Time to just man up and get on with it, I guess.
So, I’ve invested in dBPoweramp and now need to buy an external, probably USB type, hard drive.
I imagine 2 Tb (2.5 - 3K CD’s to store) sort of size should suffice.
Anybody have any recommendations or know of any good deals going ?
All help appreciated.
A well respected streamer builder ( Innuos) use Western Digital Red drives, and have done for years.
Says something for reliability. You can buy any drive and stick it in any kind of case you want, from a NAS system, to a portable USB case.
+1 for WD Reds, mine have been running 24/7 for 9 years now.
They are designed to run hotter than normal HDDs for use in Nas’
Personally I’d go for SSD these days but they are still very expensive for storage that won’t change and will only really involve ‘reads’
Buy a NAS rather an external caddy as you can go for RAID 1/5 and have some resilience.
I use a QNAP TS251+ with SSDs in RAID1 and then backup my music to Amazon Glacier.
I have a couple of 2TB Seagate USB HDDs that are just over a year old. I’ve had so many failures with USB drives over the years that I do not trust anything. I’ll replace the Seagates before too long. Stuff isn’t backed up unless you have at least two copies of the original IMHO.
Are you putting this in the listening room or elsewhere?
Listening room, most likely.
Then I would seriously consider 2.5" drive(s) in a quiet enclosure.
This. I back everything on my Inuos up to a NAS and also to a pair of 2 TB portable HDDs. The NAS backup happens automatically. I do the USB drive backups on a Thursday and keep one in the office as a means to minimise my paranoia about re-ripping everything…
Excuse my ignorance, but an example being ?
QNAP with 2x 2TB Samsung 860 SSD
Pretty sure I have a 2 bay QNAP that I’m not using in the garage somewhere and the Samsungs are around £200 each.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Samsung-SSD-860-QVO-2TB/dp/B07KSJF3MD
3000 CDs would fit onto 1TB, and that becomes more affordable for an SSD - less than half the price. But I would go for HDs in a NAS system, especially if there’s a freebie going! Bung that next to the wifi router.
Personally I’d go for a cheap(ish) NAS so that you don’t always have to have computer on.
In future you may want to use something other than your laptop as a source.
I use a Synology DS118 (one of the cheapest). Since I bought this there is now also a 119J and 120J. They don’t vary wildly. I think mine has a 2Tb WD “red” disk in it.
Here’s a 120J with 2Tb of storage for under £200
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B081H7JGPM/ref=twister_B082N6K7WW
I back mine up over USB to a 2Tb WD USB drive
No idea why those links aren’t doing the linky thing.
BTW - the single bay domestic Synology bits are nigh-on silent.
Western Digital 2 TB SATA 2.5 Hard Drive - Blue https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B079BQS5WQ/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_a8heEb1Q8YTW7
That sort of thing.
That could be ideal; thanks.
I have a Synology single bay NAS with a 3TB WD Red.
Mine has been perfect over the last four years my model is DS115 which was the latest incarnation at the time I bought it. There are regular updates released from Synology.
Don’t need the computer on and is more or less silent
Bollocks!!!
Huh?
Mahoosive brain fail… 
I bought a 1TB Seagate SSD recently for £115. Very happy with it so far. The main reason being that my Lumin streamer was struggling to power a standard external drive via the USB. (I don’t use a NAS)
