Seeking advice in selecting Solid state drives to store music (external drives)

[Analogous]

Hi,
Thank you for sharing the cloud storage costs. I did not know the costs were this high.
To your question: yes, my music collection is precious to me. This includes files and albums I have picked up during my work and travels over the years. Also files ripped from my CDs (some of which I have given away since)
I agree with your conclusion that HDD as a back up makes best sense at the moment.

 

[Analogous]

5tb for $99....!!!
But no way to get it here,,

WD's Huge 5TB Easystore Portable Hard Drive is now under $100

A huge amount of portable storage for less

www.tomshardware.com

 

[venkatcr]

Look at the prices here:

https://www.bkp365.com

At 1000/pm for 500GB you will end up paying 4000 for 2TB. That works out to 48K for one year! Wow!!

There are others who quote 7.50 per GB per month.

Strangely Apple seems to be the most reasonable (@800 for 2TB / per month). But I am sure they have restrictions on usage and other conditions.

These guys are offering 5TB at 300 per year for the first year! Their regular pricing seems to be 70$ (or INR4900) per year for 5TB. Tat sound reliable. Sounds like Jio. Get them in cheap, and then squeeze them.

Cheers (to simple HDD!)

 

[Analogous]

Look at the prices here:

https://www.bkp365.com

At 1000/pm for 500GB you will end up paying 4000 for 2TB. That works out to 48K for one year! Wow!!

There are others who quote 7.50 per GB per month.

Strangely Apple seems to be the most reasonable (@800 for 2TB / per month). But I am sure they have restrictions on usage and other conditions.

These guys are offering 5TB at 300 per year for the first year! Their regular pricing seems to be 70$ (or INR4900) per year for 5TB. Tat sound reliable. Sounds like Jio. Get them in cheap, and then squeeze them.

Cheers (to simple HDD!)

This Probably makes sense for corporates with massive data storage requirements.
As you point out it makes more sense for us to get a HDD back up (cost wise)

 

[Analogous]

It sometimes feels like the sky is about to fall!
So, I found this in my news feed (damn! These algorithms are getting scary good)

5 Warning Signs Your SSD Is About to Break Down and Fail

Worried your SSD will malfunction and break down and take all of your data with it? Look for these warning signs.

www.makeuseof.com

 

[[email protected]]

I would not read too much into MTBF figures. Those are averages across thousands of drives.
It does not mean that a particular drive cannot fail in 6 months.

I have had multiple HDD failures over the years.
Hence I always backup - to a NAS drive with RAID.

Any solid state device (SSD or thumb drive) will always have lower chances of failure, than a electro-mechanical device with moving parts, like a HDD.

For storing video and movies, HDD is still the economical choice (multiple gigabytes of storage needed).

But for music, where storage space needs are much lower, I would always reccomend solid state storage.
Still , always, keep a back up.

Hello Arghya Thanks for this message. I too facing issues with HDD drives. Too many drives I have and all are for music. Solid state storage is costly....still. Not sure whats the best way in that case? I have more than 2000 CD to store in digital formats. Converted to FLAC now. I live in Chennai too

 

[[email protected]]

Hi,
Thank you for sharing the cloud storage costs. I did not know the costs were this high.
To your question: yes, my music collection is precious to me. This includes files and albums I have picked up during my work and travels over the years. Also files ripped from my CDs (some of which I have given away since)
I agree with your conclusion that HDD as a back up makes best sense at the moment.

But Life span is Poor. thats why I am thinking to reconvert to DVD (because 2000CD ripped)

 

[argho]

But Life span is Poor. thats why I am thinking to reconvert to DVD (because 2000CD ripped)

What is the total size of your flac file collection ?

 

[OM_2K19]

But Life span is Poor. thats why I am thinking to reconvert to DVD (because 2000CD ripped)

Well, I have been using these super cheap Seagate Expansion Portable Drive 24x7 hooked to my Roon Core/Plex for the last 2.5 years, and they are still holding strong. You can put your collection on a Cold Drive as a backup for Disaster Recovery and make another copy for daily consumption if you are worried about data loss.

 

[jigarpatel]

But Life span is Poor. thats why I am thinking to reconvert to DVD (because 2000CD ripped)

If you want to store it on DVD, following article will help you in selecting right DVD media in term of longevity.

