20Tb of Music and not sure where to go from here

[dqrwbearrtnyuqm]

Hello,

 

I am in need of some guidance. I have 20Tb of music. Right now everything is stored on 4 external HDDs, connected to the pc.  I have a stock Dell Inspiron 3847 (specs here: https://www.cnet.com/products/dell-inspiron-3847-core-i5-4460-3-2-ghz-8-gb-1-tb-led-18-5/) 

 

I use JRiver feeding an iFi iDSD Micro through the iFi iUSB, iPower, and finally an iTube acting as my preamp that feeds my amplifiers. I am looking to condense everything into an easy to use, and good sounding device(s). I put Fidelizer Pro on the Dell and use VNC Viewer to access the computer through my Cell phone, Tablet or pc at my desk to control the computer when the JRiver Remote app acts up.I rarely stream but when I do, I use TIDAL.

 

I am looking to consolidate the equipment, have backups and improve sound quality. I have been told that upgrading my motherboard, ram, and my power supplies to linear power supplies will yield great improvements. That may be the case for what I have now, but what do you guys think would be the best way to yield the greatest sound improvement, ease of use, backups, and so forth? Do I keep everything on my machine and install Seagate Iron Wolf Drives, install an external hard drive enclosure that holds 4-6 drives, should I get a NAS system and set up a network to stream from? I am a little lost on where to go from here.

 

Thanks for all your help and guidance.

 

Best Regards,

 

Daniel

[The Computer Audiophile]

3 minutes ago, drbarnum said:

Thanks guys. I have been pricing out the drives for a bit. I realize that is my weakest link. I have been considering external HDD chassis with the Seagate Iron Wolf 12TB drives. From there (backups) I can pursue the improvements in sound quality etc. 

I highly recommend something like a QNAP or Synology NAS because it's simple to set them up to automatically reach out to your PC and grab the data for backup. You don't have to do anything. 

 

Attaching another external drive housing will require a Windows backup utility or your manual action. Neither of which will be ideal. 

[AudioDoctor]

Well, that's a good question.

 

Let me ask you a few. What are you trying to accomplish going forward and what do you want to spend?

[The Computer Audiophile]

Hi Daniel, thanks for all the info, it will help others help you.

 

This will take a detailed plan and discussion as there are many pieces to this puzzle. 

 

For simplicity you could use something like an Aurender or install Roon on your existing PC and get a NAS that automatically backs up the music. I'm not sure Roon on a NAS is a good idea for 20TB. I have 10TB and have had some issues. 

 

Are you leaning toward any specific solution?

[dqrwbearrtnyuqm]

AudioDoctor, 

 

Good questions. I do not have a budget at the moment, but a self imposed budget puts me around $1k-2k. 

 

I would like to have enough future storage for more music and have a smaller footprint overall. I am not disappointed with the sound I am getting now, but I realize that without backups I am flirting losing everything. What I would like most is a modest sized device I can put all of my music on, have the backups ready when I need them, and enjoy the music without constant tweaking of the PC or device in question. If that means going the NAS/Server route, I can plan for that. I am ignorant on good options that yield as good or better sound than I have now that satisfy the ease of use, backups, and simple installation hopes.

 

Thanks,

 

Daniel

[dqrwbearrtnyuqm]

Computer Audiophile,

 

I have considered Aurender, but the size of my library is what keeps me from going that route. I attempted Roon once, but did not give it a fair chance, I was distracted with other projects and did not take the time I should have with it. I have had very little issues with JRiver, so far. I am not leaning towards any particular solution. I would like to upgrade my DAC at some point and build a preamp. I figured a single box solution (meaning a single pc with enough storage) would be my best solution to fit without having a wiring mess and working with network protocols, but I can deal with all of that too, though I am not a network engineer. I have had some basic classes in it.

 

Thanks,

 

Daniel

[AudioDoctor]

I think in that case, with that budget, and with your desires to simplify and back up, the easiest solution would be to put Roon on your computer, get an external to backup your files, and use a Pi4 as a network endpoint to output via USB to your DAC fits in your budget and simplifies everything.

[charlesphoto]

First thing you need to do is backup! Not like next month after hemming an hawing solutions but like yesterday! I suggest at minimum a bare drive dock and hard drives of your choosing (I would go for two 10TB). https://eshop.macsales.com/item/NewerTech/U3S3HD/

 

Drives fail all of the time, so best to even have backup of your backups. With that much quantity I would suggest going RAID with the storage you'll be accessing for speed, and individual drives for the backup. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

17 minutes ago, charlesphoto said:

First thing you need to do is backup!

This is so true. The most precious asset we have is our time. Losing 20TB of music is a lot of invested time past and future. 

[Solstice380]

@drbarnum As the smart guys have said, backing up we’ll is first and foremost!  I think you may spend most of your budget on hard drives.  😜  A RAID setup NAS is, most likely, your best bet there.   Some people have 3 copies with 1 of them offsite.  
 

Unless you are willing to put the time and money in to make a single PC with proper power supplies (read that as not real easy and definitely not cheap!) a good way to go is network from your player PC to a simple endpoint as mentioned above.  I use HQPlayer software with a NAA.  Sonore and SOTM make endpoints or you can use a low power PC like a NUC or Raspberry Pi or Upboard.  

 

All together might stretch your budget a little bit.  Don’t skimp on the hard drives.   

 

 

[dqrwbearrtnyuqm]

Thanks guys. I have been pricing out the drives for a bit. I realize that is my weakest link. I have been considering external HDD chassis with the Seagate Iron Wolf 12TB drives. From there (backups) I can pursue the improvements in sound quality etc. 

