External hard drives and sound quality

Blindjim -

Your internal drive could be maxed out, or heavily fragmented. There is so many other possibilities - for instance Itunes could be updated or options changed exactly at the time of switch to new drive.

Fat32 is garbage. Using non-journaled format is asking for a disaster.

If bits would "decay" then checksum errors would be reported all the time with hundreds of thousand of files on computer, compressed files (including jpegs) would be corrupted etc.

The fact that you need partitioning software to split drive or "redo" OS every year tells me that you have PC and Windows (I'm sorry).

Firewire does not load main processor (has own processing unit) the way USB does. It is also more elegant, in my opinion, with daisy chaining instead of hub (only one cable coming out of computer).

Richard_stacy - I'm not sure why you bother with NAS, unless you have network of people using it. It does nothing other than making hard disk slower. Why not just plug external drive into computer. External drives are also cheaper than NAS drives.

Kijanki...it was a tough choice deciding on the nas. connecting a usb hd to my computer would be cumbersome. the player is on my laptop which floats around my house and would not care much for anything connected. i do not even really like the n+dualband dongle i use hanging off but, unlike the post above, g band does not handle the streams/transfers as well. i do not find the nas slow in comparison to any other configuration either. this nas was not much more expensive than an external drive, $165 for the small, fanless and simple box at best buy. so at 1tb, maybe $60 more give or take. i do find that a good router is really important for smooth, fast performance.

i went through a bunch of trials before choosing this and still do question it. i tried the readynas duo which runs the player on the nas. i tried a external hd connected via usb to my router. finally i just flipped a coin (actually i asked my wife which one she thought was prettiest) and picked the blackarmor nas 110.

Map...

I'm the last guy to ask about image or video file deterioration.

As there's tons of variables in my case (s), I've mixed and pulled in and out drives now into and out of several boxes over the years, all I can account for is the audio side of things getting duller and duller. Again, side by sides show it well. Only the oldest Files I have stored way back from Napster's free file trading deally seem most affected.

Kijanki
yeah... Gatesware. 100% on every box and notebook.

...and all govt boxes too. Meaning over priced and low end units usually. Everytime I get one I'm grateful for it, but have to upgrade a good bit of it for it to be stable and as responsive as I prefer.

lately they'vve come with ACRONIS loaded onto a hidden partition, with an image of the fresh install of OS. A re-do takes only 15-30 min. A full re-do and reload of all my accessiblity software and fav apps takes longer. So I've begun doing an image of the partition once fully restored onto a separate drive, and thereafter simply clone to each successive drive as needed. Takes about an hour, front to back... inst the HDD and loading the completed image.

if you don't mind things slowing down a bit, and are keeping all the data off the OS drive, you can go a couple years I suppose. I've done that once... my oldest now retired box has 4yrs or more on it, maybe five, without wiping & reloading. it's a JIC box anyhow.

With windows it makes sense on the larger discs 500GB & up, to partition. Error checking and defragging then take way less time... and the data is easier to recover and back up.

It's simply what I did and do, until high functioning accessibility software makers take aim at Macs.... which likely isn't going to happen.

maybe it's like driving a stick or an automatic... once you get into it, it's OK.

it is what it is.

Richard_stacy - I completely forgot about laptops. It's good to hear that it can be done successfully - I might need it one day (wife uses laptop).

Blindjim - the most important that you can manage it over long time. Some things are better in Windows some in Mac. Friend of mine uses Dragon Naturally Speaking (Windows program) on the MAC instead of Mac Speech that is based on the same engine, because it works better for her. Multiple Sclerosis affected vision and her hands are shaking a lot.
I use 1TB drive but with close to 1,000 CDs in ALAC it is only 300GB. I keep second identical backup drive at work but am still worrying about something going very wrong during backup.

Kijanki: Fat32 is garbage. Using non-journaled format is asking for a disaster.

Excellent point. One way in which such a disaster could happen is if power were to drop out at exactly the wrong moment. The file table could be corrupted, resulting in the entire contents of the drive being lost.

Kijanki: If bits would "decay" then checksum errors would be reported all the time with hundreds of thousand of files on computer, compressed files (including jpegs) would be corrupted etc.

Agreed 100%.

Blindjim: With windows it makes sense on the larger discs 500GB & up, to partition. Error checking and defragging then take way less time... and the data is easier to recover and back up.

Also, partitioning can make the computer faster and more responsive. Read and write times for files near the "beginning" of a hard drive (corresponding to the outermost parts of the platters) are typically about twice as fast as read and write times for files near the "end" of the drive (corresponding to the innermost parts of the platters). The reason being that since the platters are spinning at fixed rpm's, tangential velocity is much faster near the outer edge than near the inner edge.

Since the operating system and program files typically consume just a very small fraction of the size of a modern hard drive, it therefore makes sense to put them on a relatively small partition that is located at the "beginning" of the drive.

Blindjim: If you don't mind things slowing down a bit, and are keeping all the data off the OS drive, you can go a couple years I suppose. I've done that once... my oldest now retired box has 4yrs or more on it, maybe five, without wiping & reloading. it's a JIC box anyhow.

While it is very common for Windows PC's to become increasingly sluggish over time, that need not happen if the right practices are followed. I have five Windows XP PC's in my house, most of them a few years old, and one that I built 7 years ago. I have never had to do an os reinstall, and they all work as well as when they were new. See the second of my two posts dated 11/22/09 in this thread for what I attribute that to.

Best regards,
-- Al