Using an SSD HD as your music Library to replace your USB HD

[Bencat]

I have a stand alone Logitech Media Server installed on a Raspberry Pi 4 8GB using Max2play as the distro . Over the years i have always used a standard USB HD as the music storage connected to the Pi by USB . I have changed for a 1 TB unit to the current 2 TB one as I ran out of memory using about 1.3 TB at the moment for around 62000+ Flac tracks .

Now around two years ago the use of SSD HD items was being advised for the silent operation , faster access speeds and immunity to shock . At that time they were limited in storage capacity and also for me too expensive . i looked again about a year ago but while the storage had increased and the prices had dropped at £550/600 for a 2TB one this was a little too expensive for me for only a very slight improvement i would expect .

Then on Saturday night after a late night browse I ran across a thread saying that this was much more a cost effective upgrade . Well at first the prices were £350/400 which is lower but still a little too much . Then an Amazon Offer dropped in and I was surprised a Crucial X8 TB SSD at £174.99 but also available on five payments with no interest . This was too tempting so even before my brain had clocked it my finger hit the button .

Arrived today and it is very small and feels nice and sturdy . I now have the long job of copying all the music files from one HD to the new one which will take around 23 hours so no putting it in place and hearing and seeing the results till late Tuesday or possibly even Wednesday morning. I have done this for reasons of more secure long term reasons than any performance gain but we will see what happens. As the SSD has no moving parts then it should be able to access faster and of course it will silent (not that i have ever noticed any noise from the USB HD which is right next to me now) . If anyone has done this switch any tips advice and comments would be appreciated .

[Clive]

I've been using a 1TB SSD for a couple of years. It works fine and is faster to re-index and lower power (if powered via USB). Does it sounds better...I can't say I noticed but I changed a couple of years ago so I forget. Your transfer time seems slow, are you using USB3?

[struth]

sounds like its coming off of usb2, in which case there will be no speed improvements. usb3 should copy that over very much quicker than that you state.

[dave2010]

sounds like its coming off of usb2, in which case there will be no speed improvements. usb3 should copy that over very much quicker than that you state.Is the unit something like this one - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Crucial-CT2000X8SSD9-Portable-USB-C-Black/dp/B08C3XVP2P?th=1

It ought to be very fast if the hardware connections aren't bottlenecking things. Not that it really matters so much for playing the tracks, but for backing up and copying to other systems, the higher transfer rates are a definite plus.

[Jimbo]

I have a stand alone Logitech Media Server installed on a Raspberry Pi 4 8GB using Max2play as the distro . Over the years i have always used a standard USB HD as the music storage connected to the Pi by USB . I have changed for a 1 TB unit to the current 2 TB one as I ran out of memory using about 1.3 TB at the moment for around 62000+ Flac tracks .

Now around two years ago the use of SSD HD items was being advised for the silent operation , faster access speeds and immunity to shock . At that time they were limited in storage capacity and also for me too expensive . i looked again about a year ago but while the storage had increased and the prices had dropped at £550/600 for a 2TB one this was a little too expensive for me for only a very slight improvement i would expect .

Then on Saturday night after a late night browse I ran across a thread saying that this was much more a cost effective upgrade . Well at first the prices were £350/400 which is lower but still a little too much . Then an Amazon Offer dropped in and I was surprised a Crucial X8 TB SSD at £174.99 but also available on five payments with no interest . This was too tempting so even before my brain had clocked it my finger hit the button .

Arrived today and it is very small and feels nice and sturdy . I now have the long job of copying all the music files from one HD to the new one which will take around 23 hours so no putting it in place and hearing and seeing the results till late Tuesday or possibly even Wednesday morning. I have done this for reasons of more secure long term reasons than any performance gain but we will see what happens. As the SSD has no moving parts then it should be able to access faster and of course it will silent (not that i have ever noticed any noise from the USB HD which is right next to me now) . If anyone has done this switch any tips advice and comments would be appreciated .

Just bought a Crucial SSD to replace the HDD in my Macbook Pro. Lightening quick access speed and my files sound better from the SSD via Audirvana than they did from the HDD.

[kirstysdad]

Beware...
SSDs give up the ghost without warning, unlike HDDs which play up a bit before dying. I have replaced all my HDDs with SSDs and the speed improvement is undeniable, but bear in mind that you MUST keep everything backed up.

[Shovel_Knight]

I've been using SSDs almost exclusively since 2009 and the only SSD that ever died on me was the first one I bought - the technology was pretty new and unreliable back then.

Obviously it doesn't mean that you shouldn't make backups, in fact there are only two types of computer users: those who back everything up and those who haven't lost their data... yet.

