Data Robotics has just announced two new versions of its Drobo disk storage solution. The Drobo Elite is now the top of the line model with 2 iSCSI ports and no direct connect options. Audiophile will likely be more interested in the Drobo S. The S model has five drive bays allowing up to ten TB of disk space. In addition to the added drive bay Data Robotics has included an eSATA port for vastly increased speed over FireWire 800 and USB 2.0. eSATA does have some very short cable length requirements so the DroboShare is still a recommended option with the Drobo S if a music server must reside in ones listening room.

If 8 Terabytes is not enough for your music collection you'll be happy to know Data Robotics has just introduced the DroboPro. It has a 16 TB capacity, USB 2.0, FireWire 800, and iSCSI interfaces. The DroboPro uses BeyondRAID technology and can use a multitude of different disk sizes in a single enclosure. New to the Drobo lineup is the iSCSI capability. This enables connecting to the DroboPro over a standard computer network. iSCSI is similar to Network Attached Storage (NAS) in that it allows disk access via a network connection, but that's were the similarities end. Connecting via iSCSI is a little trickier and has more limitations than a standard NAS unit, but the benefits are plenty. I like iSCSI because the external/network drive mounts automatically upon boot-up and appears like a directly connected disk. This allows the user to format the disk and view the disk in Disk Utility or Disk Administrator, etc... It's not clear if the standard DroboShare is compatible with the DroboPro at this time. Read more for some close-up photos.

We are all guilty of lackluster data backup and storage management in one way or another. Most music lovers have a single hard drive in their laptop or desktop and when it fails every single album goes up in smoke (Cheech and Chong reference). Others are a little more cautious and attach a standard external hard drive to their music server and run a backup every once in a while. Some of us are even running RAID 5 NAS units and betting that two drives will not fail at the same time. All of this is fine and dandy until you hang up your smoking jacket and set your tobacco pipe down after an extended listening session. Long after you've retired for the evening the dog swings by knocking the pipe to the floor. Unbenownced to both of you a smouldering ember has disappeard into the shag carpetting and before you know it you're wearing you're Hugh Hefner-esque robe in front of your house watching it burn. I'm sure a music sever and collection of ripped albums would not be top of mind at that moment, but no doubt the unreplaceable family photos and family heirlooms would come to mind once everyone was safe. Most people would be S.O.L. in this situation. Fortunately FireKing has created the MediaVault HD that can hold 500 GB of data in a fireproof enclosure. This sixty-five pound container is one substantial and safe external storage solution.

Those of you using a NAS drive to store your music collection know that mounting the drive is very important. Launching iTunes before the NAS drive is mounted will reset your music folder location to the default local folder. Then the dreaded exclamation marks appear next to every track. It's not the end of the world to recover from this, but it's far easier to prevent it from happening.

Many of us can't afford to purchase a piece of equipment that does one thing and one thing only. We often go for the item that does one thing great and has the ability to do many other things pretty well. Sometimes this even helps us justify the purchase with a significant other. The Apple TV works as a nice wireless audio device while at the same time enables your spouse to download every episode of Sex In The City via the iTunes Store. A new push lawnmower enables your spouse to get exercise while mowing the lawn. Or, maybe not. Those of you looking for a great NAS storage device for all your music, and a device that the rest of the family can use, must take a closer look at the QNAP TS-409 Turbo NAS.

Audiophiles can now let their compressed music stretch out a little because Seagate just announced a 1.5 terabyte consumer desktop hard drive. Seagate also dropped a 500 GB laptop drive today. This should bring the prices of 1 TB drives down considerably upon official release in August. Read more for all the currently available details.

Data Robotics has just released its new Drobo v2. the biggest difference appears to be FireWire 800 support. In addition to FW800 the new Drobo has "vastly improved" USB 2.0 and an upgraded processor. Audiophiles with disk storage in their listening room will be happy to know the new Drobo operates quieter and cooler. The one upgrade that didn't make it into the second generation Drobo is built-in Ethernet. I guess there is always the Droboshare or v3.

Yesterday Western Digital released its new MyBook Mirror Edition. This could be a really nice option for audiophiles looking for more storage and audiophiles just jumping into their first music server project. A couple highlights include automatic data mirroring in 500 GB or 1 TB (usable space) options and even better this is a fanless design that uses less power and produces less heat. This unit also allows the drives to be upgraded in the future. If you're looking for simple direct connect USB storage this could work really well in your audio system. Read more for all the details.

Storage has traditionally never been a part of the audiophile vocabulary. Now, like it or not, storage is a very integral piece of every music server based audio system. One of the first specs I consider when trying out a new music server is disk space. This is one thing that can make or break a canned or custom music server. If you have 750 GB worth of music you certainly aren't going to purchase a 500 GB music server. Similarly you are not going to buy a sleek looking LaCie external drive if it won't hold your 1000 disc collection. In addition to disk size audiophiles must consider how much noise a hard drive solution generates, how it connects to music servers, and how the data is backed up. I've configured a few storage solutions in my life from $200 to over $2 million. Needless to say I am very selective when it comes to choosing storage for my music server. I want all the options, a lot of disk space, and I'm not willing to spend an arm & a leg. With such specific needs you'd think finding the perfect disk storage solution would be frustrating for me. The answers is yes and no. For a long time I couldn't find the perfect solution. This made the decision very easy. I just didn't purchase anything. Then I found the Thecus 5200B Pro IP Storage Server. Music server storage doesn't get any better than this.

The regular readers of Computer Audiophile are well aware that I often recommend connecting an external hard drive to the Apple Airport Extreme Base Station. This removes the sound of the hard drive from your listening room and can clean up the look of your equipment rack. For those of you using this configuration and still running OS X Tiger you can mount the AirDisk automatically through the airport disk utility. If you've upgraded to OS X Leopard you may have noticed that the airport disk utility has disappeared and with it went the ability to auto mount an AirDisk. After wasting time trying to figure out an Apple supported solution I decided to create my own auto-mount application through the Apple Automator. What follows are my step by step instructions with screenshots for creating your own Automator application and launch it at startup. If you want to skip most of this feel free to download the Automator app that I've created.