Article: Reevaluating My Music Storage

[Billy_SP]

1 hour ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Can either of those play 12 channel DXD files with 65,000 tap convolution filters?

 

I don't know for sure, but according to this review, the Wolf can do multi channel, upsampling and DXD:  https://houseofstereo.com/blogs/news/review-by-posi-ive-feedback-impressions-the-wolf-audio-alpha-3sx-music-server-revisited

 

I have no commercial ties with any audio company, just thought it was a route worth of consideration given that a server can give you plenty processing power and flexibility.  I am considering this route myself by the way.

[The Computer Audiophile]

23 minutes ago, Billy_SP said:

 

I don't know for sure, but according to this review, the Wolf can do multi channel, upsampling and DXD:  https://houseofstereo.com/blogs/news/review-by-posi-ive-feedback-impressions-the-wolf-audio-alpha-3sx-music-server-revisited

 

I have no commercial ties with any audio company, just thought it was a route worth of consideration given that a server can give you plenty processing power and flexibility.  I am considering this route myself by the way.

Thanks @Billy_SP. I will look into it. DXD stereo and upsamping are one thing, but 12 channels of DXD with convolution are another. My Aurender can play 12 channel DXD, but I have to send the audio to another computer for convolution. 

[Marcin_gps]

This is exactly why I have all my files backed up on a 2nd drive and on dropbox. 

[bobfa]

I wonder  If a “real server” like: https://system76.com/servers.  Would be a better idea.  configure it like you want.  Run windows in a VM for those needs, pick a NAS software pagckage?  

 

Do we need a new thread:  The Audiophile Style Data Center! 😇

 

 

 

 

[bobfa]

21 hours ago, Marcin_gps said:

This is exactly why I have all my files backed up on a 2nd drive and on dropbox. 

Be very careful with dropbox it is not a backup system and will sync your files into the ether if you are not very careful

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

6 minutes ago, bobfa said:

Do we need a new thread:  The Audiophile Style Data Center! 😇

I'm sure my family woud love when I install fire supression system :~)

[The Computer Audiophile]

7 minutes ago, bobfa said:

I wonder  If a “real server” like: https://system76.com/servers.  Would be a better idea.  configure it like you want.  Run windows in a VM for those needs, pick a NAS software pagckage?  

 

The inner-geek in me does appreciate such a system and would like it :~)

[Billy_SP]

18 minutes ago, bobfa said:

I wonder  If a “real server” like: https://system76.com/servers.  Would be a better idea.  configure it like you want.  Run windows in a VM for those needs, pick a NAS software pagckage?  

 

Do we need a new thread:  The Audiophile Style Data Center! 😇

 

 

 

 

 

Yes for flexibility and processing power, no for the quality of ports (need reclocking), the low noise ethernet and the power supply,  which IMHO make a night and day difference for the final sound quality.

 

Pink Faun, Baetis are other examples that allow configurations and provide the other stuff necessary for good sound. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

On 1/18/2023 at 11:03 PM, luisma said:

Hi Chris, I can't find out at the moment with a quick search but I know the HBA adapters allows TrueNAS and the software to build the ZFS vdevs (these are ZFS's logical RAID units) and system, making it transparent to migrate to another RAID / vdev upon failure of the controller. Which is something other technologies don't do. Synology will rebuild a NAS for you but you need to call support and pray they figure it out.

 

ZFS in general:

It has a huge disadvantage which is the writes, if you write continuously without deleting much you are good, if you constantly write and erase, write and erase it will degrade with time, that's the ZFS Achilles heel. I don't write/delete much o it is fine.

The other disadvantage of ZFS is capacity, once you cross 70% of used capacity it degrades performance.

 

Aside of that is a wonderful system, the XL comes with WD REDS, these in the past where SMR (you don't want SMR), I believe now are CMR which are good but I would not go with WD RED's 

https://www.servethehome.com/wd-red-smr-vs-cmr-tested-avoid-red-smr/

 

I usually build my NAS and select Enterprise drives for it (I'm a huge fan of former HGST part of WD today) enterprise drives IMO is the best way to go and they are not much more expensive if you know where to buy.

