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Aurender N100 internal hard drive or USB external drive?

I own one of the rare breeds of Aurender N100 variants that did NOT come from the factory with any internal hard drive storage, it is the same as the N100H in every other aspect.
Right now I have a 4tb WD HDD connected in the rear of it by USB which is fully accessible from the Conductor app.

I guess two questions really....

1/ Would I truly notice any difference in SQ if I went ahead and installed an internal hard drive vs my present usage of an external USB hard drive.

2/ If I went ahead and installed an internal hard drive, what model of hard drive is fully compatible with the N100, or does it really not matter? Or are there levels of HDD drives? Is SSD better than HDD? Are there levels of SSD?

Guess thats more than two questions but you get my quandary.
Seriously this stuff keeps me awake at night.........
128x128uberwaltz
uberwaltz's avatar
uberwaltz OP
13,381 posts
 
Great article Anwar, thanks!

Sounds like due to the way Aurender caches all music queued up to play onto its internal ssd it might not be as crucial for where the hard drive resides as it might be otherwise.

However I still might prefer to install an internal HDD just to tidy things up a little.
erik_squires
15,916 posts
 
Internally, you have less of an issue with more power supplies to pollute your AC.

SSD is best, but you don't need top of the line. 2 year old SSD's have plenty of throughput.  They have instant, random access, and no motors to spin up/down.

I only have about ~ 200 GB of music at home, I keep it on a thumb drive attached to my Roon server. Technically slow as can be, works fine.

Best,
E
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uberwaltz OP
13,381 posts
 
Heard back from Ari at Aurender customer support.

You pays your money and takes your choice apparently.

Any brand off HDD or SSD was his reply although he did say he preferred Samsung for SSD and Seagate for HDD.


djones51
4,947 posts
 
I’ve had good luck with Samsung, crucial and WD ssds, according to their website it needs to be a SATA SSD 2.5/ 7mm. There’s 3 speeds I, II , III get the III it will run at whatever your streamer accepts and that’s the fastest and most common now. If you decide on a HHD same deal 2.5/7mm need to watch those some laptop drives are 9mm.
uberwaltz's avatar
uberwaltz OP
13,381 posts
 
Djones
Thanks for the additional information of speed of drives.
If going to do it probably not worth skimping so do it right first time.

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