[jcbenten]

A NAS is nice as it comes with most of the apps/software you might need but, with your budget, you could look on Craigslist/Next Door/etc.,\ for a large case workstation or server (4 or more HD slots) and roll your own NAS with cheap or free software.  Then use your external drives as backups.  A little more effort but costs a bit less.  Depends on how much your time is worth  (mine I price high so I did the NAS 🙂 )

[dqrwbearrtnyuqm]

Thanks. I will look into QNAP and Synology. I was eyeing them down a little while ago, but let other projects take precedence.

 

Thanks,

 

Danle

[StephenJK]

6 hours ago, drbarnum said:

Hello,

 

I am in need of some guidance. I have 20Tb of music. Right now everything is stored on 4 external HDDs, connected to the pc.  I have a stock Dell Inspiron 3847 (specs here: https://www.cnet.com/products/dell-inspiron-3847-core-i5-4460-3-2-ghz-8-gb-1-tb-led-18-5/) 

 

I use JRiver feeding an iFi iDSD Micro through the iFi iUSB, iPower, and finally an iTube acting as my preamp that feeds my amplifiers. I am looking to condense everything into an easy to use, and good sounding device(s). I put Fidelizer Pro on the Dell and use VNC Viewer to access the computer through my Cell phone, Tablet or pc at my desk to control the computer when the JRiver Remote app acts up.I rarely stream but when I do, I use TIDAL.

 

I am looking to consolidate the equipment, have backups and improve sound quality. I have been told that upgrading my motherboard, ram, and my power supplies to linear power supplies will yield great improvements. That may be the case for what I have now, but what do you guys think would be the best way to yield the greatest sound improvement, ease of use, backups, and so forth? Do I keep everything on my machine and install Seagate Iron Wolf Drives, install an external hard drive enclosure that holds 4-6 drives, should I get a NAS system and set up a network to stream from? I am a little lost on where to go from here.

 

Thanks for all your help and guidance.

 

Best Regards,

 

Daniel

I find it interesting that backup is low on your list of priorities.  I have 1.5 TB of music and with a few backups also recently subscribed to IDrive to store a copy on their Iron Mountain servers.  

 

With that much data you can't do an upload, but they will send you a drive you can copy to and mail it back to them.  

 

 

[plissken]

Not sure what your ISP upload speed is but Backblaze still offers unlimited flat rate storage.

[The Computer Audiophile]

7 minutes ago, plissken said:

Not sure what your ISP upload speed is but Backblaze still offers unlimited flat rate storage.

Last time I talked to them, there were serious limits on how it could be used. Do you know if this is still the case? Can I install an app on QNAP and upload 20TB to them? I couldn't do this previously. 

[plissken]

10 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Last time I talked to them, there were serious limits on how it could be used. Do you know if this is still the case? Can I install an app on QNAP and upload 20TB to them? I couldn't do this previously. 

 

Last I heard:

 

Had to be locally attached storage. So iSCSI should work. And limited to 500GB of files selected by hand for recovery.

 

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

Just now, plissken said:

 

Last I heard:

 

Had to be locally attached storage. So iSCSI should work. And limited to 500GB of files selected by hand for recovery.

 

 

No iSCSI from a Roon Nucleus or any HiFi device unfortunately. May not be a problem in this case though. That recovery sounds kind of strange. I can backup 20TB, but only get 500GB back?

[plissken]

7 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

No iSCSI from a Roon Nucleus or any HiFi device unfortunately. May not be a problem in this case though. That recovery sounds kind of strange. I can backup 20TB, but only get 500GB back?

 

What are you using for storage? You can restore 500GB at a time. So with 20TB you would be doing 40 restores if the entire storage burned.

[The Computer Audiophile]

Just now, plissken said:

 

What are you using for storage? You can backup 500GB at a time. So with 20TB you would be doing 40 restores if the entire storage burned.

I use a QNAP right now and have had many other things in here. 

 

That 500GB at a time would be time consuming. I have 300,000 tracks stored locally. These are obviously separated into folders for artists and albums. It would be a challenge to keep track of everything for a restore should the need arise. 

[plissken]

3 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

I use a QNAP right now and have had many other things in here. 

 

That 500GB at a time would be time consuming. I have 300,000 tracks stored locally. These are obviously separated into folders for artists and albums. It would be a challenge to keep track of everything for a restore should the need arise. 

 

Agreed. It's the iron triangle of business: Get it done fast, get it done right, get it done cheap. Pick two.

 

Depending on the QNAP it could support iSCSI and you would mount it as a drive in Windows then run the backup from there.

[plissken]

Another possibility, I don't know if I would call it a recommendation, is if a few A.S. members pooled resources and installed QNAPs  at home and then used RTRR to create offsites of their local library.

 

The caveats being you need storage pools sized for the every ones music.

[dqrwbearrtnyuqm]

SJK,

 

Backup is on my priority list. In fact, it is my primary priority, but if I was going to purchase drives and back up my files I wanted to what other options there were so I wasn't doing it multiple times. 

 

And no, most is not low resolution files, most of it is hi rez and my ripped cd collection.

 

Daniel

[dqrwbearrtnyuqm]

plissken, 

 

Thanks for the information. My upload speeds are 17-20mbps. I think NAS is also the way to go. 

 

Thanks,

 

Daniel

[plissken]

14 minutes ago, drbarnum said:

plissken, 

 

Thanks for the information. My upload speeds are 17-20mbps. I think NAS is also the way to go. 

 

Thanks,

 

Daniel

NAS is certainly a best way to go. Just keep in mind it's not the same as backup.

 

20TB at 20Mbps is about 3.5 months of constant upload...

[The Computer Audiophile]

17 minutes ago, plissken said:

NAS is certainly a best way to go. Just keep in mind it's not the same as backup.

 

20TB at 20Mbps is about 3.5 months of constant upload...

NAS is backup for his other drives I believe.