We strayed from Request once, in favor of Integra's XiVa server because of budget limitations. Lesson learned. Getting music into this thing was the worst ordeal I've ever gone through. In the end, I would have paid the difference myself to give them a Request. Fortunately, I got them to.
Their tech support was exceptional, but it didn't help. It was too limited & dumbed down. One speck of dust = jitter error = song ignored. They loaned us a powerloader, and after 10 days and 200 CDs, 75 had missing songs. And since individual tracks cannot be added to albums after the fact, we would have had to re-rip all 75 had we not called for an RA.
Hard drives are flaky... they're getting bigger & cheaper every month. And, like everything else, they're getting less reliable. I have a stack of old <1GB drives that are piled in a milk crate in my basement & still work fine. And I have 2 120GB drives bought last year that crashed within 6 months. The only solution is to backup the data. Request's zone units do this, and although expensive, can take the blame off you if all you do it offer it. Warn them in advance that hard drives are hard drives, and better safe than sorry.
