2. digital
  3. 186927-131708

Primer on SSD and internal hard drives

I recently acquired a streamer /DAC that supports an SSD or internal hard drive.  This is new turf for me and wonder if I could get some basic guidance.  Please pardon my complete ignorance on this topic.

So what is the difference between an internal hard drive and an SSD?  Is one preferable?

The manual suggests using either a 3,5" or 2,5" drive. Does size matter ? ( no pun intended)

Are there sonic differences in the different available brands?  

Again, pardon my lack of knowledge on this topic and thanks for your help.

Mike

 

mdrone
larryi
4,117 posts
 

SSD would be a type of hard drive.  As the initials suggest, SSD is a solid state drive so there are no moving parts.  Other drivers have a mechanically spinning disc (e.g., SATA drives).  SSD drives were once MUCH more expensive than the SATA drive and its predecessors.  But, cost have come down so they are reasonably priced too.  The SSD drive can be expected to be more reliable (less prone to failure).  Even so, it makes sense to have back up drives to save your music so that if the drive goes down you have not lost your music.

My local audio dealer who was also a computer guy, said that SATA discs might be less electrically noisy, and therefore better for music storage, but, that was quite a while ago and I would bet the SSDs are better now.

designsfx
795 posts
 

The cost of storage is very low compared to what it was even 5 years ago. When it comes to disc drives I will say that some disc drives are much quieter than they used to be but I prefer solid state drives. I use two Samsung Evo’s in my server and haven’t had an issue.

Samsung Evo SSD

ghdprentice
7,320 posts
 

An SSD drive is very likely to sound better than a hard drive. But a high quality streamer will gather the music off the hard drive and shut it down when playing. 
 

With a high quality streamer there should be no difference in sound quality between a streaming service like Qobuz and using music from your internal SSD drive. So if you have a high quality streamer I would not put a lot of effort / cost into internal memory. Less and less are ripped or downloaded music used at all. I only have some on my streamer for emergencies when the internet is down… at this point less than once a year for a very short time. 

fuzztone's avatar
fuzztone
5,636 posts
 

Unclear question. Do you mean the diff between SSDs and spinners?

SSDs plug right into sata transport protocols. There is no such thing as a "sata drive". You can plug an old IDE spinner into sata with an adapter.  SSDs plug into USB with a $9 case.

SSDs are like USB flash drives except faster. And at 512 Gb or larger they are cheaper. Faster. than spinners too. When you load 10K+ files you will appreciate speed.

Noise is not an issue unless you live in a cave.

 

More to discover