Longevity of Recordable CDs, DVDs and Blu-rays — Canadian Conservation Institute (CCI) Notes 19/1 - Canada.ca

www.canada.ca

 

[[email protected]]

Hi,
I am looking to buy a External SSD to store my music and connect to my streamer.
Online searches show a number of companies selling SSDs with a range of capacities (128gb -2 Tb) Lots of variation in prices too.
Can anyone with some first hand knowledge advise on:
- what’s the “sweet spot” currently in terms of memory capacity and good value for money.
- build quality and reliability.

500 GB = 4500 INR - But remember to convert to FLAC atleast while transferring, if you are not doing already. if you use DVD R then it should be 35-37 INR each DVD thats 4.7 GB. so how much you have i dont know. Its your decision.

 

[[email protected]]

If you want to store it on DVD, following article will help you in selecting right DVD media in term of longevity.

Longevity of Recordable CDs, DVDs and Blu-rays — Canadian Conservation Institute (CCI) Notes 19/1 - Canada.ca

www.canada.ca

Thank you for sharing. Its a good one.

 

[jigarpatel]

Weather you use SSD or HDD, they are bound to fail, only question is when.
It's better to be prepared for failure. In my view good strategy would be as below

1. Have NAS -from which you will consume media on day to day basis.
2. Have Backup
   1. Backup 1: at your home
   2. Backup 2: at offsite, might be at your friends home

Only good backup strategy will save you from failure.
Last but not least: NAS is not a backup. If someone deletes files accidently, you will loose files.

 

[IndianEars]

I agree with Jigar. Further:

1. The best Back up strategy is to share your library with friends... requesting them to maintain your folder names.
This will yield multiple backups at diverse locations

2. A NAS is only a means to expand the capacity of HDDs. It certainly not a good back up. Failure of the NAS Power Supply can instantly kill all HDDs in the NAS, if the PSU dies, giving out an electrical surge..... This has happened to a friend who is also a forum member here......

 

[raghupb]

I agree with Jigar. Further:

1. The best Back up strategy is to share your library with friends... requesting them to maintain your folder names.
This will yield multiple backups at diverse locations

2. A NAS is only a means to expand the capacity of HDDs. It certainly not a good back up. Failure of the NAS Power Supply can instantly kill all HDDs in the NAS, if the PSU dies, giving out an electrical surge..... This has happened to a friend who is also a forum member here......

That's out of box thinking
Cheers,
Raghu

 

[Kannan]

Two high capacity hard drive 8/16 TB can be retained for storing all music.
One can be retained as unpowered (powered only occassionally) and the other as active storage.
Cloud storage can be used as additional option.

 

[OM_2K19]

I agree with Jigar. Further:

1. The best Back up strategy is to share your library with friends... requesting them to maintain your folder names.
This will yield multiple backups at diverse locations

Why not to send one copy to Iron Mountain?

 

[IndianEars]

Two high capacity hard drive 8/16 TB can be retained for storing all music.
One can be retained as unpowered (powered only occassionally) and the other as active storage.
Cloud storage can be used as additional option.

This is exactly what I do, Kannan.

I started with 2 separate external usb drives of 4 TB Each... one active n one only activated for backups.

When i outgrew 4 TB, I bought an 8TB External, Powered, USB HDD n now use the 2 old 4 TBs as backups.

If feel its more secure n cheaper than a NAS

 

[IndianEars]

But Life span is Poor. thats why I am thinking to reconvert to DVD (because 2000CD ripped)

I would personally advise you against this approach ("reconvert to DVD").

2000 CDs ripped in wav will very easily be accommodated on a 2tb hard disk.

Flac files will take half that space but I personally feel that wav files sound better then Flac. This is of course a controversial topic and I do not intend to open a Pandora's box here on this topic.

I can confidentially say that no one has ever felt that wav sounds inferior to flac.
Hence you certainly do not lose sound quality by keeping all your files in wav.

2tb HDD is reasonably priced nowadays and you can even afford 2 hard disc of 4 TB each (for future rips) ...... one for use and one for backup

I prefer externally powered USB drives as they are bigger physically and more robust

I have personally had bad experiences with Seagate hard drives which have almost always died within 3 years. When submitted for warranty they replace with refurbished hard drives which again fail in less than one year so you lose your data TWICE!

fortunately I have had no problems with Western Digital hard drives which have proved very robust in use in my setup.YMMV.

 

[Dr Sarkar]

I can vouch for Samsung SSDs. I’m using a couple with my Mac mini. Blazing fast. Regards