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

 

stievus

@stievus 

  • If it's an SSD, it'll be plenty fast.
  • Go for the 4tb. You'll likely fill it faster than you realize, especially if you begin to add hi-res files. A single SACD disk image can take up well north of a gigabyte.
  • You may want to go for even larger if your streamer will recognize a larger drive.
  • Definitely keep at least one backup. Keep your backup offsite if at all possible. I keep three copies: one on the SSD in my streamer, one on an SSD in my desktop computer and one on a portable SSD that I keep offsite (except when I'm backing up additional music).

@roccity Makes sense, but the question will also be 'To stream or not to stream'. If the quality of streaming Quboz, in my case, is good, then how necessary will it be to have the same music stored on an ssd, except for rare irreplaceable and new works. @audphile1 suggested that to me, which makes sense too.

@stievus Then there's always the possibility that a particular album or artist that you love suddenly becomes unavailable on Quboz or whatever your current streaming platform of choice. Given the minimal cost of storage, I feel it doesn't hurt to at least have your CD collection and any other digital audio files you may have on an SSD with an HDD backup.

@roccity True; some titles I played a lot already disappeared (while they still are in Spotify). Problem is, you never know in advance which ones will disappear, and buying everything I like will be a fortune.

a member here with significant streaming expertise (can't remember who) recommended the Samsung T7 a couple years ago--i bought two on that recommendation although my streamer is also a server with its own internal storage so i just use them for backup--but i can designate the streamer to use them (which i did at first) and they worked smoothly.  Someone above also mentioned.