[struth]

my 2 zbooks have internal ssd's. i keep all programs on these and music and films on ex hdd's. works fin and usb 3 with hdd is plenty quick enough really.. my hdds are about 6/8 tb, but still very affordable. everything is backed up

[Bencat]

Okay copy of my music files is finished now . The slow copying is because it is from the 4 TB USB HD plugged in to my laptop and the USB 3 socket is broken so has to be USB 2 . I plug the Cruxial CX8 SSD in to my Raspberry Pi 4 and that has USB 3 so the transfer from that to streaming should be quicker .

Turned off my LMS removed the USB HD replaced it with the SSD HD and then did a full rescan after first mounting the SSD HD . The scan took pretty much the same as the USB HD used to and I have not noticed anything in the way of speed gains.

Now the crazy part that i find very hard to believe the sound is most definitely better and not by a little . I know that the digital files on both HD's are identical and i know that when they were ripped they were checked to be perfect digital copies of the original digital file on the CD . There is no way they should sound anything but the same , maybe they do and are the same and this is just my brain playing tricks . End result is i am not bothered for as long as it lasts will just enjoy what i hear . I am not encouraging anyone else to do this nor wouldI have any confidence that someone else would hear it . But for me at least it exists and makes my music sound more real and more enjoyable with the most improvement to many of the poor recordings / masterings (but great music ) that I have . It does not make them sound like a polished sound of say Yello but it does make them easier and more enjoyable to listen to .

Thank you all for your warnings on the possible failure of the SSD it is noted . I have three separate USB HD Drives all backed up with my full music Library as I rip new CD's they are copied to all . One is attached to my router , one attached to my PC and one is kept safe and not plugged in so if something zaps the Network and gets the others that one will still be there. I also still have all of the physical CD's as well so if the very worst happens I can always rip everything all over again.

[struth]

Timing, jitter etc may be a factor in ssd's favour. But using a reclocker or similar on output should nullify that.
Good it's all working well

[Filterlab]

Being in IT I’ve been using SSD for years in everything (including the PS4). Much better than hard drives, data streaming is around 9x quicker, little heat, no moving parts, very reliable.

Why wouldn’t you? Well, SSDs are essentially like millions of light switches. If a failure occurs then recovery is exceptionally unlikely as ‘off’ is ‘off’, whereas HDDs tend to fail gradually on the whole, and leave a magnetic footprint of data which can relatively easily recovered.

Saying that, a Crucial or Samsung (I favour Samsung) SSD hardly ever fails. I use either in all the SSD upgrades I do on Macs.

Whatever you do, make sure you have at least two backups. That’s a good rule for all computer systems. I’ve seen clients lose their businesses due to lost data, because they didn’t have a backup in place.

[Pharos]

I was told, rightly or wrongly, that SSDs have inbuilt alternative circuits which can come in and substitute, and override the failed transistors, is that right?

[Mr. C]

I would suggest for quality FBA playback SSD would be a minimum requirement

[Filterlab]

I was told, rightly or wrongly, that SSDs have inbuilt alternative circuits which can come in and substitute, and override the failed transistors, is that right?

Not to my knowledge, when they fail, that’s it normally. They tend to fail on block count when they go wrong. Most operating systems will work around it and mark the bad sectors as with hard drives, but if data resides on those blocks then it’s lost unless the failure is gradual, which is unlikely on an SSD.

If the last block becomes unreadable then the drive is dead and the data lost. As with any storage system, regular checks are essential (Drive DX is the best for Mac, Techtool Pro is also good) and replacing the drive immediately upon a warning is a must-do. That’s why multiple back ups are required as it’s easier to restore from a working back up than try and recover data from a failing or failed drive.

[Clive]

Doesn't Windows intelligently handle SSDs in some way, probably better than Linux O/Ss for a Pi which probably simply treat SSDs as an HDD?

[Filterlab]

The only extra handling over an HDD is garbage collection (TRIM), but that’s mostly taken care of by the SSD firmware these days.

Macs have a TRIM system built in which is utilised on their computers with a factory SSD, but it’s disabled for third party drives, but again it’s usually handled by the drive itself or by manually running a repair on Disk Utility.

[Shovel_Knight]

The only extra handling over an HDD is garbage collection (TRIM), but that’s mostly taken care of by the SSD firmware these days.

Macs have a TRIM system built in which is utilised on their computers with a factory SSD, but it’s disabled for third party drives, but again it’s usually handled by the drive itself or by manually running a repair on Disk Utility.

