Need advice on what to purchase to hold 1TB of music and connect to my new Innuos Pulsar.

Beware of buying an SSD that is running USB 3.0. it may be incompatible with your system if it's running USB 2.0. 

I initially bought a Samsung 2TB SSD. It was not compatible with with my Marantz or Cambridge units. A NAS is overkill in my opinion just adds cost and setup complexity. I ended up getting an external 5TB HDD that uses USB 2.0 and connect that directly to my Cambridge CXN V2. Search and playback are very quick. No delay. Back up is done via my laptop using the Samsung SSD as the backup.

Why only 1TB?

If you're going to go through the routine of setting it in place, I'd opt for 2; better 5.

As per Devo, "Duty Now, For the Future"...

And TB drives and SSD prices continue to drop....

What a stupid decision by the manufacturer to have usb ports that can’t be used used to play stored files.  That is such a basic feature of most streamers.  I won’t recommend Innous going forward until they change that 

I have a lifetime Roon membership, but only use Sense because it sounds so much better. Therefore, I have no need to use my Pulsar as a Roon endpoint only. Really am disappointed I have to buy a NAS with the added complexity of processing built inside these NAS units. Probably also need to power the NAS with an LPS to get the best sound and avoid introducing unwanted noise. 
 

I really feel Innuos needs to offer direct connectivity of a nice SSD. I have owned the Zen, Zenith and now the Pulsar so I am a big Innuos fan.  The Pulsar sounds better than the Zenith and by a good margin when streaming. I would still buy the Pulsar knowing this issue, but it is unfortunate.  
 

@asvjerry

I don’t see me ripping anymore CDs or buying music files in the future. Since I have 1100 CDs ripped only using some 60% of 1TB, it seems reasonable to buy a 1TB. I will look at 2Tb since it is only a little more money 🙂.

@thyname

My Raid is simply two HDD drives storing my music. The second redundant drive is a backup in case the first one fails. No ethernet connection so won’t work with the Pulsar. I purchased this for backup only, not intended for daily use.