 

With 8 bays you could do with 14 TB drives (you could use higher capacities 18TB if needed)

 

1x vdev with RAIDZ2 (RAID6) = 14x 6 = 84 TB

 

I personally would do:

 

2x vdevs with RAIDZ2 = 28TB + 28TB = 56 TB (a tad faster and even more resilient) assuming 56 TB is enough for you

 

If you ever need to expand storage you must replace all drives in a vdev one by one and it takes time, that's why I like to split vdevs in maximums of 4 drives and not 8 drives.

 

Synology is much much much more simplified but the overhead of the system, the limitations and the abilities of TrueNAS to do maintenance and check drives etc. are just better IMO.

 

EDIT: 1st paragraph I meant to say "making it transparent to move the drives to a new ZFS system and read the RAID and operate it there independently from the actual hardware controller"

 

 

 

 

I've been thinking about this post more and going over the options endlessly. 

 

I wonder how I can speed up my existing QNAP to max out its performance, for a reasonable amount of money using spinning drives for the main storage. Then add a couple large USB drives to the QNAP and schedule backups to those. 

 

Analysis paralysis to the max :~)

[Jud]

32 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

 

I've been thinking about this post more and going over the options endlessly. 

 

I wonder how I can speed up my existing QNAP to max out its performance, for a reasonable amount of money using spinning drives for the main storage. Then add a couple large USB drives to the QNAP and schedule backups to those. 

 

Analysis paralysis to the max :~)

Low tech/low cost seems like a great idea to me. Only question is whether the QNAP will take the additional volume of music you’ll be trying to cram in there.

[The Computer Audiophile]

11 minutes ago, Jud said:

Low tech/low cost seems like a great idea to me. Only question is whether the QNAP will take the additional volume of music you’ll be trying to cram in there.

I have four open drive bays and an open NVMe slot for caching if needed. 

[bobfa]

2 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

I'm sure my family woud love when I install fire supression system :~)

I would bet that the biometric security system would come first in their love!  Keypad and retina scanner on the fridge.  DNA scanner on the stairs to the listening room!  Someone would have to feed and take care of the guard dogs on the basement data center.

 

Maybe just add some drives and a TB cache to the NAS!  Back the whole thing up to cold storage and go back to listening!

 

 

[Jud]

34 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

I have four open drive bays and an open NVMe slot for caching if needed. 

Throughput OK?

[The Computer Audiophile]

3 hours ago, Jud said:

Throughput OK?

I need to do some testing to see where bottlenecks are, there are always some. 

[JohnSwenson]

I'm a big fan of TrueNAS. I run it on a Supermicro server I built myself using NVMe drives. I've been using Supermicro motherboards for my main engineering workstations for a very long time without a single issue. I have three of their motherboards on the shelf, they all still work perfectly, I just wind up replacing them every 5 years or so to get faster/better etc. I can't get up the nerve to through away these motherboards that are still working perfectly. Every so often I take them out and just hold them, marveling at the quality and engineering.

 

I use BackBlaze B2 for cloud backup, their price was much less than anything else I looked at and TrueNAS makes using it incredibly easy.

 

I have yet to have anything fail on TrueNAS so I don't know how easy it is recover. I've had very BAD experiences with traditional RAID, but ZFS seems to have worked out many of the issues I've had before. We'll see on that one.

 

I Do have a VM running Windows 10 on it for a couple of things only available on Windows. This worked surprisingly well, much more reliable than Windows on a normal desktop computer. 

 

One thing with the server hardware is ECC memory, I'm not sure but I get the impression that this makes a big difference long term. I've had several machines with ECC memory and they all have much better "uptime" and way less just plain little "gotchas" that inhabit other systems.  I built a little computer to run my new big CNC machine out in the shop (completely sealed, no fan Akasa case) and it has ECC RAM, you do NOT want your CNC machine going crazy!

 

And yes, the power supplies designed for rack mount servers have screeching little fans on them. The ones in Supermicro equipment ARE quieter than others, they use special compliant fan mounts that help a lot.

 

For me, going with TrueNAS was one of the best decisions I've made.

[Jeremy Anderson]

5 hours ago, JohnSwenson said:

I use BackBlaze B2 for cloud backup, their price was much less than anything else I looked at and TrueNAS makes using it incredibly easy.

 I also use BackBlaze. Super cheap for storing lots of data. Restoring it en masse is a bit of a pain, but if you're not in a hurry, they'll put your data on a hard drive and mail it to you (and even refund you the cost of the drive if you return it to them).