Since OS X 10.11, it's possible to enable TRIM for any SSD on a Mac: sudo trimforce enable

USB SSDs usually don't support TRIM since this is originally a SCSI command. Only drives that support UASP (USB Attached SCSI Protocol) support TRIM over USB. There's no difference between Windows and Linux when handling UASP-enabled USB drives, macOS doesn't support TRIM over USB at all so in the end it all depends on the drive's internal garbage collection.

[Filterlab]

Indeed, that's why it's not worth running the trimforce command, the firmware on SSDs takes care of garbage collection, and the wear levelling is so ludicrously high on SSDs these days that in most cases the write limits won't be hit before the computer is replaced anyway.

[Silent]

Okay copy of my music files is finished now . The slow copying is because it is from the 4 TB USB HD plugged in to my laptop and the USB 3 socket is broken so has to be USB 2 . I plug the Cruxial CX8 SSD in to my Raspberry Pi 4 and that has USB 3 so the transfer from that to streaming should be quicker .

Turned off my LMS removed the USB HD replaced it with the SSD HD and then did a full rescan after first mounting the SSD HD . The scan took pretty much the same as the USB HD used to and I have not noticed anything in the way of speed gains.

Now the crazy part that i find very hard to believe the sound is most definitely better and not by a little . I know that the digital files on both HD's are identical and i know that when they were ripped they were checked to be perfect digital copies of the original digital file on the CD . There is no way they should sound anything but the same , maybe they do and are the same and this is just my brain playing tricks . End result is i am not bothered for as long as it lasts will just enjoy what i hear . I am not encouraging anyone else to do this nor wouldI have any confidence that someone else would hear it . But for me at least it exists and makes my music sound more real and more enjoyable with the most improvement to many of the poor recordings / masterings (but great music ) that I have . It does not make them sound like a polished sound of say Yello but it does make them easier and more enjoyable to listen to .

Thank you all for your warnings on the possible failure of the SSD it is noted . I have three separate USB HD Drives all backed up with my full music Library as I rip new CD's they are copied to all . One is attached to my router , one attached to my PC and one is kept safe and not plugged in so if something zaps the Network and gets the others that one will still be there. I also still have all of the physical CD's as well so if the very worst happens I can always rip everything all over again.

I have a Zen Mini 3 streamer which has a built in SSD and CD drive for getting music onto the SSD. Before I ripped any CDs onto it I took a USB HD with Back In Black on it and plugged it in the back, tested the sound for about 2 hours on the tracks I know well before removing the HD, ripping the exact same CD onto the SSD and trying another two hours or so with the version on the SSD. I have to say that the SQ was noticably improved (albeit not drastically), mainly the high end stuff was a little bit cleaner sounding and the music just felt like it flowed a bit better. I went into the experiment assuming that there would be no discernable difference as I wasn't sure that the technology differed enough to affect SQ but I was pleasently surprised. The version on the HD and the SSD were from the same CD and both WAV files.

[StanleyB]

I have been into SSD for more than ten years now. I even have a dedicated laptop for just music. It can run for 5 hours or more on a fully charged battery, which means no mains borne noise spikes etc.
As for back up: I run a system back up of the C drive once a month, which takes care of any Windows updates etc that might have happened during that month. That's done on another dedicated 240GB SSD, which are now less than £30.
The music etc files are on a separate partition. To back those up I use the Synchronize function in a program called Directory Opus, and synchronize the files on that partitions with a 4TB Western Digital mechanical drive. Only the updated files are then copied. I tend to leave deleted files from the SSD on the external drive, just in case I do happen to need that deleted file one day.
One thing that the SSD allows me to do, but that I struggled with when I was using the mechanical drive, is playback of 24/192 and 32/192 WAV files. They would normally have to be FLAC instead if I wanted to avoid timing and buffering issues.
As for TRIM etc. I leave that to Windows. But for anyone using SSD, consider leaving at least 10% of your drive untouched. Once you enter that zone you can have all sorts of negative issues with the drive. One of them is a slower access and write speed. The other is a lack of spare space for the system to use as a buffer.

[Yomanze]

I was told, rightly or wrongly, that SSDs have inbuilt alternative circuits which can come in and substitute, and override the failed transistors, is that right?

Yes, until there are no more left to replace the 'knocked out' ones with. With regard to SSD care best-practice, it's advised to avoid going past 70% capacity usage, this might be part of the reason why.

However, there are still "silent" errors to contend with such as bit rot. Interestingly, cosmic rays are the cause of this, literally "knocking" electrons from their cells in SSDs.

SSDs are not an archival medium, they should be used with an estimated lifespan of 3-5yrs in mind. I've had a few SSDs fail now, and when they go it is 'catastrophic'. I now use several disks with a dedicated boot drive, which helps with long-term reliability. SSDs are more durable in general, but spinny drives can easily last longer if not shocked around frequently.

