Replace External HDD with SSD?

Tinkering
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I’m using a WD 4 TB HDD attached via USB-C to my NUC for music storage. I have found a good deal on a 4 TB SSD USB-C drive. Is it worth upgrading? I have about 43,000 songs in my library.

I am using a NUC8i3BEH, tall. Alternatively, I think I could put an internal 2.5 SSD inside as well. Would that be better? How would Roon find it?

If I did do this, I would Chronsync my existing WD HDD to the new SSD, then attach the SSD to the NUC and port Roon to it. Would I need to restore a backup?

I think that this would work; any pitfalls?

Thanks all!

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Only if you’re troubled by the extra box hanging off your NUC.

There’s no difference between internal SATA and external USB in terms of performance, SQ, or anything else.

External USB is simpler to get music on because one can always hook it up to another PC/Mac and do a direct transfer rather than over the network.

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Soylent, thanks! Will an external SSD provide any performance improvements, such as snappier song playback, library processing etc.?

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I was trying to distinguish between an external USB HDD with a spinning platter vs. an SSD. Sorry if I was unclear! So, would an SSD be notably better than an old-school mechanical WD HDD?

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Peter, no means no.

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LOl, ok thanks! Looks like I sit tight with what I have.

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Not for music files, but it will be quieter. Whether that’s a factor for you depends on where your NUC is in relation to your listening post

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Thanks. I listen in my office, where the NUC is, but I cannot say that I hear noise. In my living room I have a Bluesound node, and of course hear nothing. So looks like I stand pat.

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for me the only difference between SSD and HDD is reliability. If your music library is up to 2TB then go with SSD. With the HDD you always run a failure risk.

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There’s always the risk of failure, regardless of what you use. That’s what backups are for. But when you have a working disc, why not keep using it until it breaks?

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Good point. I mean if you don’t have a disk and you need one the failure rate on SSD is significantly lower compared to HDD

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In the first 5 years, the reliability rate, according to one study, is the difference between 1.04% and 1.83%. After 5 years, you should be thinking of replacing the drive either way, always replace before you are forced to. Recovering the data from a failed drive, which is always expensive, is even more so with SSD than HDD.

Additionally, SSDs have a write limit and will begin failing when that limit is reached. Not relevant in a storage scenario, but, relevant for an OS drive.

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But then, if SSDs cost say twice as much than HDDs, they should, in theory, last at least twice as long to be feasible. I thought about moving to solid state a few times before, but couldn’t justify it. Personally, I use solid state for OS installations and temp storage and HDD for large data and backups.

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Thanks all. Looks like I stick with my WD HDD.

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I mounted a 1Tb SSD inside the spare bay in my Mac Mini which I use only for Hi Res music storage (10,000 tracks). My library is all high res, so the SSD does help the larger tracks buffer faster and things are snappier in Audirvana and Roon but an SSD isn’t really necessary for audio.

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Well, hang on a minute. The one thing a SSD will help with is speed of accessing the Roon database, which should be on a SSD per Roon recommendations. You haven’t indicated where your database lives; I assume you have a SSD boot drive in the NUC on which you keep the database? If so, then the advice by others is correct: a SSD will give you no performance improvement on music files.

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Read the post. The OP is asking about his music files.

A second internal SATA drive in the NUC is an SSD.

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Yeah, I read the post. He did not mention how he’s handling his database file.

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NUCs won’t take HDDs.