1TB SSD for under £400

[MCRU]

Just received one of these babies, should fit a few FLACs and DSD files on!

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

[bigmarty]

Great find,
how would you use it? Could you find some sort of enclosure and use it as an external drive. My mac at home is getting a bit full and thinking this would be perfect for putting my iTunes library on and using it to stream to my hifi via airport express? Any help would be appreciated.

Marty

[WAD62]

Great find,
how would you use it? Could you find some sort of enclosure and use it as an external drive. My mac at home is getting a bit full and thinking this would be perfect for putting my iTunes library on and using it to stream to my hifi via airport express? Any help would be appreciated.

Marty

I'd suggest that using it in a NAS would be a bit of overkill, as you can physically 'decouple' a NAS and also place it another room, you can pick up a standard 3.5" 1TB HD for about £50.

I think the best use of SSHDs is if you're using a computer as your streamer, wired into a DAC, thus benefiting from both reduced electrical & HD noise IMHO

[AlexM]

I'd suggest that using it in a NAS would be a bit of overkill, as you can physically 'decouple' a NAS and also place it another room, you can pick up a standard 3.5" 1TB HD for about £50.

I think the best use of SSHDs is if you're using a computer as your streamer, wired into a DAC, thus benefiting from both reduced electrical & HD noise IMHO

+1 - use a small fanless, headless PC as a playback device with a small SSD, and a NAS full of spinning rust located somewhere else for capacity.

That crucial 960Gb drive is well-priced, but the cost per bit is still 15-20x the equivilent hard drive, and that isn't going to narrow in the near future - I upgraded my NAS to 10Tb for less than that six months ago. I'm still not convinced that it wouldn't be better to have a large hard drive for music combined with a small SSD for OS, apps and swap files if you don't want to do go the streaming/NAS route - if you just used the HD for music file storage you will get minimal seek noise, and with the right case it would be practically inaudible.

I am also still concerned about the long term reliability of MLC flash drives, although in a low write IO environment they should be fine. Backups are starting to become a problem at multi-terabyte level!.

Regards,
Alex

[Gazjam]

onboard SSD sounds better than a NAS though

[AlexM]

using what setup? presume that you mean using an SSD internal drive. `What about HD in an external eSATA enclosure?. I can't say that I find my Macbook pro with SSD sounds better than the SBT/NAS. I haven't noticed a difference using JRiver Media Centre either comparing using a network drive vs. a library local on the MBP internal drive either.

I think that if you have a large library then the cost of an SSD is better spent elsewhere.

[Tim]

"That crucial 960Gb drive is well-priced, but the cost per bit is still 15-20x the equivilent hard drive, and that isn't going to narrow in the near future"

Well I have to disagree with this (sorry), the cost of SSD's will continue to fall and capacities will increase. Just read the internet Tech reports, the Register and hard drive manufacturer reports about where there are going with drive technology. Just today I was reading an article about 100TB drives by 2018 (not SSD mind you) and 1.5PB by the end of the decade. DRAM and NAND scaling does have an upper size limit but prices of consumer sized units are going to continue to fall before they stabilise.

"I think that if you have a large library then the cost of an SSD is better spent elsewhere"

Yes agreed, *but only if sound quality isn't your top priority*. I agree 100% with Gary and after endless (and I mean endless) testing on my home server, apart from a memory stick which isn't practicable, an internal SSD holding a music library gives me the best result . . . period. A NAS will be much cheaper, but in a dedicated server it won't IME please you as much as an SSD will. I am not alone in these findings, but as in anything YMMV depending on the individual configuration of your playback system. I currently run a 2TB WD RED mechanical drive externally, plugged by a longish SATA cable directly into the motherboard and powered independently. That is the closest I have got to an internal SSD and its not elegant, but does the job without breaking the bank. As soon as a 1TB SSD dips below £300 I will be buying one and I'm a tight arse, but I consider it to be worth it. I think Martin has SSD's in his server and has reported similar results.

Anyway, horses for courses, but as far as I'm concerned a serious (user friendly) music server should be playing its music from an internal SSD, not mechanical drives, USB drives, eSATA drives or a NAS. But that's just my opinion and a lot will depend on your budget too

[NRG]

maybe worth pointing out that the SSD drive above will end up with a usable capacity of somewhere near 880GB when formatted...

[Tim]

maybe worth pointing out that the SSD drive above will end up with a usable capacity of somewhere near 880GB when formatted...

Good point Neal, I'm going to need two at some point, but my library right now is 771GB, so will just squeeze in

[AlexM]

Well I have to disagree with this (sorry), the cost of SSD's will continue to fall and capacities will increase. Just read the internet Tech reports, the Register and hard drive manufacturer reports about where there are going with drive technology. Just today I was reading an article about 100TB drives by 2018 (not SSD mind you) and 1.5PB by the end of the decade. DRAM and NAND scaling does have an upper size limit but prices of consumer sized units are going to continue to fall before they stabilise.



Yes agreed, *but only if sound quality isn't your top priority*. I agree 100% with Gary and after endless (and I mean endless) testing on my home server, apart from a memory stick which isn't practicable, an internal SSD holding a music library gives me the best result . . . period. A NAS will be much cheaper, but in a dedicated server it won't IME please you as much as an SSD will. I am not alone in these findings, but as in anything YMMV depending on the individual configuration of your playback system. I currently run a 2TB WD RED mechanical drive externally, plugged by a longish SATA cable directly into the motherboard and powered independently. That is the closest I have got to an internal SSD and its not elegant, but does the job without breaking the bank. As soon as a 1TB SSD dips below £300 I will be buying one and I'm a tight arse, but I consider it to be worth it. I think Martin has SSD's in his server and has reported similar results.

Anyway, horses for courses, but as far as I'm concerned a serious (user friendly) music server should be playing its music from an internal SSD, not mechanical drives, USB drives, eSATA drives or a NAS. But that's just my opinion and a lot will depend on your budget too

Tim,

I have used an SSD as an internal source, and didn't notice any improvement in SQ over either using a remote share, or an internal HD on a Macbook Pro. Is your music server using an internal soundcard or an external DAC?. I use optical or SPDIF outputs to an external DAC (well, the Cambridge Audio 851C dac section), and that might be part of it. The upsampling/reclocking in this DAC has very jitter rejection, so it might be less susceptible to influences in the streaming component.

I have read that most would agree with your preference with SSDs, but I haven't observed it myself and I am interested as to why it should make a difference. What testing have you done with independently powered eSATA enclosures and disks of either type?. If improvement is PSU related, then this should also have a demonstrable benefit (as you suggest you found with your external SATA drive). I am thinking that the difference is less likely to be in the nature of the medium as environmental influences.

I'm interested in this phenomenon, but happy if others feel it's been discussed to death and there is nothing else new here.

Regards,
Alex