For archiving, tape is still preferred (even today!), or several HDDs in RAID or ZFS configuration.

Cloud is also an option, I wouldn't rely on USB drives personally.

[eldarvanyar]

Am I right in thinking that if you are using Linux you need to turn the journaling off otherwise it will wear out the SSD quickly?

I have a Vortexbox with a normal 1TB HD that I would like to change to a SSD.

Glad that yours is working out for you.

[PaulBarnett]

Am I right in thinking that if you are using Linux you need to turn the journaling off otherwise it will wear out the SSD quickly?

I have a Vortexbox with a normal 1TB HD that I would like to change to a SSD.

Glad that yours is working out for you.


Almost.

It's not a Linux issue, but a filesystem issue. Any journaling filesystem (ext4, btrfs, both mainly linux, ntfs, mainly windows) uses a journal (log) of changes, to guard against filesystem errors in the event (say) of an unexpected shutdown. And the use of the journal will incur more disk writes, which theoretically can impact SSD lifetimes.

But.

In a music server, most accesses are reads, which don't write to the journal. You will typically write a new album or track once, then play it many times.

And modern SSD have huge lifetime 'total bytes written' (TBW) values - in a music server, you'd be hard-pressed to hit even 1% of this over 5-10 years..

In linux (and maybe windows), the default is to record last-read times of files on the disk as well as last-written times, and this used to be a concern for early SSDs - so an option was added to to the linux mount command (noatime and later nodiratime) to suppress these disk updates. I used to use this option, but don't bother nowadays, as SSD lifetime is so much better. Maybe this is what you might have heard about SSDs and linux.

Added: and as Yomanze said - SSDs are not magical, you still need backups.

[ianlenco]

Am I right in thinking that if you are using Linux you need to turn the journaling off otherwise it will wear out the SSD quickly?

I have a Vortexbox with a normal 1TB HD that I would like to change to a SSD.

Glad that yours is working out for you.

Might be worth contacting Vortexbox. Some time ago I asked them if I could change the HD for an SSD and they said no! Probably depends on the model but in any case you would have to transfer all the files and operating system.

[PaulBarnett]

Might be worth contacting Vortexbox. Some time ago I asked them if I could change the HD for an SSD and they said no! Probably depends on the model but in any case you would have to transfer all the files and operating system.

Under Linux this is trivial - use the dd command to copy from old to new drive - and that's it.

[PaulBarnett]

Might be worth contacting Vortexbox. Some time ago I asked them if I could change the HD for an SSD and they said no! Probably depends on the model but in any case you would have to transfer all the files and operating system.

It would be interesting to know if their 'no' means a) it is not technically possible, or b) we'd prefer you to buy a new unit from us.

if a), they are probably wrong.

[Batty]

I have an 8 year old laptop that was taking a very long time to start, I swapped out the 1TB HDD for a 1TB SSD, all back as new again so now I use it purely for music and have the music backed up on NAS and an External 2TB SSD.

[eldarvanyar]

Under Linux this is trivial - use the dd command to copy from old to new drive - and that's it.

Thanks for the reply’s Paul. It’s good to know that SSDs have improved so much and that the journaling on Linux file systems can be left on.
I built my own Vortexbox server and am one release behind and could do I’m with updating it. It’s built on a Fedora package which is quite away behind the latest release and some update no longer work.
I do struggle with Linux if I am honest and dabbles with it since Suse Linux 9.0 and other flavours but do struggle with the coding aspect.

Can you please layout the DD or transferring the HD disk to a SSD? I would like to be able to have the music in its own directory on a formatted part sheet f the disk to make system updates easier by having them on the other partition.

What commands would I need , so I could copy and paste them into the Vortex box by logging in from the network.

Also how do you turn the compression off for FLAC?

Thanks

Lee


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[PaulBarnett]

Can you please layout the DD or transferring the HD disk to a SSD? I would like to be able to have the music in its own directory on a formatted part sheet f the disk to make system updates easier by having them on the other partition.

What commands would I need , so I could copy and paste them into the Vortex box by logging in from the network.

Also how do you turn the compression off for FLAC?

Thanks

Lee


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Ahh. My comments were general linux-related - I have never used a Vortex box. but here goes.

1) I would completely separate the task of replacing the hdd by an ssd from everything else.

2) You need a machine running linux, and the ability to connect both the old and new disks at the same time. and the ability to issue commands as root. This might, but need not
be, your existing vortexbox server. (can you access it via ssh, and gain root access (via sudo or otherwise)?) Or any old pc or laptop, booted from a usb storage key with a live
linux copied to it.

