside to an external hd setup?

Egad this place is helpful.