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In Reply to: RE: need help understanding external hard drives posted by AbeCollins on December 09, 2014 at 08:02:32
Hi Abe - thanks again for the response. I have approximately 500 CDs to rip, so I am pretty sure a 1tb hard drive will be enough. If possible, I would love to use the same one to backup as for the music storage, but this is one of the things I am confused about, whether there would be enough room to do both with the same 1 tb drive?
What I have read about using a USB hard drive with a USB DAC is that there can be jitter, etc., caused by a synchronous conflict between the two devices, as they would both be in use together, resulting in significantly lower sound quality. Are you saying that this will not happen if they are on two different buses? I need to look at your previous post again; I really don't know anything about these things. Is the Thunderbolt type drive the only other option I have that will work with both my old machine and a new one? If so, then I am more inclined to try your two different buses idea, given the much greater cost of the Thunderbolt type drive.
Follow Ups:
500 CD's will easily fit onto a 1TB disk drive taking up no more than about 1/3 of it's total capacity. However, it would not be wise to keep your music collection on the same disk as your backup. If your disk crashes there's a good chance that your backup goes along with it.Backups are an entirely separate topic with various strategies that work. The key is to come up with a solution that YOU fully understand and have proven. In other words, don't wait for a catastrophe to test your backup and ability to recover. You want a separate disk for your backup and better yet, more than one backup disk.
I explained the USB Bus to you. You have several choices: USB 3.0 external HDD, Thunderbolt USB HDD, Thunderbolt to Firewire adapter with a Firewire HDD. You choose.
The link below is rather old but pretty much describes what I've already told you about the USB Bus.
Edits: 12/10/14
Thanks, Abe! I think I have a handle on all this now; as you said, I just need to choose. I appreciate your patience with a newbie very much!
If you plan to use iTunes as your audio player, be sure to 'rip' your CDs to an uncompressed format like AIFF or WAV. If you use compression, choose a lossless compression like Apple Lossless (ALAC). Do you use AAC or MP3.
Most of my collection are in AIFF uncompressed or Apple Lossless (ALAC) compression. Apple Lossless which is similar to FLAC will achieve about 50% compression on the file size to save disk space with virtually no effect on the sound quality.
If you choose to rip the CDs with iTunes be sure to go into iTunes > Preferences > General Tab > Import Settings >
then choose AIFF Encoder or Apple Lossless Encoder and check the box for "Use Error Correction".
If you think you might try other players in the future, and possibly the FLAC format, it is simple enough to convert from AIFF to FLAC and other formats.
Enjoy.
Hi Abe - I just saw this post of yours. I am considering purchasing the Audirvana software to use as the player, as I have read that the Dragonfly DAC I purchased will work very well with it. If I do this, would this change your recommendation? Would AIFF or Apple Lossless be better?
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