There may be a 2nd sata connector in your pc or server, or you might use a usb->sata cable (£5-£10 from amazon). Your old and new disks will both appear as files with names
like /dev/sd{x} where x is a letter (a,b,c etc). Issue command 'cat /proc/partitions' to see what drives and partitions you have, and their names.

3) to copy a whole disk (eg hdd to sdd), first check you have the names right (copying in the wrong direction will be catastrophic!)

Then do, as root: (triple-check the names): dd if=/dev/sdx of=/dev/sdy bs=1M oflag=direct status=progress

This will take some minutes, and make an exact copy of disk sdx (your hdd) on sdy (your ssd) (sufficiently old linuxes might not have the dd status option)

now physically remove the old hdd - switch off the machine, unplug the hdd cable(s), and unscrew its screws. (this is your backup, just in case),
put the new ssd in its place, replacing cables and screws. Switch it on - all should now just work.

After (or before) - to change the partition layout. Yes I too would want the music files in a partition separate from the o/s. Are you sure vortexbox dosn't already
do this? In general you need to

1) remove the music files (make sure you have a backup

2) shrink the o/s partition. This is much easier if the disk is not the one running the o/s at the time - so (say) attached to another pc running linux via a usb key.
use a partition editor such as gparted.

3) in the newly-free space space, create a partition for the music files - maybe use the same tool as in step 2)

4) edit /etc/fstab to mount the new partition at the same place as the old (now empty) music directory.

5) copy the music files back into the new partition.

6) done (but remember, I know nothing of vortexbox :-) )

Re turning off flac compression - not sure you can - why would you want to?

1) when creating flac files from a cd, vortexbox will initially create wav files, then convert to flac (with the flac command). flac command has options for more or less
compression, but no option, I think, for no compression at all

2) if you really want uncompressed music files, maybe vortexbox has an option to copy to wav rather tham flac? (assuming vortexbox even supports wav files)

3) you can manually use the flac command (with -d, decode, option) to convert existing flac files back to wav.

[ianlenco]

Might be worth contacting Vortexbox. Some time ago I asked them if I could change the HD for an SSD and they said no! Probably depends on the model but in any case you would have to transfer all the files and operating system.

Apologies, this of course is nonsense! For some reason I confused Vortexbox with Innuos Zen mini, both of which I've owned in the past. It was the Innuos that I was told I couldn't swap an HDD for an SSD.

[eldarvanyar]

Thanks a million Paul for the instructions. I can access the Vortexbox vis ssh at root level.

Vortexbox is just the software not the physical box or hardware. It has all the unnecessary bloatware such as printer spooling etc stripped out of it. It can rip and steam CDs, Blu Ray and DVDs depending on software license and is grate for old pcs.

I built a dedicated one some years ago and it works a treat.

Here is the webpage to find out more and download the free software.

https://www.vortexbox.org/forum/main-forum

[PaulBarnett]

Thanks a million Paul for the instructions. I can access the Vortexbox vis ssh at root level.

Vortexbox is just the software not the physical box or hardware. It has all the unnecessary bloatware such as printer spooling etc stripped out of it. It can rip and steam CDs, Blu Ray and DVDs depending on software license and is grate for old pcs.

I built a dedicated one some years ago and it works a treat.

Here is the webpage to find out more and download the free software.

https://www.vortexbox.org/forum/main-forum


Just had a quick look at vortexbox - I installed the 2.5 beta in a VM. Some things that would put me off using it: (but all probably fixable)
1) based on a very old fedora (v25, 5 years old) and appears not to have been updated for some time (2019?)
2) some things (for me) missing - nfs? streaming?
3) media storage is in the root partition

If you still want to use vortexbox on your current server, I'd be tempted to just take out the old hdd, put in a new ssd, install latest vortexbox version, then copy your media files
back onto the ssd (maybe from the old hdd, maybe via a usb-sata cable)

Or install (say) a minimal fedora, and just the software packages you need (LMS, squeezelite, etc) - This is not as simple as installing vortexbox :-)

I use picoreplayer (https://www.picoreplayer.org/) as my music server & player. it differs from vb mainly in that
1) it runs on a raspberry pi, not a pc.
2) it has current versions of relevant software (o/s, LMS, squeezelite player), and is maintained.
3) it does NOT have the ripping from CD ability that vb has. (I just use a laptop for this)
4) it only supports one output device, rather than the up to 5 that vb supports
5) it has a plugin architecture, so that it can be updated as new things arrive (eg spotify, qobuz, bbc radio, etc etc)

My music files are on a usb drive attached to the Pi, copied from the master copy on a nas.