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Mac Mini System/Storage question


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Hi folks, first post here. I've been lurking for awhile, but I thought I would tap into your wisdom with a specific question before making an important purchase.

 

I've been reading a lot about using a mac mini as a music server, and plan to do so myself. It seems the way to go is to get an external for the music files to keep them on a separate drive.

 

I will be using a Peachtree Nova Pre for my DAC so my USB bus will be tied up with that. I plan to use Amarra as well.

 

Here the question: I have an opportunity to buy a seemingly ideal mac mini on my local craigslist for a great price. 8gb RAM, i7 proc, and a 128SSD internal AND the original 1TB 5400rpm internal both installed. So my question is, if i put the system on the SSD, is the 1tb on the same SATA bus going to choke at all? I would think it should be fine? I am a recording engineer and use 7200 RPM externals for recording multiple (32+) tracks of 24/96.. so i can't imagine iTunes/amarra being an issue using the same SATA bus, even though the music is on a 5400rpm drive..

 

Any feedback or personal experience is appreciated. Thanks in advance.

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I wouldn't worry about it. I doubt both drives are sharing the same bus, and likely have 6Gb/s each.

 

Even so, you get about 550MB/s of bandwidth on a single 6Gb/s connection, and the fastest mechanical hard drives aren't even going to hit half that speed.

 

A 2.5" 5400 RPM 1TB disk is probably only using 100-150MB/s at most.

And if all you're doing is playing music, only a fraction of that speed is required. Less than 1MB/s if you're playing lossless files.

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I wouldn't worry about it. I doubt both drives are sharing the same bus, and likely have 6Gb/s each.

 

Even so, you get about 550MB/s of bandwidth on a single 6Gb/s connection, and the fastest mechanical hard drives aren't even going to hit half that speed.

 

A 2.5" 5400 RPM 1TB disk is probably only using 100-150MB/s at most.

And if all you're doing is playing music, only a fraction of that speed is required. Less than 1MB/s if you're playing lossless files.

 

Hi, thanks for this. Exactly the answer i was looking and hoping for.. for some reason i thought i had read that lossless filetypes used much more bandwidth. Looks like this is the way to go. Thanks.

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I wouldn't worry about it. I doubt both drives are sharing the same bus, and likely have 6Gb/s each.

 

Even so, you get about 550MB/s of bandwidth on a single 6Gb/s connection, and the fastest mechanical hard drives aren't even going to hit half that speed.

 

A 2.5" 5400 RPM 1TB disk is probably only using 100-150MB/s at most.

And if all you're doing is playing music, only a fraction of that speed is required. Less than 1MB/s if you're playing lossless files.

 

To echo the points noted above, for quite some time I used a similar Mac Mini configuration with a SSD boot drive and all my music files stored on a separate internal 1 terabyte drive. This worked wonderfully for music playback with Pure Music, Audirvana and JRiver.

 

Barr

Silver Circle Audio | Roon | Devialet | Synology | Vivid Audio | Stillpoint Aperture | Auralic | DH Labs

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