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In Reply to: RE: Quiet storage posted by PAR on February 4, 2017 at 10:29:29:
Well, I'm pretty sure the OP was asking for a practical solution. Of course we go down that bottomless rat hole of extreme optimizations and tweaks but I don't think that's what he had in mind in this particular post. I believe I gave him the quick, simple, and practical options in a quiet HDD or silent SSD.He may also be trying to justify purchasing a NAS and that's fine too.
What Seagate HDD do you have? Is it a 2.5" 5400rpm laptop style or a larger 3.5" 7200rpm unit?
If the OP wants total silence he won't get it from one of these.
I'm not suggesting that he will get TOTAL silence but 2.5" 5400rpm laptop style drives are extremely quiet, cheap as dirt, easy, and can't be heard by most people at typical listening distances, especially while listening to music. I've run them for years before SSD prices came down. Even w/o the music playing and "typical" being 6 to 10 feet away in my estimation, I'd challenge anyone to hear a good USB 2.5" 5400 rpm laptop disk. Of course if you're sitting right up by the HDD in front of you (maybe a desktop music setup), you may hear it. And of course you already mentioned "memory play" where the music is cached so the disk won't be accessing while the music is playing.
As for placing the USB HDD or SSD on a USB port, all one has to do is ensure that the USB controller is not shared by another device like the DAC, mouse, keyboard, etc. Very easy to do. Works very nicely with no hiccups. Sure one can worry and do more but at this point we're talking tiny incremental gains.
As for disks being prone to corruption that can be said of ANY disk. And it's not always the disk's fault. So the occasional check and backup is in order regardless of what disk is used. But quite frankly, 'corruption' was a bigger problem in the days of old MS Windows. I haven't experienced any such corruption since switching to Mac seven years ago, or with recent Windows 10.
"However if constant running of the drive is envisaged then a NAS with appropriate discs is a better choice as external drives are not built for that intensity."
There's nothing intense about playing music off a disk drive. It's primarily reads, practically no writes, very very little seeks, and the disk can be auto powered OFF after a period of inactivity. ANY disk would be loafing playing music. A 2.5" disk in a laptop gets a more intense workout doing mundane tasks like spread sheets, word processing, power point, browsing the web, editing photos, being bumped around, etc., yet they often last for years with no issues.
As for durable NAS disks, these are typically of the 3.5" variety and they are inherently more noisy than a 2.5" laptop disk (but quieter than other 3.5" disks). However, there's no reason one couldn't buy a "NAS disk" and not put it in a NAS. Just use it as an external disk. But I wouldn't. I'd still go with a quiet 2.5" laptop drive with USB (or Thunderbolt) interface.
"However a NAS is clearly preferable ( indeed unavoidable) if more than one user and more than one listening location is required."
I have to disagree. I do not own a NAS yet I have 5 listening locations in my home all being served up by one computer on my network with internal and external 2.5" USB disks and SSD. No dedicated NAS here and the networked listening locations include: Master Bedroom, Guest Bedroom, Family Room, Home Office, and Basement.
There are several ways to setup a digital music playback system and tweak it endlessly. I was offering up a couple practical solutions. The tweaks are up to the OP.
Edits: 02/04/17 02/04/17
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- RE: Quiet storage - AbeCollins 11:50:18 02/04/17 (0)
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