Snood stoopid question - External Hard drives for playback on System - Power cord or Portable powered by laptop?

[Snood]

What do you guys and gals use?

Laptop/portable External no power cord
Laptop/External Powered
Or
Desktop/portable External no power cord
Desktop/External Powered

Just wondering for future info

Thanks for any info

 

[skherbeck]

I've got a desktop with 2 powered 8Tb drives (identical info on each drive), and a powered 8Tb external drive hooked up to my OPPO (again, identical info to the other externals). I also have a laptop with a select playlist of my favorite surround tunes hooked up to my OPPO via HDMI. (A lot of redundancy but I'm paranoid bout me surround... whoops me talk like snood !)

 

[Circular Vibes]

I prefer powered externally, regardless of portable or desktop. Computer power supplies are notorious for not being terribly accurate on current loads. The wall warts that come with externals may not be much better, but at least they only have one job to do, and they can be replaced or upgraded if desired. My laptop actually reccommended not to use USB powered drives with it, as did my digital antenna PVR box as they could not guarantee they could give enough current to be suitable for all drives.

 

[Snood]

Thanks Skherbeckster & Circular, need more peeps piping in tooooo

Main concern is whether having a non- power corded "portable" might make the the Oppo/Player or laptop stress a lil more causing some problems with playback of the Hi Res stuff.

 

[Frogmort]

Hi Snoodles!

In my setup I have a laptop in a closet in the back of my room with my receiver and projector and I have two self powered 8TB external hard drives hooked up. It's all out of the way and a stationary setup in my theater room, so no portability really needed. I do have a couple of slightly smaller portables that I use occasionally.

One of my best friends has a 4TB portable that he brings over when we're partying and I hook him up with my latest surround albums or movies, and he takes it home and uploads the new stuff to his self powered hard drive in his home setup.

I'd generally think one would probably be about as good as the other, but if you're just going to have them in a permanent location, self powered just seems like it might be slightly higher quality, but a portable can be nice to take a few things on the go to somewhere else like to a friends house to either bring some of your stuff with you to share, or bring some stuff back home with you from them.

 

[winopener]

External powered, always. Or self-powered with a powered usb hub.

 

[jimfisheye]

Both a laptop and a tower. Tower is main studio machine and also music/video archive and home theater. Laptop is a powerful enough model to be a backup machine. I treat it like my personal machine and surf the web on it.
Mac Pro:
2x 480GB SSD's with OS on each. Free space is the high performance work space. (An older OCZ and a newer Crucial at present I believe)
2TB 7200 HDD for part of my music collection and a small video archive (need to add a 4TB one of these days and load more music)
2TB 7200 HDD for Pink Floyd recordings
2TB 7200 HDD for Studio Earth projects
1TB 7200 HDD for installers, test apps, system image files, old systems, etc archive
Those are all WD black 3.5" in the internal bays.
External USB drives for backups for all those. (The 3.5" with power supplies kind. Also WD.) I use Carbon Copy Cloner.
Thought about going to a NAS a couple times but I just haven't had the need to yet.

Macbook Pro:
250GB SSD and 1TB 7200 HDD (Samsung and WB black respectively. Both internal. Partition on the 1TB for a backup clone of the SSD.)
The data partition on the 1TB is a duplicate of the installers, test, etc archive. I use the free space for downloading activities or to throw music on to take with me as needed.

I'm on top of it but it's bare minimum back right now. I also burn everything to bluray to archive.

 

[César]

Snood, I've been using external USB powered drives with my Oppo for the last 10 years. Not a single issue with either the discs or the player.
I use 2TB disks now and I back everything up on a 4TB

 

[mandrix]

Hmmm. I have 3 SSD's, 4 HDD's, & 1 BR burner, all internal on my main rig. Some data is shared between drives or copied to the HTPC or my wife's rig. Most music things exist in at least one digital, one hard copy.
If I eventually add external drives they won't be powered from PSU. But having said that, I'm running SeaSonic 1000w psu's in our two main rigs, overkill yes but I'm confident in their regulation abilities. + the HDD's have a fan cooling the rack down in the pedestal just in case.

Only ever owned one laptop, a cheap one running DOS for reading data/programming computer on my former Z28. It died.

 

[HomerJAU]

@snoody Think NAS. Data renduncy, everything in one spot. Auto bit rot correction on higher end models from Synology using btrfs file system (invisible from a users perspective) - not sure about other vendor NAS.

Edit: And you can access the files remotely over the internet from anywhere.

 

[bluelightning]

Externally powered drives only. Mechanical drives are too much of load for most USB interfaces to drive. Internal drives on desktop workstations are a different story. Those will be powered from the tower Power Supply.

