Which NAS do you recommend for music

[dave2010]

More than one drive so files can be backed up.

Network attached so any files can be stored on there from any computer on your network.

Depends on the NAS used.

I've just had a drive crash (probably my own fault - and only about £45 to replace) but it's a concern. I've tried some NAS devices in the past, but hopefully things have improved now. I had a couple of Buffalo units. The first one wasn't great, but I bought another. One was supposed to be capable of backing the other up, but in fact both then crashed. I think I can recover one of them, but haven't had time to bother. The other was replaced, and somewhere I've got a new one in a box.

I agree about ripping being a pain, and it's not a great idea to rip loads of stuff, then have a drive crash.

I'm trying to get all my music rips onto drives in some form of order, so that I can simply copy drives when/if I need to. In the worst case I've still got the CDs and DVDs, but don't want to have to do that again if I can avoid it.

I tried using an Apple Mac with Time Machine, but in fact it was the TM drive which I screwed up. Moral - don't use a portable drive with a laptop.
I've just ordered a larger desk top drive, and I won't connect to the computers unless both the drive and the computer are on a solid base. In the future, I'll probably move to SSD drives, but I'd like the price to come down. I did make a couple of small SSD based USB external units by buying standard SSDs and putting them into USB caddies, and they are obviously more robust than hard drives if they are likely to be moved around.

For small scale work, I just bought this Toshiba gadget, which works with USB drives and also USB memory sticks -
http://www.toshiba.co.uk/hard-drives...eless-adapter/ It was cheap - under £12, but has taken quite a while to figure out, and I've not finished yet. It works quite well with an iOS device, such as an iPad Pro - but you'd need to figure out a decent player to run on such an iOS tablet. For hi-res sources, an App, such as PlayerXtreme might be needed - and of course some method of getting the output to a decent DAC.

Apart from the NAS or storage issues, how are people playing their music? Streaming, or downloading, then playing back from a dedicated music machine? Some might be using new models of streamers, and perhaps so-called hi-res downloads.

I tend to use Apple Macs but so far haven't gone for anything above 48 kHz 24 bits as source material - apart from one or two test experiments. The requirements become tougher if the best is to be obtained from (say) 192 kHz 24 bits, or DSD rips - and ethernet LANs aren't always very helpful - though they do seem to be getting better these days. In fact I've almost gone full circle, and I do now play CDs more frequently than I did a few years ago, when I had a major effort to rip 1000s of CDs.

[Ali Tait]

Hence why I recommended a Drobo. Takes four or more drives depending on the model, backs up automatically and nothing is lost if a drive goes down, just replace and carry on.

I play through an NVA TFS, though it's mostly films these days, as most of my music listening is vinyl or RTR.

[dave2010]

Hence why I recommended a Drobo. Takes four or more drives depending on the model, backs up automatically and nothing is lost if a drive goes down, just replace and carry on.

I play through an NVA TFS, though it's mostly films these days, as most of my music listening is vinyl or RTR.

I agree, up to a point. A lot depends on how much money you have to spend, and how risk averse you are. There's always going to be something you can't cover, such as your Drobo unit failing, or being stolen, and you probably need to have some off site storage as well if you're really going to secure everything - or at least try to. I am currently really seriously considering this as a problem for my own files and data, and I'm investing in (for me) a serious number of drives. I think that serious professional outfits would do even more, but most of us mere consumers just have to give up at some point, and take a chance.

Some of the RAID units used by film and other companies are really serious - and this might just be at the low end - http://betanews.com/2016/04/18/lacie...96tb-capacity/

PS: As I recall, and it is perhaps almost inevitable, RAIDs don't always use standard disk formats, though the drives themselves may be standard. This is not necessarily a problem, but it is something else that potential users need to be aware of. They may end up looking like standard drives to the computers or network, but the individual drives used in the RAID may not be readable except in another similar RAID unit. This is just something else to consider. Also, commercial systems may use hot swappable drives, but that might be overkill for consumer use - even by enthusiasts.

??NVA TFS?? see here - http://theartofsound.net/forum/showt...t-Marco-Towers impressive stuff.

