External hard drives and sound quality

Everytime I've bought a brand new hard drive, regardless if USB, NAS, or just another one to put into the box, the music files or video files I put onto it sound fresher, crisper, more open and just better overall.

So there’s something to be said for newe HDDs.

I've also heard slight diffs from the format of the disc. Finding FAT to 32 sound more open than NTFS. Go figure. Maybe it was the drive materials... the format... the cabling... beats me. But new drives with freshly transfered files always sounds best to me.

There is too a thing called "bit decay" or something like that which says files stored on magnetic mediums tend after time passes, to begin deteriorating. Slowly. So slowly in fact it takes a while. A good while and a side by side comparison to truly notice these desparities.

I've discovered this in my own drives and pcs but only after some years of storage. 2-3 perhaps. Wiping/reformating and reloading the files usually fixes that incidence. again, it's near non noticeable unless you compare similar files on an older drive and a new one.

That’s why backing up and reloading from time to time is important . For the more anal of us, and to be sure it is more pertinent to redoing the OS about once every year to two years depending upon usage, in addition to the norm of error checking and defragging. Your disc (s) .

In general if the OS is on the drive with the media files, and you are at or above 75% capacity, things will begin to act up and/or slow down. If at all possible, and today it is more than ever before, add another storage center. usb, NAS ESATA, etc., or at least another physical Drive into the box.

unless you have on hand some partitioning software and can create or split, your drive into two, with one being a logical drive merely for storage data.... get a secondary drive!. Things will spped up and become more stable too.

SS drives now, in the USA anyhow are still very costly and not terribly large. There are also bugs with interfacing them into 64 bit OS, and OS older than Win 7.... or so my Geek buddy is finding out with his new 30GB SS unit where he places only his Wind 7 64 gbit OS.

Even adding a new ROM drive for ripping will aid the freshening up sound of the ripped files to some degree.

your results may vary, but these thoughts are those which I've discovered over the past eighht to ten years, using various OS, boxes, AND drives in various configs.

Good luck.

Blindjim,

Hmm, do you notice deterioration in your digital photos, video or other files stored as well or only with audio files?

mapman...same files, same dac cables etc. the only change was moving them from my laptop to nas. weird huh? my system is very revealing and i am certain of the difference. glad it's for the better!

things that should not make a difference sometimes do. i recently switched digital cables (to an mit oracle ma-x) from my transporter to berkeley alpha dac and it is the biggest change i have ever experienced in my system. that cable is spooky, very spooky. sorry to get of topic...

SSD's, that support trim and garbage collection, are pretty much plug and play with Windows 7. I've installed SSD's in all my laptops and desk tops. Music is stilled stored on conventional HD's (all 2.5"). With the older SSD's, and older OS's, it was a bit of a PITA setting up offsets, OS specific block lengths, and doing manual trim and garbage collection.

FYI - I just picked up an Airport Extreme and a Glyph GT050Q 1T drive, if that means anything to anybody out there... Will report back on the sound when I get everything hooked up, and thanks again!