WD Mybook Live and NDX/NDS

My own experience (which is with a Uniti) is that streaming does give better sound quality than USB sticks. I'd think NDX/NDS would only be better still.

I'm sure some people will say it's worth paying more for your NAS than the WD Mybook Live. They may have a point but the whole NAS drive area is far from easy to quantify.

I'd have to add: Do remember you'll need a back-up for the WD Mybook as well. Otherwise in five years time you may find you've lost all your music when the hard drive fails.

Frankly, I still feel this is one of the big drawbacks with NAS storage unless you go for a RAID enclosure.

Streaming does give great quality, convenience etc. But I've said before and it's worth BIM that back-ups are vital.

Jon, two things.  I've read here many times that RAID isn't a substitute for backup; I've taken the many posts here about that to heart and use an external usb drive to backup my Synology 212 (2 hdd in RAID format).  So I backup my entire NAS to an external usb drive plugged into the NAS.  This is all quite simple.  My NAS has a built-in backup function to make backing up to the external drive easy.  Belts and suspenders, but worth it to me.  Suitable usb drives are very inexpensive now

PZ -- I think you'll find having a NAS to be a much more satisfying way to organize your music, much more so than usb sticks.  I did the usb stick thing for a while too but have moved on.  Most people rave about the sound quality of using usb sticks, and I am not sure you'll hear an improvement by changing to a NAS.  Just backup that NAS

Bart,

Yes. I'd take on board all you've said there. I honestly cannot argue with any of it.

I'm still feeling though that streaming is a complicated solution for a great many people.

CD had (has) the benefit of people owning the original copy. With NAS drives we are now saying have a back-up (in RAID) and then another back-up.

I can see why this would put a great many people off going down that route.

Then again, I can see many people buying a WD Mybook Live, loving the functionallity and then tearing their hair out in years to come because they have not backed-up their music library to another drive. But why should they? How many boxes should the average user expect to have?

CD, for all its faults, does have the advantage in that you still have the original copy. As does vinyl.

I wouldn't worry about the kind of NAS. There is the NAS and there is the streamer and in between there is the network. Really, there is no such thing as a "combination of NAS A with streamer B". I recently pulled the LAN plug on my router which leads to my streamer during operation. Guess what - the streamer kept on playing for a good 30 seconds because it is buffering the data. And I bet that any streamer couldn't care less what kind of device the data was stored on as long as it is readily suplied over the network.

Some poeple claim that USB sounds even better than streaming. Anyway, the core purpose of an NDX is streaming from a network. The USB socket is an additional option for the 'quick listen'.

Jon, as for how many backups one should expect to have -- well, it all depends on one's tolerance for pain   If one's digital music is comprised solely of cd rips, and the original cd's are retained, then no add'l backup is needed if one is ok with re-ripping upon hd failure.  One could lose cd's and lp's in a house fire, but as of 2012, I would say that hard drive failure is much more likely than a house fire.  So we backup.

Backing up a Mybook Live is so easy that no one should ever tear out their hair over it.

Bart, are you backing up your US separately to your NAS but use the same external hard drive or do you have a different external hard drive for the US???????

Sorry, some more questions

Also, I think we touched on this before....why do you have a NAS and a US?
If the US were big enough would you just use the US and dispense with the NAS???
What is the benefit of having a NAS as well as a US?

As I was thinking that all I ever needed was the US.......'turnkey' solution and all that.

Jason, I back up the uServe to the NAS, and then the entire NAS to the usb drive. uServe>NAS backup is run by the uServe's backup function, and the NAS>usb drive backup I do manually from the NAS control panel, when I remember to.

I have a NAS and a uServe because when I bought the uServe it was the now-former variety with a 1tb hdd that could NOT be used to store files from external sources.  So any hdtracks music, other rips, etc., had to be on a NAS or usb stick.  That has all changed now with the 2tb uServe version which lets the user store his/her own files in a "Downloads" folder on the hdd. With that version a NAS for music replay via the uServe is redundant. 

But NAS's have other functions on a home network too which one may find useful

Hi,

To answer your question:

Does anybody use NDX/NDS with WD Mybook Live NAS ? NO

Any bad experience with this combination ? NO

I've 5 years experience with WD Drives - I prefer them because they are silent (no fan), reliable & reasonably priced.

I've a 2tb (WD-world) usb (for manual back-up) piggy back on a 1tb (WD-world) Nas (previously used with 1tb US) intended for download from B&W music service.

But my 1tb US drive crashed severally, eventually had it changed to US ssd version, so I had to buy another drive. So, I bought a 2tb Seagate Goflex (because it was on offer). it turns out to be a big mistake, always on sleep - everytime I wake it up, I've to refresh the database control etc.

Two months ago, I bought 2th WD Mybook Live NAS (to replace the seagate) & it's business as usual. It took less than 48 hours to copy 1.3tb of data from seagate to it. The seagate now acts as my second back-up (only switch-on when I need to do backup).

Summary:

WD 2tb usb is 5 years old - originally used to store FLAC files streaming  into Squeezebox duet.

WD 1tb Nas is 2 years old - for online downloads (because the 1st gen of US did not allow it) & it had a usb port which I piggy-back the 2tb for manual backup

WD 2tb My book live is only 2 months old - act as my main NAS to US.

My experience with WD has being good & they are easy to configure. On my personal experience, I can recommend WD NAS.

Also, my suggestion would be to buy 2 NAS of the same required sizes - 1 for Live & the other for backup.

Enjoy!