Question about backup on the Core

Given the Core runs a version of linux, I doubt it would be formatting the drive using NTFS. 

When I look at the details of the internal drive (which was formatted by the Core) it definitely says that it was formatted NTFS. 

GT posted:

Given the Core runs a version of linux, I doubt it would be formatting the drive using NTFS. 

Why? Under GNU/Linux you can format a drive partition in NTFS with "mkfs -t ntfs". I regularly use drives with NTFS partitions under GNU/Linux systems. What is not clear to me is why the Core has formatted the attached drive. That makes no sense to me. If the attached drive was formatted in NTFS, the Core should have just mounted it. Why formatting?  

Richard Choong posted:

When I look at the details of the internal drive (which was formatted by the Core) it definitely says that it was formatted NTFS. 

I would ask Naim's technical support. Do you know what was the original FS of the drive? Perhaps you can try to attach a NTFS drive to the Core. In this case it should just mount it, why should it re-format the drive? 

i think it is definitely ordinary NTFS. Don't forget with the Core you can mix and match different music stores and shares and move music around if you want to. Why have the complexity of a drive formatted differently to the rest?

When you Install a drive inside the Core, you then have to define it as a music store and you are asked to agree to it being formatted as part of that. Apart from making sure it is NTFS and not something else, I think the formatting process also sets up the directory structure that the Core uses (IE the same one as US).

best

David

So it still begs the question. Why am I not able to read the back up or the actual internal drive ( I actually removed the internal drive) when I plugged it into a windows PC  It doesn't show up.

Same problem when formating rhe drive for Apple. No chance to see it on my mac

Richard Choong posted:

So it still begs the question. Why am I not able to read the back up or the actual internal drive ( I actually removed the internal drive) when I plugged it into a windows PC  It doesn't show up.

Right, but at this point only Naim's technical service can answer this question I'm afraid. You could also try with a different drive or bring the Core and the formatted drive back to your Naim dealer. Or you try to gather more information on the formatted drive. To this end, gparted (http://gparted.org/) is an excellent tool. It is available for Linux, Windows and OS X.

nbpf posted:

Richard Choong posted:

So it still begs the question. Why am I not able to read the back up or the actual internal drive ( I actually removed the internal drive) when I plugged it into a windows PC  It doesn't show up.

Right, but at this point only Naim's technical service can answer this question I'm afraid. You could also try with a different drive or bring the Core and the formatted drive back to your Naim dealer. Or you try to gather more information on the formatted drive. To this end, gparted (http://gparted.org/) is an excellent tool. It is available for Linux, Windows and OS X.

I guess that's what I will have to do. That said, it's not a critical issue at the moment. This all came up because I decided to change my internal drive to an SSD. I had to back up my original internal drive then restore it to the SSD ( which I put in place of the HDD). The restore went well and the SSD now has the full collection of music that I had on the previous internal HDD. In the end, this question is just one of the many unanswered questions I have in my brain about a great many things. Will just let the dealer know and see if my question gets answered in due course. 

In view of the last few postings, I suspect that my earlier assertion that the internal drive is formatted by the Core for NTFS was wrong. 

But I doubt that asking a dealer will do much unless he/she is really interested in the question. The best way to pursue is to ask Naim technical support.

I am also going to swap my internal HDD for a SSD, but I'n going to do it by reimporting everything from my Unitiserve, but only once Naim have got metadata editing working, because for classical music the present metadata guesswork and assumptions by the Core gives very unhelpful results.

best

David

David Hendon posted:

In view of the last few postings, I suspect that my earlier assertion that the internal drive is formatted by the Core for NTFS was wrong. 

But I doubt that asking a dealer will do much unless he/she is really interested in the question. The best way to pursue is to ask Naim technical support.

best

David

I have already written to Naim's technical support. 

David, Richard:

no matter what the specific weaknesses of the current Core platform might be (I am sure that they will be readily fixed via system upgrades) I believe that a robust approach towards managing a music collection should be fairly universal.

Device-specific features (file systems, folder structure, etc.) obviously need to be addressed but, in my view, should not inform the overall management strategy and workflow.

I have adopted the practice of having really many copies of my music collection: on spare drives at home and at work, in my music server at home, on a drive connected to my router, etc.

All these drives share a common directory structure and are essentially interchangeable. When I buy a new album or edit some metadata, I propagate the changes by means of simple rsync-based scripts to the other drives. This can be done remotely and is very reliable and fast: only differences are actually transferred.

I am not saying that my practice would work well for everyone. But I argue that, no matter which approach one adopts towards managing one's data, this should not be informed by a specific device. 

Thus, if I had a Core, I would not care about how its internal drive is actually formatted and how the folders and files of the drive look like. I would just make sure that I can update those internal data by connecting the Core to a USB drive or by pointing it to whatever LAN resources. This way the Core would be a target in my data management approach and I would not need to care about device-specific features (file system type, folder and file names) propagating to other drives or devices.

Hi,

The internal drive of a Core is NTFS formatted and I have confirmed again today that I can read the internal drive of my Core using a USB caddy in any of my Windows machines here (using Windows 7 or Windows 10). Similarly I confirmed by backing up that same Core to an NTFS formatted USB drive that the drive could be read in the same machines.

Since you were unable to read either then I'm wondering if there could be an issue with the setup of your PC? Can you read other USB attached hard drives?

Phil

Phil Harris posted:

Hi,

The internal drive of a Core is NTFS formatted and I have confirmed again today that I can read the internal drive of my Core using a USB caddy in any of my Windows machines here (using Windows 7 or Windows 10). Similarly I confirmed by backing up that same Core to an NTFS formatted USB drive that the drive could be read in the same machines.

Since you were unable to read either then I'm wondering if there could be an issue with the setup of your PC? Can you read other USB attached hard drives?

Phil

Phil, 

I have tried it with 2 separate notebooks and neither could read the drive. It's odd. I will try again with another notebook (once I get one to try) and report back here.

I used Seagate's Backup Plus Mac Portable drive. The Core could back the data into it very smoothly.

Then I plugged the drive in my Mac Mini (with latest Sierra OS) and it could show me all the files backed up (in appropriate Downloads and Music folders).

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Sourav

I have just down the same as Sourav, same seagate drive and all shows up on my mac ok. Interestingly if I plug it into my muso it doesn't read the drive, presume this is either due to the how the files* are set up or the formatting of the drive.

* when I copied a track off the back up onto another hdd and then added a standard flac file, the flac file played but not the back up file

David O posted:

I have just down the same as Sourav, same seagate drive and all shows up on my mac ok. Interestingly if I plug it into my muso it doesn't read the drive, presume this is either due to the how the files* are set up or the formatting of the drive.

* when I copied a track off the back up onto another hdd and then added a standard flac file, the flac file played but not the back up file

The Mu-so will only read FAT/FAT32 formatted devices (we also don't support USB powered hard discs on the existing Uniti and Mu-so range) and a Core backup would be EXT, HFS or NTFS so won't be recognized by a Mu-so...

Phil