Switch from CD to Network

i see what you are saying about the backup being external. I also agree with the more redundancy you have the safer you are...so do both basically.

I can also say that battery backups are a good idea for your PC and NAS. 

I do battery backups on my iMac, NAS, router, switches, and modem. that way the network can never go down while I am transferring anything resulting in corrupted data.

Synology is the way to go if you can wing it. For ease. I know they can also be set to email you when drives are failing and things of that nature.

also never cut and paste. ever.

Err, a somewhat enigmatic comment. What are you not cut and pasting? And why not?

Simon

Copy a file first and then paste it somewhere else. When it has copied successfully you can delete the original. That way if anything untoward should happen whilst copying (like the lights go out), the original file is still in one piece.  There's many a slip twixt cup and lip.

But that is exactly what any decent operating system does anyway.

Not that the lights have gone out on me before i can honestly say on pc and mac nothing untoward has ever happened to the original file whilst in a transfer situation. You might get an error for what ever reason stating it failed to copy, and i have even had macs goto sleep half way through a transfer (picking the copy progress back up on wake) 

in a cut situation if it fails for what ever reason the cut file remains where it was.

Yes, but the other significant point is that RAID setups (whilst not without its uses) use a different logic to backup arrangements. True backup stores a copy of data from before it was lost/corrupted. Raid just stores two copies of current data. It the current data is corrupted or lost, there is no backup as the copy is also corrupt. There is no previous version.

On a related note: When working with large files at work, I am obsessive about saving fresh versions regularly. That way, if the file becomes corrupted in some way (less common than it was, admittedly) I can start again from a relatvely recent version, rather than having re-create the file from scratch.

Yep. The orginal automatically stays put until the copy is done and verified as complete.

(When cut and pasting on a single disc, I suspect that the file doesn't really get moved in any case. It just gets re-adressed so it appears in a different place to the user.)

Yes i think it says on the website about the java link getting broken, whatever that means, if you update java. To be honest it wasnt installed before, so i wont be updating it.

Graeme

I am going to bow out. You guys use Upnp and I use Samba...In my opinion even though its just a bit different it is a better process. But since you guys decide to use Naim products that only support UpNp, as far as I know which is a little they don't support Samba.

I have had glitchy issues with Upnp streaming movies...such as issues with fast forwarding and rewinding. skipping multiple chapters and having the stream have to catch up...it could be different with music. I have tried it on a fat and slim PS3 wired and my Oppo BDP-103...but using Samba I still have issues but much less. No problems with music using Samba and flac, wav, aiff, alac.

There are so many ways to accomplish what you want you just need to decide how you are going to play the music, through a computer or using a Naim product. That will determine your type of file sharing. The type of file sharing will determine the manufacturer of the NAS you will use.

Figure that out and you'll be ripping in no time.

Almost all nases over a hundred quid support Samba/UPNP/Apple Filing/DNLA/FTP etc etc, so not entirely sure what your point is.

Naim's HDX/NS01/NS02/NServe use Samba.

My UPnP server uses Samba (CIFS) to mount the NAS file systems, so I use both.

All the NASs I have had or use now support AFP (Apple), CIFS (Microsoft) and NFS (Unix) file sharing protocols and the FTP transfer protocol. In the home one of those will almost always work and is now not even limited to the vendors platform. For most it's plug and play and they might not even be aware which file transfer protocols they are using.

Simon