Max USB stick capacity

I use several 64GB FAT32 sticks with my ND5XS...no problems.

Thanks for that Paul and co.

Just a quick thought about using a USB stick for the car stereo.  I am not sure how to go about it if the stereo does not have a USB connection. Anybody found a way, for instance can one buy a cable that can be used?

Jason

Just to add to this thread, i have a lot of music backed up onto these small portable USB drives and mine are 1Tb size each.

I can plug one of these drives into the HDX and it works, to play music from it.

I know its not meant for that, and the USB port is not meant to power the USB drives, but it does and it shows the statement of no max capacity, as i have the 1Tb working

These are hdd's, not ssd's?  Good to know . . . !

Thanks to those who replied - just for clarity, I meant the USB flash drives.  Useful for playing high res files on Unitserve if you don't have a NAS. Anyway, good to have it reconfirmed that there is no size limit.

Cheers, Paul

Yes bart, they are they atandard western digital / iomega / toshiba hdd units that sell in Ireland for around 100 euro.

I was not aware you could get SSD drives of this size?

The issue I have with flash drives in my car is, that it will play the music without probs from any size flash drive but it will only recognize music up to the max data volume of 32 GB. Anything above that is simply ignored.

1TB USB SSD devices have recently been  developed by Kingston and others. expect to see them availableshortly. From what I can see they are USB3.0 devices.

Simon

Really? Then it must be good news to us but I guess cost is another factor during product development stage. On 2nd thought, all the 3rd party music players such as Audirvana, Bit Perfect, Amarra, Pure Music etc are using computer RAM to preload tracks to play so rendering the types of external storage irrelevant unless we store our music library internally. Is this so?

My current setup has a 12Tb NAS drive to store the music, and have used around 4Tb of that capacity. I am not sure there are music players that store such sizes.

My HDX is a 1Tb unit and max you can get is 2Tb, so i do need external storage.

So as a NAS is needed, i imagine an SSD version would be better due to its absolute silent design with no spinning discs?

12TB storage is huge and accommodate many years of collection. I think if we need more than 1TB storage, external one is the solution. I reckon SSD is preferred for its dead silence operation without the noise from the spinning disc and the fan. But then again, we can always place our NAS in another room or further away from the listening spot. And, I still do not think SSD has any bearing on the sound quality as mentioned that these plugged-in music players are using RAM to pre-load the tracks before playing rather than real time. Therefore, the possibility of audio drop-out or error in reading is almost negligible.

Agreed. The reason for the 12Tb was to ensure enough space for now and looking ahead, plus i have the NAS set up in RAID 5 configuration to offer some protection. (all also backed up onto a set of offline drives)

Mikapoh, sorry I didn't understand your question... Explain again why SSD storage may be irrelevant for some devices.

Ta

Simon

Simon, my question was referring to any gain in sound quality by using external SSD storage as opposed to conventional HDD in the context of a computer based system. In my limited knowledge of the subject, I understand apart from elimination of the spinning noise, there is no audible gain in sound department. This is because when one is using memory playback software (ie, Audirvana, Amarra, Pure Music etc) which load the audio data from external storage into RAM, the actual playback is from RAM so there is less or no errors in reading the data. We can even configure the playback software, say 6GB of RAM that easily accommodate the loading of few albums into the RAM, thus avoiding the need for spinning the HDD in real time. In view of this, I am saying no audible sound improvement whether our external storage is HDD or SSD. But I could be proven wrong as I am no expert in this field.

On the other hand, I have to say again that SSD will most likely have impact on the sound quality if one is using iTunes only since it is playing the audio data directly from the hard drive.

Mikapoh,

you seem to assume that the use of HDDs automatically induces reading errors and that a SSD will not. Mabye this is the reason why most tax bills are incorrect ...

SSDs undoubtedly have their merrits but safer data reading is not one of them.

In terms of drive storage, my focus on whether to use HDD or SSD would be based on my perieved benefits of data security rather than other items.

I assume that SQ etc are on a level playing field, however the perenial issue of spinning discs being susceptable to impact damage etc and result in drive read errors is a key focus for me.

Surely SSD by its nature offers a safer and more secure storage option and that would be my reason for moving to SSD drives when they are of a sufficient ize nd cost effective

Mikapoh, thanks, yes I agree with PinkHamster, lack of data errors is not a particularly strong attribute of  SSD with current technology, and R/W cycles are not overly impressive, but the advantages are size, power consumption, and envionmental.

In terms of SQ if digital clocks and analogue circuits are completely decoupled from the drives EMI and powerlines and ground currents, I can't see there would be much if any difference between the two drive types.

Simon

Ops, did I? Apology, perhaps my last sentence has been misleading. What i meant was if we were using internal drives as music storage, inevitably SSD will have an added advantage due to the much lesser electrical noise generating from the spinning disc. Moreover, It also runs cooler and operate with zero vibrations that will degrade the sound quality rather than high speed spinning of the disc. 

So it seems that SSD has some demerits in data reading. Another one is reliability issue?

I guess Mikapoh is driving at the possible data transfer error/ delay through network NAS vs RAM playback. Not SSD vs conventional HDDs.

Thanks Simon for the decoupling explanations. You know I was hoping you could reply earlier on my question. My learning curve is still steep :-)

Another question for you. Do you think the types of USB cable will have audible effect from external HDD (which house the music library) to the Mac Mini? Or, any computer grade USB cable should get the job done?

Thanks in advance.

I was interested in the comments abodata reacts data reading errors.  How would such errors sound ?  Just curious, I have 3 ssd drives plugged into the back of my Unitiserve, and the set has been faultless so far. So, if there are data errors, would the music simply not play ? Or would it play but sound odd ? If so, how odd ?

Paul

Gents,

there are no data reading errors involved, neither playing from a UPnP server nor from a USB storage device. How do you think Excel would react if there was faulty data coming from a USB drive? It would either crash or give you false data. Have you ever experienced that? (Well, Excel crashing maybe, but not on the account of faulty data from astorage device)

Mikapoh - i very much doubt such cables have a difference in sound. I guess if the cable was very badly designed and it was radiating RFI it might just cause side effects elsewhere - but i would have thought your Mac PC  would be radiating more RF EMI - albeit at acceptable levels.

Paul - the error rate we are talking is extremely low - so that might be one or two bits in your whole 1TB music collection if you are unlucky.  Further the drive subsystem manages almost all of this for you - and marks an area out of service if its damaged or error prone - and the data is moved to another area of the drive. The subsystem usually uses Reed Solomon type redundancy or equivalent to perform data recovery if its a single bit that has gone bad, such that the error  is not seen by the host computer.

An error that is not correctable if executed will usually exit the app or crash the computer. In audio, if the error was fortunate enough to be in the sample data ... then it might be a click, silence, or completely un noticable.

But - non correctable errors will usually fail parity or a checksum- and be flagged and prompt the subsystem to try and re read the data until correct or give-up and mark the file as bad.. hence why we mirror drives in critical applications.

Simon

Can anyone tell me how you get Flac music files from a Windows 8 Laptop (only supports NTFS & exFAT) onto a 64Gb Fat32 formatted USB Datacard?