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usb external hard drives versus flash drives

B

Brian S

pfm Member
Hi,
For a year or so I have been using a Bryston bdp2 with my music loaded onto half a dozen flash drives. The sound reproduction, to my ears, is extremely good. I have been considering adding an external hard drive, preferably powered by usb port, as back up. I have read that such drives bring with them a depletion in sound quality due to cable connection. Is there any truth in this? I would be very grateful for any advice or to hear of members experiences. I could just buy a few more flash drives but that would be a bit like the messy cables problem.
 
In my experience the cables do not cause any noise issue. This being said, if you switch to traditional (spinning) hard disks, the noise they make may be unwelcome. As an intermediate solution, SSD drives are excellent as they are fast, of good capacity and make no noise. Their only drawback being the added cost.

Another option worth considering, for very large collections, is a separate music server (using traditional hard disks, with backups, etc) located in another room where noise is not an issue.
 
No truth at all in general terms, however, a badly designed USB input could allow some noise into the system, but I am clutching at straws, and certainly do not think this would be the case with your Bryston.

Get yourself a decent portable drive and be happy that you have everything accessible.

As for the cable being a factor, that’s funny. Try putting a USB stick onto a USB extender, there will be no difference, unless it’s well over 5m and not boosted.
 
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Absolutely no truth whatsoever, a HDD, SDD or flash using a well made USB cable will all sound the same.

You are listening to the music files not the hard drive medium.

Buy a nice big HDD to make life easier rather than swapping around usb keys.
 
I'm not familiar with your Bryston. Is it loading the music into a RAM buffer? That would seem likely on a presumably sophisticated device. If that's the case, then the drive and/or cable shouldn't have any effect, in fact if you're loading into RAM then the current track should keep playing even if you disconnect the drive.
 
Brian S said:
Thanks everyone. Just what I wanted to hear.
Click to expand...

One thing to bear in mind is that the USB ports are limited to 500mA. If you use a drive be it HD or SSD you may need a self powered one for larger capacities over 500GB.

Cheers,

DV
 
it seems to me it is better to run hard drives with the psu, in the past ive had to usb 500gb /1 tera and they failed but never had a powered drive fail in over 10 years.
 
I am afaid I purchased a 500gb t3 Samsung drive before I had read your input, rich. Silly really, 250 would have been adequate. Wooed by the price I'm afraid: £94.

However, this will be esentially a backup, the Bryston takes six USB drives.
Thanks, BrisnS
 
The Bryston manual says that the USB ports are limited to 50mA, too low for an external hard drive. I wonder if this is a typo and it should be 500mA...
 
maybe trouble is to find a usb drive that goes to sleep when not used or wakes up quickly, none of my usb powered ones do, but my old Seagate external powered ones do
 
I am a total ignoramous about drives. I have gone for SSD to avoid requiring a self powered drive. The seperate room option is not possible just now. The rearranging of my files at this moment is to serve as occupational therapy. I am nursing a broken ankle following a healthy day out on the Lakeland hills, ha, ha.
 
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