Recommended SSD for my Nucleus One

Roon Software Discussion Nucleus
1

Hello friends

I will buy a Nucleus One, and I would like you recommend me the best option.

I am between:

1.– Western Digital 2TB WD Blue SA510 SATA Internal Solid State Drive SSD - SATA III 6 Gb/s, 2.5"/7mm, Up to 560 MB/s - WDS200T3B0A

And

2.– Crucial BX500 2TB 3D NAND SATA 2.5-Inch Internal SSD, up to 540MB/s - CT2000BX500SSD1, Solid State Drive

Crucial has better reviews

Thanks in advance

Best regards…Fernando

2

Firstly, for use in a Nucleus One, the performance figures of the two drives are irrelevant. Both offer performance much higher than required for use as internal storage in a Nucleus device.

You will probably find that MTBF (mean time between failures) and other reliability indicators are of little use either because the use pattern in a Nucleus device is very atypical. Most such figures are generated assuming a large number of writes whereas, in a Nucleus, files tend to get written once and then never modified or deleted.

This latter point means that some SSD’s (like the Samsung QVO range) can be a relatively poor bet for general use (resulting in less glowing comments in reviews) but become very good options for use in Nucleus.

In short, it is practically impossible to choose the best SSD for a Nucleus based on benchmarks and reviews. All you can really do is choose an SSD from a manufacturer with a good and long established reputation.

In this light, either of the options you propose will likely be perfectly fine but you shouldn’t rule out the Samsung QVO range either.

As the end of the day it probably comes down to personal brand preference and price.

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3

Thanks for your answer Wade

So you mean external drives are better???

Thanks in advance

4

No. Either internal or external will work fine.

External drives do have the advantage that you can also use them as a destination location for Roon Database backups but, depending upon your setup you might not want to use an external drive on aesthetic grounds.

All I was saying is that:

  1. Roon does not require high performance from an internal storage drive and any SSD will be good enough from a performance point of view.

  2. Reviews tend to concentrate on performance (which is not important to you) and manufacturers specs for reliability which are obtained/estimated assuming a very different use case and thus not really relevant when considering an SSD for Nucleus internal storage.

The Samsung drive that I mentioned is also an internal drive:

As I said in the conclusion of my first reply - get whichever drive you want based on cost and manufacturer reputation. Don’t over think it. Don’t pay any attention to reviews that focus on performance or manufacturers reliability figures.

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5

Thanks a lot for your help Wade, very usefull

Best regards

Fernando