Audio File Size Calculator
Ssd are not that expensive now , I would look for Samsung , Crucial , WD, Sandisk 1-2tb.
Since you will have a dedicated computer for music , then why do you plan on using an external ssd?
What will be the set up for this media player? Do you have an external dac or you will use onboard sound card?
Ssd are not that expensive now , I would look for Samsung , Crucial , WD, Sandisk 1-2tb.
Since you will have a dedicated computer for music , then why do you plan on using an external ssd?
What will be the set up for this media player? Do you have an external dac or you will use onboard sound card?
So I have a question regarding the "5 year" expected life of a pair of HDDs in a NAS. Is this spinning continuously for 40 - 50K hours, or is this with the "spin down when not in use" function set?
I think my NAS is spun down 99% of the time in a 24 hour period. Almost every time I go to access something, I have to wait for the drives to spin up...
@Black Stuart - didnt mean to hack you off about pops and clicks. I was simply curious if any available software is able to do that function. My curiosity stems from a hardware device, available back in the day, that was able to to do real-time "tick and pop" removal from LP playback. I simply wonder if that tech made it into a PC application form factor or not. Or if it was re-invented. Must be!
We have a local DJ that suggests they have Edison cylinders available for requests. He adds "they're all digitized".
I think my NAS is spun down 99% of the time in a 24 hour period. Almost every time I go to access something, I have to wait for the drives to spin up...
@Black Stuart - didnt mean to hack you off about pops and clicks. I was simply curious if any available software is able to do that function. My curiosity stems from a hardware device, available back in the day, that was able to to do real-time "tick and pop" removal from LP playback. I simply wonder if that tech made it into a PC application form factor or not. Or if it was re-invented. Must be!
We have a local DJ that suggests they have Edison cylinders available for requests. He adds "they're all digitized".
I have a couple of NVME caddys for photography
You can get up 1/2/4/8TB NVME drives for these, although I'm running a 1TB and a 2TB (just because time elapsed between acquiring each one.
A redundant backup is needed, unless you want to weep one day.
This is the latest caddy I got:
Sabrent USB 3.2 Type-C Tool-Free Enclosure for M.2 PCIe NVMe and SATA SSDs (EC-SNVE) | EC-SNVE
Then I just got a NVME ssd to throw in it to suit my price
It's tiny too obviously - only about 100mm long
You can get up 1/2/4/8TB NVME drives for these, although I'm running a 1TB and a 2TB (just because time elapsed between acquiring each one.
A redundant backup is needed, unless you want to weep one day.
This is the latest caddy I got:
Sabrent USB 3.2 Type-C Tool-Free Enclosure for M.2 PCIe NVMe and SATA SSDs (EC-SNVE) | EC-SNVE
Then I just got a NVME ssd to throw in it to suit my price
It's tiny too obviously - only about 100mm long
Cedar was the benchmark for restauration ( hardware/software) 20 years ago. It still is but this is not cheap...
The solution most have choosen now in pro field is Izotope RX. It is now the workhorse of industry for any restauration works ( including vinyl but not only, movie industry won't do anything without it).
It's not cheap either but very powerful tool. I use an older version (Rx7) but feels no need to change for anything. It's not real time but results are top notch.
The solution most have choosen now in pro field is Izotope RX. It is now the workhorse of industry for any restauration works ( including vinyl but not only, movie industry won't do anything without it).
It's not cheap either but very powerful tool. I use an older version (Rx7) but feels no need to change for anything. It's not real time but results are top notch.
That is a long reply but most of it indicates sound thinking. Just don’t forget a backup in one form or another. A second SSD with the data officially does not count as that but it works OK in case of disaster recovery and it is fast as well.
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SSDs, especially the modern ones with many voltage levels per one cell (more bits per cell), will eventually loose the stored information when powered down, i.e. when their controller stops shuffling data around to refresh the cells information. They are not suitable for longer-time offline storage. It is not the bit rot reported to exist in HDDs (fixed by filesystems using CRCs such as ZFS or btrfs - but I have yet to see a bitrot after 20 years of running multiple HDD arrays in our company servers) and RAM (fixed by ECC an effect of which is quite common in our servers).
IBM
SSDs can lose data in as little as 7 days without power - ExtremeTech
SSDs are designed for fast work, HDDs are OK for longer-term storage.
IBM
SSDs can lose data in as little as 7 days without power - ExtremeTech
SSDs are designed for fast work, HDDs are OK for longer-term storage.
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For all those of you afraid of bit rot, you can always use zfs file system on your pc or on your nas. With its feature for scrubbing the data is hard to get rotten bits.
I personally use truenas on my qnap nas server and never got and issue even if I live in a zone where we get frequently electricity blackouts.
I personally use truenas on my qnap nas server and never got and issue even if I live in a zone where we get frequently electricity blackouts.
If you're going to go down the server route then consider a device with RAID 1, which mirrors all files across all drives. So a four drive array only has the capacity of one drive, but will continue to work even if 3 drives fail. Many devices allow hot swap of discs. I had a Synology server with this and had a drive fail. It continued to work and I just slotted in the replacement drive when it was delivered.
Actually it does not have to be a server, linux software raid1 (mdraid) is very practical for a regular streamer to improve reliability and ease of recovery in case a drive dies. I would guess the streamer discussed here https://www.diyaudio.com/forums/digital-source/377596-looking-expensive-streamer-12.html#post6805858 with 2 SSDs inside running linux is using Raid1 at least for the root partition, to allow easy replacement of a failed drive.
