Will there be an HDX with more memory

quote:

Originally posted by Rockingdoc:
I have been waiting before buying the HDX because it currently does not offer enough internal storage for me. Now we are a couple of years down the line, I am sure Naim could source larger capacity hard-drives that meet the other specs. required.
I wonder whether a larger capacity HD will be offered, or whether the NAS route will be the only option for future increased storage.
Personally, I like the original one box concept, and think that NAS is a less elegant solution, not to mention requiring re-wiring my house with CAT5 cable.

I would advise to go for the NAS-route.

It will give you unlimited storage capacity.

A 1 TB or even 2 TB internal disk will fill up someday.

-
aleg

quote:

Originally posted by Rockingdoc:

Personally, I like the original one box concept, and think that NAS is a less elegant solution, not to mention requiring re-wiring my house with CAT5 cable.

The one-box concept of the HDX is one of its under-rated features - it's what attracted me in the first place. But there doesn't IMHO appear to be a reason why the internal storage needs to be increased any more, as the NAS gives you effectivly infinite capacity.
You don't have to have a wired network to use a NAS. Mine is upstairs, connected to the HDX via a wireless Airport Express - works just fine. In principle, you could also have a NAS local to the HDX, using wired ethernet, although I'm not sure there's such a thing as a quiet NAS! Certainly wouldn't work with mine.

quote:

Originally posted by Rockingdoc:
not to mention requiring re-wiring my house with CAT5 cable.

Surely you already have networking to your HDX for CD lookup, etc? Just place the NAS with your router.

Eloise

quote:

Originally posted by Nero:
In principle, you could also have a NAS local to the HDX, using wired ethernet

Is this true? You need to connect the HDX via Ethernet to an internet-connected network in order to get CD track info; so how can you connect a "local" drive to the Ethernet port? And doesn't an NAS drive have to connect to a router?

I agree it would be a strange configuration, but I think you could connect directly with a crossover cable. However, if you need internet connectivity (obviously for CD ripping lookup), then it makes overwhelming sense to have a router/switch in there somewhere. All I'm saying is that the NAS doesn't have to be very far away, and doesn't involve rewiring your house with CAT5. Wireless connection works fine for me - the only connection I have to my HDX is to an Airport

I am in the process of comparing the HDX HDD versus NAS versus a retro modded CDX2. It is my hope that I won’t be able to hear a difference between the NAS and the HDD, but I’m not far enough along the process to say. At some point any HDD will fail and I would much rather recover music from a mirrored and/or externally backed up NAS than send an HDX back to get my music rescued. This seems the more sensible way to go and in time (sound quality considerations accepted) I can see nothing residing on my HDX. As alluded to above, I had to install a bridge to get network connectivity for the HDX and having done that it was a painless step to hang a NAS off it.

And 500G won't be enough. Easier to add more capacity on a NAS.

I still think needing to use network storage flies in the face of the initial plug and play one box solution for digital file storage and playback.
For example, I'd like to use an HDX to transport my high resolution music player to another use in a remote system, like a giant, high quality iPod.

If network streaming is unwanted or not possible you still have the option of plugging a USB storage device into the HDX. I don’t know if this can be converted to a music store though. The manual has many pages and it’s not something I’ve considered.

If I end up taking the HDX plunge (will see what transpires with the SSD) my plan was to use one of the higher end ReadyNAS models (or similar) to feed it, some of which have x2 ethernet ports....My thinking was I would run one cable direct from the NAS to the HDX giving it the most optimum connection, whilst another ethernet lead could route to the rest of my network via the router/switch.......However, reading this thread through, I've now just realised this may not give the HDX net access which I hadn't been thinking of - i.e. I don't know if the NAS will act as a hub and pass the net feed on from the other ethernet port....??

Steve.

Steve - just use a dedicated switch (simple Netgear 4 port) - NAS into one port, HDX into the other port and one port to your existing router. It'll keep general network traffic off the 'music' network and still allow the HDX access to your normal network router via the switch for internet access / control via wireless devices.

James

Yeah I guess James (I've actually got a 3com 16 port giga switch within my network)...it was just that I saw the NAS had 2 ethernet ports so thought to myself "cool, I'll run one direct to the HDX (if it is to be) and keep that bandwidth totally away from the rest of the network.." but wasn't thinking about the need for net access for look-up etc.....I'm sure it will be fine via the 'normal' method as you suggest, but was just wondering out loud....

quote:

Originally posted by james n:
Steve - just use a dedicated switch (simple Netgear 4 port) - NAS into one port, HDX into the other port and one port to your existing router. It'll keep general network traffic off the 'music' network and still allow the HDX access to your normal network router via the switch for internet access / control via wireless devices. James

Exactly what I’ve done (and I suspect many others). I have a four port Buffalo bridge with the HDX and NAS wired to it. The primary objective was to get web access for the HDX. Having established that, it was surprisingly easy to just drop a NAS in, and off it went. I have compared ripped CDs on the HDX HDD and NAS and found no differences that I can hear.

quote:

Originally posted by Rockingdoc:
I still think needing to use network storage flies in the face of the initial plug and play one box solution for digital file storage and playback.
For example, I'd like to use an HDX to transport my high resolution music player to another use in a remote system, like a giant, high quality iPod.

Unfortunately, just like an iPod, the capacity has limits. Having said that 500GB is enough to get a lot of albums onboard!

