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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
gdnrbob
4,459 posts
 
Well, they are faster.
And, I have yet to have one crash.
B
oddiofyl's avatar
oddiofyl
3,988 posts
 
I have been thinking the same thing as my library grows.   I have a Toshiba 2TB connected to it now but I think that prices on SSD are lower I think it's about time .
bob540 OP
415 posts
 
@oddiofyl I have been researching SSDs and found a article where a guy wrote that while hard drives do fail, so too do SSDs.  Depending upon usage, he said that any drive can fail after a few years.  Given how much more SSD costs compared to hard drives with the same capacity, I sure wouldn’t want to replace one every 4 years or so (though I don’t put heavy use on hard drives I have had and still have an external hard drive that is working after 10+ years).

I saw a Samsung SSD (said to be very reliable) with 2 TB capacity for $350.  
williewonka
3,082 posts
 
If you are that concerned about your digital music, and you should be, 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.

I have three such units.
- one for general backups of my computer systems
- one for my music
- one for my photo’s

I have had a drive fail on the music NAS, but I was using standard hard drive for desktop computers. So I plugged in a new drive rated for data servers and pressed the ON button - Voila - completely restored !

Now both drives in that NAS are rated for data server use :-)

RAID requires a hard drive that is specifically for data servers- they are more robust and can handle the load RAID places on them. They are not much more expensive than a regular hard drive and provide faster data transfers.

HDD's rated for data servers are running 24/7/365 at server farms and they do fail after a few years, but RAID makes it easy to replace and more importantly recover the data on the failed hard drive. 

By comparison - my NAS runs maybe an hour a day - it will last a very long while.

You should also keep an offsite backup just in case of a bad house fire - but that can be kept on a smaller single drive USB unit

As for the choice between solid state and mechanical drives...
- I have been using mechanical "server drives" for around 10 years.
- never experienced a problem - YET :-)
- and they are fast enough for the music I play

Solid state technology can partially fail but the drives have the smarts to recover & block failed memory areas - to some extent. But this too will get better with time

Personally - I will continue with the mechanical drives
- until they disappear from the market place, which could be sooner than later

Hope that helps
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