I use the same setup in my ancient HP T5741 thin client used as a house gateway to internet, DNS, DHCP etc - two dirt-cheap 2GB mSATA SSDs in mdraid 1, both have the grub bootloader installed. It's simple to do in linux and costs next to nothing.
I use the same setup in my ancient HP T5741 thin client used as a house gateway to internet, DNS, DHCP etc - two dirt-cheap 2GB mSATA SSDs in mdraid 1, both have the grub bootloader installed. It's simple to do in linux and costs next to nothing.
Thanks for the article. I was aware of the issue with SSDs longer term bitrot, but hadn't realised the commercial units could only survive a couple of weeks.
Internet streaming is not green, incremental on line private back-up is greener
Something simple to make a backup with or without Raid disc back-up is the already talked NAS.
Synology are simple and reliable, click & forget. They also can stream via USB -and wifi if embeded if I remember-.
It's low power. I personnaly would advice a 7200 speed classic hard disc from a reliable brand. Or check on Internet the different style of NAND memory and their life span on Internet : a good SSD with a lot of To is still expensive if memory reliability is a concern.
The first rule remains you need an off site back-up. 2.5" portable HDD from 5 To exists. With the Synology : you can make an on line incremental geo-cluster in an other area like the house of a family member, your office, etc. You need so two Synology NAS and the incremental back-up runs automaticly each week, each days, each the ways the option you choose via Internet at night for instance. Sort of private Cloud.
I personnaly don't like the Raid 1 backup without battery memory writting cause fails can arrive at shutdown of house electricity and after all when you first disc is agging, the second with the Raid writes the sector error (losses) of the first. So an on line back up and a time to time manual back-up on a 2.5" HDD via USB-3 or better USB-C Gen1 or 2 is OK and fast.
About FLAC, etc. the classic Wav format is a no brainer and may light the CPU charge of some streamers/soft combo as there is no need of decoding like the flac.
Something simple to make a backup with or without Raid disc back-up is the already talked NAS.
Synology are simple and reliable, click & forget. They also can stream via USB -and wifi if embeded if I remember-.
It's low power. I personnaly would advice a 7200 speed classic hard disc from a reliable brand. Or check on Internet the different style of NAND memory and their life span on Internet : a good SSD with a lot of To is still expensive if memory reliability is a concern.
The first rule remains you need an off site back-up. 2.5" portable HDD from 5 To exists. With the Synology : you can make an on line incremental geo-cluster in an other area like the house of a family member, your office, etc. You need so two Synology NAS and the incremental back-up runs automaticly each week, each days, each the ways the option you choose via Internet at night for instance. Sort of private Cloud.
I personnaly don't like the Raid 1 backup without battery memory writting cause fails can arrive at shutdown of house electricity and after all when you first disc is agging, the second with the Raid writes the sector error (losses) of the first. So an on line back up and a time to time manual back-up on a 2.5" HDD via USB-3 or better USB-C Gen1 or 2 is OK and fast.
About FLAC, etc. the classic Wav format is a no brainer and may light the CPU charge of some streamers/soft combo as there is no need of decoding like the flac.
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Make that 5400 rpm HDD’s as these live longer. They are already fast enough for video and audio, become less warm and make way less noise too. I have seen too many 7200 rpm disks that exhibit that terrible whining/resonating when 2 are used in NAS devices.
Most audioplayers have quad core ARM CPU’s that don’t have any problem with FLAC. I don’t know why but the ones with I.MX6 CPU’s perform quite good.
Most audioplayers have quad core ARM CPU’s that don’t have any problem with FLAC. I don’t know why but the ones with I.MX6 CPU’s perform quite good.
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While decoding flac takes more CPU, reading half the data compared to wav from the network/drive takes less CPU. IMO the CPU consumption when decoding the flac is negligible.
Also the whole processing occurs in batches (timed by the alsa period chosen by the player) in several threads (at least reading from the source/processing=decoding/writing to alsa) and decoding the flac will just make the processing thread run slightly longer before going to sleep than for wav. Plus every OS will run many other threads and the overall mix will behave differently for every device and OS/version from this POW.
Do you have any measurements that decoding flac produces more noise in your DAC output? I assume a properly designed chain with no ground loops, of course.
It makes sense and for sure the less cpu load Ithe best I surmise. So it certainly doesn t matter with an OS like W10. But it may have an importance with small embeded OS for Rpi units.
No data, read that on Diyaudio but don t remember where? Anyway it is a detail over all the rest you really care.
No data, read that on Diyaudio but don t remember where? Anyway it is a detail over all the rest you really care.
While the headless linux on the RPi is much more efficient than the graphical win10, still its kernel and user-space programs run lots of other threads too.
E.g. transfering twice the data over SMB from a network drive with the tracks means twice as much load for decrypting the encrypted load. Over USB - processing twice as many USB data by the USB driver, etc. I am not saying it is any significant, just showing that there are many other activities involved.
E.g. transfering twice the data over SMB from a network drive with the tracks means twice as much load for decrypting the encrypted load. Over USB - processing twice as many USB data by the USB driver, etc. I am not saying it is any significant, just showing that there are many other activities involved.
The CPU load while decoding FLAC was barely a concern back in 2001 when FLAC was first released, and it's certainly not a concern 20 years later.
A bigger concern for collectors of digital music is that your tag data can be reliably read across any/all music playback applications you are using now, and into the future. That's where WAV falls down. See my comments back in post #26
https://www.diyaudio.com/forums/digital-source/377502-external-ssd-music-storage-3.html#post6799481