1000 CDs- how much hard disc space?

thedelihaus

Nocturnal transmissions
Say you have approx. 1000 CDs (for easy math purposes) and want to put them on a hard disc.

How much space do you need for 1000 CDs if you don't compress them at all (no MP3, no AAC, no FLAC or Lossless)- if you load them straight- up, as AIFF files?


Now, take the same 1000 CDs, and compress them at 256kbps to 320kbps (for argument sake- VBR (variable bitrate) AAC files).

How much hard disc space do you need for these 256-320kbps files?
 
A rough conservative estimate would be about 700 Gigabytes to store uncompressed, about 420 Gigabytes as lossless FLAC files. AAC ???
 
The maximum storage capacity of a CD-ROM is about 700 Mb, so as a higher bound for 1000 non-compressed audio CD files I would consider 700*1000 Mb = 700 Gb = 0.7 Tb that can fit easily in an external hard disk drive. Compression rates could be variable, but I would put a factor of 10 or a bit larger (say, a reasonably filled audio CD subject to a low rate mp3 compression procedure could end up with 50 Mb) , so 50 Gb instead of 700 Gb at the other end. The various compression schemes yield values between these two extremes (50 and 700 Gb).
 
Last edited:
700MB is 66 minutes 8 1/4 seconds of music, most CD's are less than that, so that's definitely an upper bound.

128kbps encoding rate is about 10 percent (not exact, but a close enough shorthand) of the original file size ("CD quality" or 44.1k/16 bit stereo .wav or .aiff files are 44,100*2*16=1,411.2kbps) , so 256kbps would be 20 percent, or about 140GB, or for 320kbps, about 175GB.

I'd go with FLAC for a max of 350GB (with current pricing that's about USD $20 worth of a 1 or 2TB hard disk drive) rather than a lossy format, then there's no worry about if something doesn't sound right if it's the lossy encoding that caused it. If you have a portable player you want to transfer files to, you could ALSO create 256k/320k files exclusively for that, and listen to the FLAC files through your main system at home.

And double your hard drive costs, as you want all this stored on two hard drives to reduce the chance you'll have to rip all those CD's again.
 
A few recommendations based on my own experience:

Convert your CD’s to FLAC file format; the advantages are no loss of resolution, the option to add tags to files which allows you to embed album info and artwork. You can easily convert these files to MP3 or whatever else you want but it will save you from doing the process over again later.

Add about 10 to 15 percent to the required storage capacity to leave space for defragmenting drive and recycling bin.

Get two identical drives and make a backup of your files, when the ripping process is complete store the second drive in an off sight location just to be safe.

Spend a while learning how to rip files to FLAC and adding tags as you go, it will save a lot of hassle later.
 
WAV files are about 10MB per minute of song.

Say average album/CD is 40-45 minutes, so average 400-450MB per CD. Go with 450MB average, so 450MB*1000 = ~450GB.

Say 40-50% smaller for lossless compresson, so 225-270GB, give or take for FLAC, et al, and anywhere from 70% to 95% smaller, so 23-135MB depending on lossy compression bitrate.

Myself, I archive/keep the full WAVs, not big into file tagging and artwork thing, and convert to 192 VBR mp3 for portable devices, etc.

Looks like we're all coming up with about the same numbers...
 
Last edited:
Most of the newer albums I've bought are more than 45 minutes. Regardless, 1000 discs will fit uncompressed on a 1Tb disc, with room to grow. They are relatively cheap now, and getting cheaper.
That's the easy part. Actually ripping and tagging those 1000 discs is another story.
Jack
 
Just an aside: people mentioned here that many CDs do not run near its full capacity: that seems to be the case in most but not all cases, the notable exception being classical music (I've got 5000 CDs, all of them of classical music and most of them- with a few early exceptions- run between 60 and 70 minutes).
 
Last edited:
A few recommendations based on my own experience:

Convert your CD’s to FLAC file format...
Question on FLAC... what does it do to the music when you have two or more tracks that segue together? MP3 doesn't retain the smooth transition I've never been able to get it to work anyway, but what about FLAC? Never messed with it. Don't have any software presently that supports FLAC.
 
Thanks fellas-

I have approx. 1500-1600 CDs total, and a bunch of out of print or rare MP3 files from blogs.

Trying to gauge what I need to have for now and the future.
 
Question on FLAC... what does it do to the music when you have two or more tracks that segue together? MP3 doesn't retain the smooth transition I've never been able to get it to work anyway, but what about FLAC? Never messed with it. Don't have any software presently that supports FLAC.

Depending on the software you use to rip the files from the CD and/or play them back you can choose an option that's something like "part of a gapless album" (iTunes checkbox in Get Info: Options).

I use Apple Lossless (ALAC) since that's native to iTunes, but there are 3rd party plugins that will allow FLAC and OGGVORBIS.

I'd pick a ripping application that will use Gracenote or the CDDB to pull the track/album/artist info from the net, 1000 cd's would be a lot of typing for manual data entry!
 
FWIW, I picked up a 1 TB Seagate Barracuda HD a few weeks back for $60.
Kind of puts it all in perspective, eh :scratch2:

Store all those CDs for the price of a couple audiophile CDs or LPs??
 
FLAC records the tracks just like on the CD. It's the player that will either play them continuously ( gapless playback) or will gap them. MediaMonkey, one of the best sonically and software wise player, plays back all tracks gapless.
 
WAV files are about 10MB per minute of song.

Say average album/CD is 40-45 minutes, so average 400-450MB per CD. Go with 450MB average, so 450MB*1000 = ~450GB.

Say 40-50% smaller for lossless compresson, so 225-270GB, give or take for FLAC, et al, and anywhere from 70% to 95% smaller, so 23-135MB depending on lossy compression bitrate.

Myself, I archive/keep the full WAVs, not big into file tagging and artwork thing, and convert to 192 VBR mp3 for portable devices, etc.

Looks like we're all coming up with about the same numbers...

Just ran the numbers...

My CDs have average of 11.7 tracks per disc, average play time 48.7 minutes, average track size 41.9MB (on disc size), average CD size 491.3MB.
 
I put my music on two hard drives ,MP3 and taged @ 320Kbps, about 400 gigabits and as a safety, I store one in the house and the other in a different building. I have heard of people lossing everything in a house fire, so I am not taking any chances.
 
Last edited:
I too back up my collection now - ripping all of those discs was plenty of work! The price of drives is falling like a rock - get yourself a pair of 1.5 TB drives (cost is near the same), rip to FLAC, and never look back. :) You'll have enough room for just about ever, and a redundant copy should anything ever go wrong.
 
I don't know, TB large drives were something I was told by a large computor store commercial sale person to stay away from, as they still are not dependable.
 
16/44.1 WAV to 320Kbps MP3 should be closer to 5:1. And re: FLAC, I've found that I average 3 CDs per GB when FLAC is used. So 1000 CDs compressed via FLAC would consume about 333GB of drive space. As raw 16/44.1 WAV files, probably closer to 500GB of drive space for the same 1000 CDs.
 
Back
Top Bottom