???RTR??? What???

[Ali Tait]

:-) reel to reel.

Agree about backups, I keep a portable HD in my work laptop bag with my music collection on it, just in case something happens to the Drobo.

Also agree about proprietary systems, the Drobo is one such, which you could say is a drawback. I could just buy another though if mine breaks, plenty usually for sale on the bay.

What I do like though is the automatic backup - no faffing or input needed, does it all itself.

[Mark Grant]

Synology have a good reputation in audio circles with Western Digital Red drives.

+2 for Synology, they are excellent.

What I like about Synology is that the DSM operating system gets better each year, there is often an auto update that works well to make things more slick or add more features.

The 216j is ideal as an entry level for streaming music.

The + series such as a 216+ are faster but not really needed unless storing video or lots of photos etc.

[dave2010]

Ali - re msg 24.

It was a portable drive which I seem to have bricked, so take care. I have wondered about replacing it with either one of these
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Transcend-M.../dp/B005MNGQ6C,
or one of these
https://www.amazon.co.uk/LaCie-Rugge...s=lacie+rugged, or else simply being more careful in future.

Do take care with your own portable drive.

Clive and Mark

Interesting to read about the Synology systems - I'll look into those further. However, unless I get further into video, I doubt that I'm going to have a need for a very elaborate system. Probably a 4 or 6 drive RAID system would be good enough for me. Serious video editing houses use massive arrays of drives - and possibly most of them are SSDs - for speed. I did get into video a bit earlier on, and it was a bit of a slow process until I figured out that I could use proxy video files, thus avoiding/reducing the need/desire to go out and buy a much faster machine and associated file storage. The proxy files do take a while to set up, but that can be done in the background, or overnight.

Here we are "only" talking about audio, so although we like things to work well, most systems are fast enough.

[StanleyB]

I have tried both SSD and mecanical drives in a NAS. Spare yourself the cost of the SSD. The network speed is a limiting factor.
If you use a NAS, try to use a separate USB drive to back up the contents of the NAS. I have a mate who just had his 4TB drive trashed and with no back up of anything.

[dave2010]

I have tried both SSD and mecanical drives in a NAS. Spare yourself the cost of the SSD. The network speed is a limiting factor.
If you use a NAS, try to use a separate USB drive to back up the contents of the NAS. I have a mate who just had his 4TB drive trashed and with no back up of anything.

I agree about the costs of SSDs at present. Also I echo the points about backing up - very important unless one really wants to lose a lot of data, or have to do masses of work (e.g ripping) again.

However, if the volume of data is small enough, which would depend on the amount of music to be stored, and which formats etc., then for portable use it might still make sense to put an SSD in a caddy and use that. I have done that with a couple of SSDs - one Sandisk, and one from Crucial, and I have also recently bricked a portable 1 TB drive by bumping it. For large volumes of data stored on disc drives make sure the drive system is secure and stable to minimise possible damage.

SSDs should become cheaper over time, so that in a few years for modest to medium storage they will be preferred, but for the time being large volumes are still significantly cheaper using hard drives then SSDs. Bsesides being more robust, SSDs can be significantly faster, depending on the interfaces used, though for audio work this isn't such a big deal. For video the extra speed can be a big bonus, particularly for editing.

[bumpy]

Hence why I recommended a Drobo. Takes four or more drives depending on the model, backs up automatically and nothing is lost if a drive goes down, just replace and carry on.

I play through an NVA TFS, though it's mostly films these days, as most of my music listening is vinyl or RTR.

With the Drobo do you have to buy Drobo hard drives or is it a universal fitting which takes any internal (SATA?) drive?

[dave2010]

With the Drobo do you have to buy Drobo hard drives or is it a universal fitting which takes any internal (SATA?) drive?

You can look at the Drobo site. See - http://www.drobo.com/storage-products/choose-drive/

I think the smaller unit takes 2.5 inch drives (including SSDs) while the larger units take 3.5 inch drives. According to the advertising and the on site video (go to "How it Works") you can mix and max drives, but physically it looks as though they have to be either one size or the other.