Karaoke Forums

Hey all,

I'm trying to get a sense of HD space needed to hold a CDG collection. If I were to use CDG Rip at the highest (reasonable?) bitrate, how big a file is the average song going to be?

I guess another angle is how big a collection can a 160 GB, 250 GB, or 500 GB laptop hard drive hold?

Thanks in advance!

The average size of a song is about 4MB ripped at 128. Multiply that by about 2.5 to get the size for a song ripped at 320. Same song would be about 10MB. You can do the rest of the math to find out what you will need for what you have

My personal opinion is this,, buy a larger hard drive right off the bat. As cheap as storage is these days, you won't regret going to a 500 gig or larger. As far as ripping and how much space a song takes up. It's all in what format you plan on ripping them to. If you go binary format (bin.) then it's gonna take up a huge amount of space, anywhere from 40 to 70 mb... if you rip to mp3/cdg format, then its going to be around 4 to 10 mb... If you zip them together after ripping, then most songs will be in the 3 - 8 mb range.

But again, I suggest just buying a large storage (500 gig or larger). Then you have room to grow at anytime.

Agree, since your music collection will never stop growing (if you are like the typical kj/singer), start out big to begin with. I've seen 2 Terrabyte internal and external drives going for $99.

However you didn't state how big your cdg collection is. Just for a reference, I have approx 15K songs, ripped at 192 wma files stored on a 120gb drive with quite a bit of room to spare for new music.

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LIKE Lonman on Facebook - Lonman Productions Karaoke & my main site via my profile!

That's exactly the data I was looking for, thanks all!

As for the size of my collection, it's negligible for now, but I was looking at laptops and there are clear benefits for going with a netbook or Macbook Air (portability) but you have to sacrifice HD space for it. I wanted to get a sense of how big my collection would need to be to outgrow those HDs so I could figure out if I would outgrow it before it was time to upgrade anyway.

They sell 750gb (probably bigger) hard drives for laptops for about $100 as well.

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LIKE Lonman on Facebook - Lonman Productions Karaoke & my main site via my profile!

IMHO...Use external hard drive. A one Terra Byte drive can be purchased for around $100 (or less). Then on your laptop, you don't need to "upgrade" to a larger drive.

This is especially good if your laptop craps out on you, you still have the music on your external Hard drive. And better yet, but 2 externals, and use one for a backup.

It is also good if you decide to upgrade your computer in a couple years, no hassle of transferring music off the old computer's built-in hard drive.

You can get 2 TB for $100 now days!

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LIKE Lonman on Facebook - Lonman Productions Karaoke & my main site via my profile!

Let me be a voice on the side of going with an internal drive, not an external USB. Fewer moving parts, fewer interconnections, more reliability.

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[color=#ffff55]Mickey J.[/color]
Alas for those who never sing, but die with all their music in them.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Hmmm, another good discussion brewing here. Internal or external? I kinda agree with Mckyj57. Less connections, less to lug around. The direct connection probably will make it even a little faster vs. using usb. I am buying a new laptop Win7 soon. Now, I am more inclined to buy one with a bigger drive, 750gb or 1tb. I'll wait until the dust settles. Let's hear the pros & cons. Internal or external?

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To be fortunate enough to derive an income from a source as fulfilling as karaoke music has got to be as close to heaven as we can get here on earth!

I prefer external as I have a thief in my house. She has a bad habit of stealing my laptops. If I went internal I would lose both the laptop and the music. She shows no interest in my external drive. I can't get rid of her because I can't afford to legally evict her.

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The Line Array Experiment is over. Nothing to see here. Move along.

I STRONGLY disagree. My First laptop, which just died recently after 5-6 years of flawless use, had all my music stored on and external 250GB Maxtor USB hard drive. This laptop probably did about 2 shows a week in smoke filled bars for the most of it's life. Each nite the USB and all other external devices were unplugged to take home. Not once did anything fail. In fact, I used the same Maxtor external hard drive for 2 months on a new laptop, until I upgraded to a bigger external hard drive. I still use the Maxtor External at home on the tower PC so I can play music.

change the locks

Not legal. I don't want to be sued for illegal eviction. Her name is on the lease.

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The Line Array Experiment is over. Nothing to see here. Move along.

THEN MOVE OUT. I don't think she canhold you to a lease if she's stealing from you and you can prove it.

One data point noted.

But it's axiomatic in reliability measurements in the real world. You count the number of connections, components, and moving parts to get your reliability figure. Sure, individual systems last forever -- there's a lightbulb in a San Francisco firehouse that's been burning since 1908. But on average, the more connections and the more moving parts you have, the lower the reliability.

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[color=#ffff55]Mickey J.[/color]
Alas for those who never sing, but die with all their music in them.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

I would prefer an internal drive, but have externals that I use as well with no issues as far as the karaoke music goes.

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LIKE Lonman on Facebook - Lonman Productions Karaoke & my main site via my profile!

A very valid point from Micky: but you will still need an external HD as back-up

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I can neither confirm nor deny ever having or knowing anything about nothing.... mrscott

10k RPM velociraptors E-sata in striped RAID should be plenty fast JK

i got my 1.5T for $90.00 and pre-formatted it in the largest clusters possible with great results, even though i'm using .WAV files. with MP3, i doubt you will have problems.
i will add, if i could do internal, i think i would just for the extra piece of mind of the direct connection. just wasn't a big enough internal drive yet for lappys.

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Paradigm Karaoke, The New Standard.......Shift Happens

Micky, what or where are the extra moving parts?