New
#100
@jimbo45
I understand your point, as I used to be in your situation. but now I rather use a nice little database to keep track of what is what. No need for ReFS in my case.
Features removed or Deprecated in Windows 10 Fall Creators Update
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New #101
Hi there
@slicendice
backing up / recovering etc is so much faster too -- with REFS you can use RAID 0 which speeds things up absolutely -- OK there's no mirroring with RAID 0 but provided you've got reliable HDD's and take backups it's perfectly OK. Software RAID works very well indeed and you don't need to have same size HDD's when creating softward RAID arrays - whether RAID0 / RAID 1 or whatever. In linux it is MDADM.
In Windows there's a sort of "RAID" system called Storage Spaces which doesn't use NTFS anyway so maybe you won't be able to use storage spaces with any edition less than PRO.
A database is not actually a good idea as proprietary software (or even free like mySQL etc) makes it difficult to maintain when adding new music tracks. I think though even on Windows I'd come up against the limit when creating the links even if it would spend me weeks to organise the database keys decently to point to the data.
The easiest way by far is just to have a directory structure like I showed above. These days HDD space isn't usually an issue and there are loads of good multi-bay HDD enclosures where you can add up to 4 or even 6 HDD's to a SATA or USB3 connection and these work incredibly well too. I have 2 of those as well so 2 sets of 3 TB hdd's giving me another 2 RAID 0 arrays of 6TB each which I use for backup and then take off line. Can still get nearly the maximum USB3 transfer speed on these too.
Chances of both a Main RAID 0 array and the backup for that RAID 0 array failing at the same time are so unlikely that it's not worth bothering about. Remember this is a HOME NAS server serving some Windows clients too.
Another problem with NTFS is that you can't dynamically add more space to a directory when the HDD is full and without a lot of jiggery pokery you can't really span volumes --this is where RAID becomes useful - and NTFS doesn't support RAID natively - certainly not for WRITE.
(I know there's loads of streaming services but the sort of music I like will never appear on those services and some of it is quite obscure, very hard to find and certainly not available to purchase any more so I keep it in my multi-media server).
Cheers
jimbo
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New #102
I have a completely different view. A database is really good for this sort of things. There is no way I could store all the information I want in a folder structure. It is impossible, no matter which FS I would use. It would all end up in a big mess.
I use databases for all sorts of media. Managing this database is really easy, just drag and drop to my application and all is done automagically. If I want to move some files somewhere else. I just update the base path and the software does the physical move of data automagically.
With a database solution I keep track of Artist, Album, Year, Genre, Mood, Composer, Lyrics, Artist history/information and a lot more...no FS can keep track of all that. Searching or sorting for the information I need takes a split second, no FS can do that either. I can even batch update the media metadata of music files with a few clicks.
But I guess its easy for me as I know how to code things like this. The average consumer has no idea how to create such system, and most readily available systems are terrible. :)
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New #103
As an erstwhile database developer, I have to agree with Slice., a database is a much better solution than the Windows FMS for managing large objects with a load of associated metadata such as music tracks.
I think this each time I see a jimbo45 post on the long filename/path problem.
It's also crazy that there ain't a shedload of excellent free or inexpensive databases to do this out there.
I'll stick with Alexa. Play me some Barbara or Barbra Streisand Alexa. Cortana could not find either artist.
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New #104
I have been wondering why this is the case. A simple MySQL or even better alternative SQLite DB (and even simple XML) would be good enough. Then just a simple application or service that ties all data and metadata together. Easy peacy, 1,2,3 DONE! And the limitation would only be the users imagination if coded right. :)
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New #105
It's not only the music or the recording - its the covers and videos, rehashes, tributes and parodies that can easily be obtained online, and in near realtime become available to the user. A file is so limiting!
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New #107
YouTube is a good alternative - with the "Streisand" example - just searching "Yentl" plugs me into a serendipitous stream of recordings, some I have never heard before, and cleverly avoids repetition!
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New #108
Metadata rich content I would class as Music, Video and Images.
I use MediaMonkey to cover my Music and Video collections, and Lightroom for my Images Both programs fully utilise any metadata you care to add to the files, to allow any sort of organisation Into Playlists, (or collections in Lightroom), these can be manually or automatically created, and edited.
There is a free version of MediaMonkey which has most functions available in the Gold version and will "handle" Thousands of media files. Lightroom is a pro package so is not free but I pay around $10 a month to use it and Photoshop CC - an alternate Free image database is Adobe Bridge
So databases are available
...
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New #109
A big problem with keeping an existing version of Pro for creating ReFS is that Windows 10 version 1703 formats ReFS 3.2, but Windows 10 version 1709 converts that to ReFS 3.3 as soon as it is mounted. ReFS 3.3 is unreadable by earlier Windows versions and appears as RAW or unformatted in Diskpart, even though the data is still there.
So once accessed by the next Windows version, ReFS becomes unreadable by prior Windows versions, even if you originally formatted it with the older version of Windows.
We would have to keep a copy of version 1709 Windows 10 Pro for Workstations or Enterprise if we ever need to create ReFS volumes.
Check the ReFS Mountability table here: https://gist.github.com/0xbadfca11/da0598e47dd643d933dc
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