Which external SSD for music streaming?


My new music streamer has a USB socket to connect an external Solid State Drive. I am thinking of getting one with 2 or 4 TB storage capacity to store my whole CD collection on it. What I don't know is how fast such an SSD needs to be. I was thinking of a Crucial X6 (up to 800 MB/s), or X9 (up to 1050MB/s). Or is any SSD fast enough to stream music smoothly? Thanks

 

128x128stievus

@benanders Just to be sure, a Sata drive in a USB 3.1 case will work with the USB 2.0 input socket of the streamer?

@stievus correct - any 2.5” SATA III SSD drive in an external USB 3.0/3.1 2.5” drive case should be compatible with a USB 2.0-in audio device. Any issue would likely be on part of either the external case’s SATA-USB chipset or the streamer’s USB-in. Sufficient bus-power for the drive itself should be no issue for pretty much every relevant 2.5” SATA III SSD on the market, even on drive power-up (tends to require more juice). 

@benanders Perfect! Got a great deal on a Crucial MX500 SSD, so I will go for that one. Thanks again.

Except for noise and reliability is there any further advantage of using an external ssd instead of hdd for streaming music?

Access speed. HDD is slower. You can easily start with HDD then get SSD later, copy everything over to it and set the HDD aside as a backup.