Best USB drive for ripping on Uniti Star?

Twin drives in RAID don't make a backup. I would go for a single drive unit, and then get another USB drive to back it up. 

100% Chris,  RAID-1 is not a secure back up.     I have a Synology 2 bay in RAID1 plus I use a separate WD "My Passport" USB for backup;   its stored (not connected) in another part of the house.    I plug it in on a regular basis such as when I get new albums and/or when I back up the family 'pooters (another hard drive) on a monthly basis 

I question the choice of WD My Book,  what UPnP software does it have,  can it load Minimserver or Asset or is it stuck with tWonky??  If its tWonky or nothing,  then I would seriously not go there,  better go with Synology or QNAP.

Mike, I assume that DJ is not intending to put a UPnP server on the drive, as he just wants to store CDs ripped on his Star and play them through it. The new streamers are also servers for locally attached storage, so a regular USB drive is all he needs. 

OK good point Chris,  I missed the Star part,  my bad 

Thanks folks.

Will RAID1 mean that if a drive fails I still have everything on the other and can replace the faulty drive and just carry on without having to do any techy stuff? But it won’t protect from catastrophic failure like whole unit going bang, house fire, theft, etc. For that I need a separate single drive kept elsewhere?

How complicated is it to do the separate backup?

Hi DJ,

At Synology it's very easy, based on Hyper backup app you can backup everything which has been stored at your nas. I have a synology ds214 with two WD red drives (SHR configuration) and an external backup on WD "My passport" drive.

In my opinion it's just "plug and play" -not difficult at all.

Kacper

With RAID-1 if one HDD fails,  the other HDD is OK,  the NAS enters RAID recovery & all you need do is change the bad HDD & the NAS will copy data over to the new one.   However if something happens to the NAS, such as a NAS crash, power failure when the HDD is reading or a virus,   then both HDD's might possibly be trashed.  

My backup as I said in my previous post is done on a WD My Passport Ultra USB drive,  its a small plastic block (825 x 110 x 22mm).  I just plug it into my NAS USB port & tell the NAS to run a backup,  it takes a few minutes.   No set up required,  just plug it in & the NAS software does the rest. 

DJ posted:

Thanks folks.

Will RAID1 mean that if a drive fails I still have everything on the other and can replace the faulty drive and just carry on without having to do any techy stuff? But it won’t protect from catastrophic failure like whole unit going bang, house fire, theft, etc. For that I need a separate single drive kept elsewhere?

How complicated is it to do the separate backup?

 if you go for Synology try that configuration:

https://www.synology.com/en-gl...logy_Hybrid_RAID_SHR

DJ posted:

Thanks folks.

Will RAID1 mean that if a drive fails I still have everything on the other and can replace the faulty drive and just carry on without having to do any techy stuff? But it won’t protect from catastrophic failure like whole unit going bang, house fire, theft, etc. For that I need a separate single drive kept elsewhere?

How complicated is it to do the separate backup?

The Star has a backup system of its own, which you can set up and operate from within the app. I haven't used it, but it looks pretty straightforward.

You need a proper backup strategy, and RAID doesn't cover all the bases - in fact, it hardly covers any of them, so personally, I wouldn't bother with it.

If you have a separate back up drive connected to the NAS and it gets corrupted some how will the back up drive back up the corrupted files ie. also be corrupted?

There are separate back ups for every back up occasion so you just go back to the last good version. I have a separate hard drive connected to my synology was and have set it to automatically do a daily back up. 

As mentioned above the hyper back up app which is part of the synology was is very user friendly.

Assuming the Star uses the same app backup functionality as the Core, I got this working to a Synology NAS after some effort. You have to setup a dedicated shared folder and, after the initial backup of your music store, the app subsequently performs incremental backups of any new music that's been added. I did try the app's scheduled backup feature but this attempts to backup at 2am each morning. If you've enabled the power-saving feature on your Synology and it hibernates overnight, the backup obviously fails and the app doesn't retry. 

You might want to consider the MyCloud over the MyBook as a true NAS.  It's also very good for beginners who aren't network experts.  I have a MyCloud EX2 as my primary/RAID server, a second single disk MyCloud at a second location as my primary backup and a 4TB HDD in my main desktop as a "belt and braces" 3rd backup!

Guys our OP is asking for a USB drive to use with the Star. Why are you talking of NAS? It won t work for the Star to rip to... it has to be USB.

Use a WD My Passport or a Seagate Slim Back up. If you prefer to use a unit with a 3.5’’ drive (a la My Book) you will use an external power supply. If you are ready to spend more, buy one of those USB boxes and fit a Samsung SSD drive. This USB drive will be permanently attached to the Star rear USB socket and use another unit to back it up from time to time.

Uniti Star can only rip via USB to an attached drive, it can't rip to a NAS.  It can serve from a NAS though if music is already stored.

I want to rip using the Star so need a USB drive.  Choices seem to be Seagate Expansion 4TB £90 or WD MY BOOK 4TB £110 or MY BOOK DUO 2 x 4TB RAID £300.

Any experience of any of these?  How noisy are they?

With my Uniti Star I use a Seagate Expansion 3TB, it works very well.....

Thanks Emme

how noisy is it?

ChrisSU posted:

... The new streamers are also servers for locally attached storage, so a regular USB drive is all he needs. 

Hi ChrisSU, not sure I get this point: what is different between the new and old streamers if you attach a USB disk, say 1Tb?

With the old ones I had not much use of the USB port as (a) the UI was incomparable to UpnP (no browsing options,  no album art, etc) and (b) I think there was a restriction to FAT partitioned disks only.

With the new range restriction (b) is presumably removed but wouldn’t (a) still remain an issue?

DrPo posted:

ChrisSU posted:

... The new streamers are also servers for locally attached storage, so a regular USB drive is all he needs. 

Hi ChrisSU, not sure I get this point: what is different between the new and old streamers if you attach a USB disk, say 1Tb?

With the old ones I had not much use of the USB port as (a) the UI was incomparable to UpnP (no browsing options,  no album art, etc) and (b) I think there was a restriction to FAT partitioned disks only.

With the new range restriction (b) is presumably removed but wouldn’t (a) still remain an issue?

 

(a) new Uniti has a self-browser to navigate like UPnP server

(b) you should choose NTFS or HFS+

DJ posted:

Thanks Emme

how noisy is it?

a little bit if you are near the HDD, no problems in listening position

Thanks 

@Emme: thanks for the clarification. I wasn't aware.

DrPo posted:

ChrisSU posted:

... The new streamers are also servers for locally attached storage, so a regular USB drive is all he needs. 

Hi ChrisSU, not sure I get this point: what is different between the new and old streamers if you attach a USB disk, say 1Tb?

With the old ones I had not much use of the USB port as (a) the UI was incomparable to UpnP (no browsing options,  no album art, etc) and (b) I think there was a restriction to FAT partitioned disks only.

With the new range restriction (b) is presumably removed but wouldn’t (a) still remain an issue?

All the new streamers (Atom, Star and Nova so far) have UPnP server software on them. This will allow you to view music on a directly attached USB drive in the UPnP Server input on your Star (where it should be visible as 'Local Music') or on any other UPnP streamer, not only Naim ones. 

It you try to view the same USB drive through the USB input you will probably find that you get a more limited view of the metadata, although the music should still play. This is much the same on new and old streamers.

The possible downside to this is that according to Naim's blurb, I seem to recall that there is a limit to the amount of music you can store and serve in this way compared to on a proper NAS/Server. I can't remember what that limit is, although I have a USB stick with about 350 albums on it, and my Atom has no trouble dealing with that.

Limit is 20k tracks