Vault 2i, etc.


As a purchaser of the Bluesound Vault 2i, I received a question from Amazon from a guy contemplating purchasing one.  He noted that “all mechanical drives eventually fail”, so is it possible to connect a solid state storage device to the Vault, as a more permanent storage medium?  

Which got me to thinking:  I know that drives fail — Bluesound recommends backing up the Vault’s contents to other storage to preserve the music in event of the Vault drive’s failure.  But, over the years, I have not had a problem with drives failing — other things stopped working, but I was able to access the drive’s contents to import over to a new computer/drive.  I have an external hard drive that I still use more than 10 years later and it works fine.  Even so, I plan to back-up the music on my Vault.  I was thinking of just backing up to another mechanical drive.   But this question makes me think:  Would it be better to back-up to a solid state drive . . . are they really that much better, more durable?
bob540
williewonka
... perhaps what you should invest in is a USB or NAS drive that supports dual drive RAID mirroring. If one drive fails in the unit you simply replace it and the RAID software takes care of copying the data from the other disk in the background. You can also listen to the music while this is going on.
RAID is a useful protocol, but it is not intended to serve as a backup. RAID can't protect against human error, malware or viruses, or something like a deadly power spike.
RAID requires a hard drive specifically for data servers ...
That is mistaken. You can easily setup RAID using pedestrian hard drives - at least on a PC. (I'm not sure about Mac.)
You should also keep an offsite backup ...
Agreed!

 
That is mistaken. You can easily setup RAID using pedestrian hard drives - at least on a PC. (I’m not sure about Mac.)
Whilst RAID works with any type of hard drive, it will cause HDD failure of "standard" desktop computer drives, because of the way it uses the drive.

When I consulted guys in the computer manufacturing industry they told me NOT to use just any old drive and upgrade to the server drives - I’ve never had a problem since :-)

Drives rated for data server use are built to withstand the extra demand.and specifically; RAID protocols, so I have been told.

I initially started using "pedestrian" drives from computers and one of the drive failed within a year.

RAID is a useful protocol, but it is not intended to serve as a backup. RAID can’t protect against human error, malware or viruses, or something like a deadly power spike.
That is why I recommended an offsite backup

Regards