Amazon MP3 Cloud Storage and Player

[engspot]

There's a letter on the front page of Amazon offering a new service. The first 5GB of data storage is free and so are any purchases through their store. What I like is that it can be accessed through any Android or PC. I haven't downloaded the app for this yet, but I am going to try it out when I get home and see how it goes.

I've made a few purchases through the store and will see how long it takes to upload a CD, but this has me excited. I haven't been thrilled with my iPod battery life lately and hate being stuck in iTunes to organize/buy/listen to my music. Right now I am hesitant to buy another iPod for $200, but this may offer a cheaper solution. The only downsides I can see for the droid app are on airplanes (no internet connection) and draining my phone battery.

I'll let you know how this works out...it should at least be nice for multiple PC usage.

 

[AVB]

I'm building a small (1.5TB mirrored) NAS that I can set up to access anywhere in the world. Might be something to look into.

 

[nfulton]

I'm building a small (1.5TB mirrored) NAS that I can set up to access anywhere in the world. Might be something to look into.

I have no idea what you just said...but pray do tell. Any good source info on this. I am fed up with all of my external hard drives, Flikr, and such.

 

[AVB]

There is lots of info on Network Attached Storage (NAS) out there. Start with the Wiki and then decide if you want to build or buy. I'm using FreeNAS and building it with an old AMD 1300 and 512MB ram. Once Ive got it working I'll probably upgrade to a dual core processor and a GB of memory but right now half the fun is learning and putting it together. Check out http://freenas.org/FreeNAS for more info. I liked it because I could use a bunch of old parts (except the drives) to set it up and decide if it what I really wanted to do. If you want to buy then companies like Buffalo, Synology, Dlink and others make them. Don't get the single drive units you may see since there is no way to protect your data and losing a TB of media files is no fun.

 

[BlindedByScience]

For my new house, I strung multiple runs of CAT6 everywhere I could think of; I mean, that's sort of what I do for a living, right...??.... I wanted a redundant (RAID1) drive on the network for media serving and backups.

I just ordered one of these, and two of these. For well under three hundred bucks, that will give me 2TB of mirrored storage available anywhere in the house, and once I sort out the secure FTP protocol, anywhere in the world.

The whole "cloud computing" thing has me a bit flummoxed; it would be cool....until the net goes down and none of your stuff is available. That's why I'm going to have some redundant, reliable infrastructure at home.

B.B.S.

 

[AVB]

I pretty much did the same thing with my place. I put in 14 drops of Cat5e when I wired the house 10? years ago and so far my little NAS is distributing audio just fine over it. I'll worry about video later on.

 

[BlindedByScience]

I pretty much did the same thing with my place. I put in 14 drops of Cat5e when I wired the house 10? years ago and so far my little NAS is distributing audio just fine over it. I'll worry about video later on.

What are you running for a media server / client, Ray...??

Here's the router and switch I have coming..... Last time I counted, I have one spare port....

 

[AVB]

I'm running FreeNas on my media server. The clients are my Win 7 PC and my wife's XP machine at the moment. I'll be putting in a box to hook in the upstairs stereo later since I'm still in the testing phase. 2 ports open on my Netgear switch, its just 10/100 since it is a decade old but I might see if a 1GB switch will work later.

 

[engspot]

The whole "cloud computing" thing has me a bit flummoxed; it would be cool....until the net goes down and none of your stuff is available. That's why I'm going to have some redundant, reliable infrastructure at home.

Right now my music and photos are on a 1TB external. I would eventually like to rip my DVDs to hard drives as well, but that requires more time than I have right now. If I took advantage of this Amazon offer at least I would have 5GB of free space to use and could still have a hard back-up somewhere.

I'll have to do more research to see if NAS is a good solution with the PCs and phones (droids) we have now. Right now our house isn't exactly wired for 21st century data.

 

[JHolmes763]

The whole "cloud computing" thing has me a bit flummoxed; it would be cool....until the net goes down and none of your stuff is available. That's why I'm going to have some redundant, reliable infrastructure at home.

If you're only accessing your files at home, then sure, why not? If you're accessing your NAS from outside of the house, then you face the same reliability problems as every other "cloud" provider. You just have yourself as the only client.

I'm not a fan of the "cloud" marketing buzzword, either, but it's a method that works for enough people.

Personally, I like the Dropbox implementation of "cloud" storage. I keep all of my school documents in my Dropbox folder. I have a local copy of all the files on every machine Dropbox syncs with, it's accessible through my phone and via a web interface public computers. Free is only 2GB, so it's not useful for music or videos, though, unless you want to pay for more storage. Pandora handles all of my music needs for now, so I don't store any music locally.

-John

 

[BlindedByScience]

If you're only accessing your files at home, then sure, why not? If you're accessing your NAS from outside of the house, then you face the same reliability problems as every other "cloud" provider. You just have yourself as the only client.

....difference is if I'm my own "cloud" provider, my stuff is always accessable at home. Same risks with remote access.

 

[flamchop]

I saw this on Amazon too. I get the majority of the music I buy from Amazon. I don't think I'll be using the cloud feature, but I do like the idea that the mp3's I buy can leave a copy on the cloud... in case of botched d/l.. or if i accidentally delete the file on my machine.. stuff like that.

I use iTunes, iPod, and now mostly my iPhone for music, and have no issues whatsoever with taking my music with me wherever I go.

 

[BlindedByScience]

I saw this on Amazon too. I get the majority of the music I buy from Amazon. I don't think I'll be using the cloud feature, but I do like the idea that the mp3's I buy can leave a copy on the cloud... in case of botched d/l.. or if i accidentally delete the file on my machine.. stuff like that.

Last time I checked, once you've bought something off Amazon, you can download it over and over, cloud or no cloud. Got to admit I'm not sure but I'll double check that.

 

[AVB]

MP3's and their ilk are the first time music quality has gone backwards. Everything up to that point was about trying to get the best sound possible. No longer.

I'm ripping everything in lossless and damn the amount of space it takes.

 

[Devil Doc]

Glad to hear it Ray. As a die hard, two channel stereo audiophile, all I have to say is, just say no to compressed music.

Doc.