However, a simple expansion option for travelling is to add capacity via an external portable hard drive. It even takes power from the HDX/NSXX, so it's just like plugging in an oversized USB stick.

So long as you get the folder structure right (simple when you know how), you can fill a portable hard drive with music and cover art and easily move your music collection from place to place. We did this at Naim for HDX/NSXX demos. Just plug the drive into one of the USB sockets on any HDX/NSS machine, give it a few minutes to read the drive and build a database, and you're set to go. When you undock the drive, the HDX/NSXX removes the database. Simple. Sure beats carting loads of discs around the world!!

Richard
I spoke to Phil about this, and he suggested that it is by no means certain that the HDX will support USB hard drives - the conversation went along the lines of "I wish the salesmen wouldn't do that at shows"
I tried it with a WD Passport (which I saw Doug using at one demo) and couldn't get it to recognise the drive. But that was without external power. Maybe I need a 555PS for the USB HD
What's the official factory line on this?
Cheers
John

Yes, Phil will no doubt throttle me for this. I wasn't aware that this is not "official" and Phil may well be right that it cannot be guaranteed that the HDX will support certain drives.

My own drive was set up and prepared by Phil, so he would be the best one to comment further here.

John, I've alerted Phil to the thread so hopefully he'll be along soon to give the official Naim line and explain any issues here.

One of the issues with USB drives is the lack of feedback to the host OS prior to entering sleep mode, which really makes things a bit difficult when trying to keep the database synchronized with all available volumes.

With the 1.5a software, it is reasonably easy to put together a copied traveling drive with full metadata "blobs" and artwork as copied from the server folder structure–that said, one still has to contend with the fact that the drive chipset may elect to save energy, rather than to do its job!

Oh dear, I thought it was going to be ok after all, but now my head hurts.
I really do want an HDX, but even my dealer is a bit iffy about some of these issues.

Read the forum, listen to your dealer, keep your cash in your pocket until something changes.
Job done.

quote:

Originally posted by Rockingdoc:
Oh dear, I thought it was going to be ok after all, but now my head hurts.
I really do want an HDX, but even my dealer is a bit iffy about some of these issues.

Rockingdoc

There is IMO no need to hold back.

Because there is no issue.

You just shouldn't use USB-hard drives with the HDX.

You either use the internal drives and if you want more storage than that, you use a NAS.

No problems, no issues.

Problems and issues arise when people are trying to use 'things' the machine wasn't designed for.

If you just use what Naim tells you to use then there is no problem.

-
aleg

Hi Guys,

Richard pointed me at this thread yesterday so lets see if we can dispell some myths and misinformation in one hit...

OK - firstly the "can we have bigger drives" question ... at the moment we have 500Gb drives in the HDX and it may seem a simple proposition to just swap those out and "throw in" bigger drives. In practical terms it's not that difficult for us to do this however the larger drives have more platters and tend to have two problems - firstly that they are noisier and secondly that they run hotter and obviously we don't want to have a HDX that is clearly audible in use or has to run with the fan on permanently to extract heat from hot running drives.

Also remember that no matter how big the drives that we put into these units there will always be an (increasingly smaller) number of users who it is just a little too small for and 500Gb (approx. 720 discs) covers most users collections - putting in larger drives (and remember that requires two drives) bumps up the cost for everyone.

The HDX has to have access to an internet connection to perform its lookups correctly whilst ripping - we strongly encourage the use of (and only provide support for) a direct wired connection from the HDX to the customers router but I acknowledge that other forms of connection can be used (Ethernet over powerline, WiFi etc.). We only provide support for direct wired connections because both WiFi and Ethernet over Powerline solutions are subject to external influences which can reduce (or in some instances completely kill) end-to-end throughput.

It's been asked about whether the HDX supports USB hard discs to expand storage - no it doesn't. There are several reasons for this. Some of them down to USB specs - USB allows for devices to disconnect and reconnect from the host whilst in use and USB is also quite a heavy processing load, neither of which are appropriate for our requirements. Also (and this is where Neros comment comes in) self-powered USB attached drives typically exceed 500mA current draw (the USB spec) and although most PCs will happily support this they are actually outside the USB specs. The sales guys do often use USB drives to hold their own preferred collections of music - and generally get away with using them - but we do not guarantee that USB attached hard discs will be able to run from the HDX and so we do try to ensure that if they do use a USB attached drive then they keep it out of the way so it isn't assumed that they work. USB also takes a long time to index if you have a large drive of music so the official line is that USB should only be used for "transient" collections of music - things like MP3 players (anything that supports use as a data device should be fine) and USB pendrives containing music files. An XPS-2 or 555PS provides a cleaner and more capable power feed to the analogue sections of the HDX and so doesn't provide any additional power for USB support.

The NAS route is pretty straightforward to be honest - a NetGear ReadyNAS DUO can be had for a bit over £100, slot in a couple of drives of your preferred capacity and create a share on it, point the HDX at the share and it acts as a completely transparent extension of the HDXs own internal storage - run out of space again and you can simply add more NASs or (if your NAS supports it) just add bigger drives to your existing NAS. The HDX supports multiple stores - again all transparently - which can be reordered in terms of ripping priority. (My own HDX is set to rip to several shares on my 20Tb Windows Home Server box in preference to the internal drive - however all I see is one big collection of music.)

Hopefully that clarifies things a bit?

Cheers

Phil