Hmm, 10GB/day seems a little slow; you should be getting at least double that.

The database is build soley from the info in the *1 files. Actually, come to think of it you may just be able to get away with title= artist= genre= length= tags; emplode will then notice (on first connect) that there are missing tags and rebuild them.

The unit is very quiet; the drives are consumer-type (like in Tivos, etc), on isolation mounts. The fan simply doesn't run in normal use; they're there for "worst case" (eg, unit stacked in a cupboard above a hot amp). When it does run, we kick start it with 12v then drop down to about 7, which runs it slower (and silently) until the temperature falls sufficiently.

The HDD will spin down completely when the unit is off, as long as you're not streaming to any receivers or have any pending compression that needs doing.

Hugo