Todd,
Colin and Freymann are both correct in there replies I just wanted to add, that I rip all my files or copy over to my server from my windows machine EVERY time and then use fams (files and media sync) to apply attributes and cover art. The only issue I ever noticed with this was to make sure you have no white spaces in the files title or the issue I found is that LMCE will see the file and will allow you to update it with fams but will not display the cover art and attrib. in the UI either in all or within your chosen media sub-type. By no white spaces I mean underscores in a more than one word title. IE Batman_begins, I also use things like "and" to replace "&" and do not use " ' " or weird characters as LMCE (sql) does not like these in the titles) at all.
I have a media server in the basement with now about 9Tb of Storage running Unraid, I would never again save any material I want to KEEP on a workstations drive or for that matter even the core/hybrid. two things this allows me to have less than a 250Gb drives in my core and none in my Md's and the nice thing about Unraid is the parity drive only needs to be only ONE driveas large or larger than any one of your data drives in the system. I have all my movies, tv shows, Music on one and on another Unraid server I have stored data for myseof and the better half's data and music (for she does not like to edit her tags - LOL). The only way I could ever loose data or anything I saved on the two is that TWO drives must fail at exactly the same time. I have had all my movies packed up for now over three years. Unraid only needs a case to support up to 16 drives, a board with LOTS of SATA connectors, a GOOD PSU and on-board video Nothing fancy and a flash drive booting the Unraid software. You can actually download a full version limited to three drives to try it out. All the shares show up in any machine, LMCE, Hardy, M$ etc... google Unraid for more info. The software is based on Linux as well.
Dave