 

[jimfisheye]

I don't want to suggest that there's anything wrong with external USB drives (even bus powered). For stuff like just streaming 24/96 5.1 audio, even a USB enclosure with a 5400rpm HDD would be nowhere near a bottleneck. But USB requires CPU assistance and depending on the power situation can be unstable. That's why you'll hear recommendations against it for any critical work. I have all the pro options so I only use USB for backup drives.

More pertinent advice would be to format any new drives you buy yourself! The case of some external drives being sold pre-formatted that had malware installed was a ringer but you'll often find them formatted with older disk formats so they'll work with the oldest Windows running computers anyone might still have. Always format your new drives yourself.

 

[Simon A]

So what you're all basically saying is that running a USB powered Western Digital Passport HD directly from my Oppo BDP-105 is a bad thing to do. Correct?

I've done this often and I've never had any issues.

 

[Circular Vibes]

You can run it from the Oppo, but all drives require differing amounts of current and I do not know what the Oppo can handle. My recommendation of powered separately hard drives is based on the info in my cell phone's manual to not charge on a computer as the 5 volt supply is poorly regulated and can shorten the batteries life. I realise this is a bit off topic, but it explains my hesitation to use drives that power from USB ports. Also, my digital TV box, which has a USB port for a drive to use as a PVR tends to have hiccoughs when it gets close to full.

 

[bluelightning]

@Simon A
What I am saying is that it is the lesser preferred thing to do. USB drive capability will vary based on the device/manufacturer/PC motherboard etc. If you are using it in a singular setup and the drive works then you might be ok so long as the USB interface/power supply is not at its limits. However if you are moving that drive around and plugging it into a variety of equipment, then you are much more likely to face issues with host devices simply unable to or at the verge of being able to supply enough current to keep the drive operating properly or intermittent behavior/brown outs. I have seen this numerous times with different USB equipment. Admittedly, the Oppo's are well built machines and perhaps they ensured enough drive capability on their USB ports. Only if other vendors did the same. Going with an externally powered drive simply allows one to avoid these problems and have to pull hair out when things don't work. On the other hand, if you know your equipment well and are experienced at dealing with computer equipment and their quirks, go ahead and do what works for you.

 

[Simon A]

I asked so that other members who use similar drives know what to expect in the long run. Most of the drives I use are powered by their own power source (meaning that they necessitate being plugged into a wall outlet). I was still curious to know which is why I asked.

By the way Snoodster, your question was most definitely not stoopid.

 

[JerseyEd]

Until recently I've only had powered WD 2 & 3 TB external HD's plugged into my OPPO USB input. These were for music, concerts and movies. A few months ago I bought a WD 4TB external HD and did not realize until it arrived that it was USB powered and didn't have an electrical cord. I use it as backup for my music and concerts and run it as before through the OPPO. Much more convenient.

 

[marpow]

@snoody Think NAS. Data renduncy, everything in one spot. Auto bit rot correction on higher end models from Synology using btrfs file system (invisible from a users perspective) - not sure about other vendor NAS.

Edit: And you can access the files remotely over the internet from anywhere.

Snood, highly agree with Homer, he helped me a lot, it was overwhelming for me but I did it. Intel NUC for my external hard drive, Ethernet from my modem to switch, Ethernet from switch to NUC and my Sonology NAS external hard drive, USB from NUC to my external stereo only DAC. JRiver software for playing my digital FLAC and DSD purchased downloads. JRiver is perfect. I leave NUC on 24 hours. I use the JRiver remote, to operate, perfect. I use a program called Splashtop to access the NUC and JRiver for updates, tagging files and artwork if needed. It was stressful for me and I had a friend of mine help me who is more computer savvy than me. But it is an awesome way to listen to music. My next adventure is to rip all my stereo SACD,s, scared of that too. I would love to purchase the ExaSound MCH DAC, but baby steps for me.

 

[MrSmithers]

Hey Snood,

I have a 4TB powered WD EX2 ultra NAS (set in RAID mode so actually only 2TB but backed up). And it's nearly full. That was about £200...

I have my laptop running JRiver.

It controls all the music over wifi/DNLA on my NAS which plugs into the router. I also have my AVR plugged into the router which then receives the music files from the NAS.

I also have x2 USB portable external hard drives which are just for an extra extra back up.

People say Synology is the best for a NAS, and was a bit gutted at first as thought I was unable to play DSD files on the WD NAS. However I finally figured it was something I needed to change in the JRiver programme files. I would have liked to have got more storage but that's all I could get at the time. And it works for the mo...

 

[Snood]

OK another add on question....what formatting do you all use for your externals

NTFS or exFAT?

Snood usually use NTFS...hated FAT32 especially with movies being larger files