Thanks for the tip about TrueNAS. I'll check it out!  I've been using a Synology DS1513+ for a while now and I'm generally quite happy with it.

One of my favorite additions to Windows in recent years (since around Windows 8, iirc) is Storage Spaces, which is a way to set up a storage pool using whatever drives you have laying around (ideally equal size and consistent technology, but they don't have to be!) and then to carve up logical volumes (potentially with differing RAID-esque storage strategies like mirroring, parity or striping, etc.) from that pool. The rub is that you can lie to it and set a size for the Space and it will just pretend you actually have that much space until you run out of room on the storage array behind the scenes. It usually 'fails' into 'read-only' mode at that point, similar to what happens if you remove a drive from a mirrored/parity set.

My favorite part about it is the entire pool and space configuration is distributed across every member of the set, so you can take a Space (in whole or in part) and move it to another computer running the same (or later) version of Windows and it "just works" so long as a quorum of the drives that comprise your space(s) are available.

Storage Spaces in Windows - Microsoft Support 

[bbosler]

On 1/20/2023 at 9:57 AM, The Computer Audiophile said:

 

I wonder how I can speed up my existing QNAP to max out its performance, for a reasonable amount of money using spinning drives for the main storage. Then add a couple large USB drives to the QNAP and schedule backups to those. 

 If the same QNAP is used for storage and backup don't you run the risk of the QNAP loosing its mind and corrupting all the drives ?

 

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

8 minutes ago, bbosler said:

 If the same QNAP is used for storage and backup don't you run the risk of the QNAP loosing its mind and corrupting all the drives ?

 

 

I’m sure it’s possible, but I’m not sure how. 
 

The external USB should be formatted exFAT so it’s readable on macOS and Windows (if that’s needed).

[botrytis]

1 hour ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

I’m sure it’s possible, but I’m not sure how. 
 

The external USB should be formatted exFAT so it’s readable on macOS and Windows (if that’s needed).

I know that exFAT is very inefficient for size. The larger the HD size, the larger the block size, the more wasted space there is. With Windows and Linux (used Daphile, Volumio, and Red Hat), I used NTFS. Not sure about OSX.

[The Computer Audiophile]

2 minutes ago, botrytis said:

I know that exFAT is very inefficient for size. With Windows and Linux (used Daphile, Volumio, and Red Hat). Not sure about OSX.

I just use it often because almost any OS can read it. 

[botrytis]

Well, exFAT can be read faster, but it is not as secure as NTFS.

[Richard D. George]

I am tired of dealing with NAS’s.

 

I have ordered an Aurender ACS100.  About $3,400 not including drives.

Relatively small, and has a CD ripper.  Works “plug and play” with a Nimbe CD autoloader.

[The Computer Audiophile]

36 minutes ago, Richard D. George said:

I am tired of dealing with NAS’s.

 

I have ordered an Aurender ACS100.  About $3,400 not including drives.

Relatively small, and has a CD ripper.  Works “plug and play” with a Nimbe CD autoloader.

I get it completely. I have an ACS10 here and love it. 

[Account Closed]

Slightly OT but, I sure hope that all of you who have these (very) large music collections stored on a NAS device also have a physical off-site back-up. Cloud back-up is fine for a smallish collection but I would not trust a six figure music collection to cloud back-up. I don't know what the latest tech for this is but back in the day when I was responsible for data security we backed up our servers every day to a tape back-up unit and someone got to take the tape home with them and bring it back for the next day's back-up.

 

Strange things can and do happen. Houses burn down, get hit by lightning, get broken into, utilities have massive failures and the list goes on. All of which can result in the total or partial loss of data.

 

Another thing to consider is insurance for your data (not to mention the six figure hardware systems). These things are out of the scope of a Homeowners insurance policy and would require riders and/or special placement. Contact your agent or broker.

 

Be careful out there.

[Jud]

2 hours ago, bobflood said:

Strange things can and do happen. Houses burn down, get hit by lightning, get broken into, utilities have massive failures and the list goes on. All of which can result in the total or partial loss of data.

 

It's precisely because of these contingencies that I have a cloud backup.  My cloud provider has better provision for such eventualities than I could ever manage with an offsite backup that I owned.