Newbie question on music storage

[bluesman]

On 9/30/2019 at 8:14 AM, HDMan72 said:

I'm currently running a mid-2011 iMac which has a 500GB HDD, all my music is stored here. I'm looking into a new Mac Book Air or Pro which would have a 256GB SSD, my total music library is roughly 180GB mostly in ALAC. What would be the best option to store music if I did not want to use the SSD in the laptop?

 

You do not want to use your laptop's boot drive for music storage.  Putting music files on a drive other than your boot / OS will minimize or eliminate file access problems and ensure smooth playback of even the highest res.  SQ won't be any different unless the main drive is being hit by enough other demands during play to cause stuttering, dropouts etc.  But there's no good reason I know of to clog a boot drive with music files.

 

Your options start with a simple external USB HDD and run through the world of network storage devices.  I've used a 4T (dual 2T drives) WD MyCloud MIrror for a few years now with great performance. But I also have simple Seagate USB HDDs that work well on secondary systems, along with a Buffalo Station NAS I use for experimenting.

 

You really need to back up your music files off site.  Anything that physically destroys your hardware (e.g. fire, flood, etc no matter how unlikely) will also destroy on-site backups like a second NAS or USB drive.  I've used Livedrive (a British company) for several years and am very happy with them.  I haven't lost any music over the years, but I did lose hundreds of important photos some years ago when a power outage took out multiple drives at home despite "protected" UPS.  So if I were you, I'd get a nice NAS and a subscription to an online backup service.