[stuartlee]

Ok, it seems that HDD can have corruption issues which would damage the precious music you have.


So I would think that an SSD would be a more "stable" solution to storing music, without worrying about data corruption.


Other than price, any thoughts on this? I'm not really concerned about price v. performance considerations between SSD and HDD.


Naturally, I would think that there is a far less chance of data corruption on an SSD, when compared to a rotating platter.

 

[Calcvictim]

Not sure where you get your data from but storing music on either medium will be fine. DVDs/bluray will most likely outsurvive a hard drive if both are stored in a safe place

 

[ogormask]

I have no idea where you learned about "corruption" but its pretty much impossible or improbable at best. You can defrag a regular hard drive to keep things healthy and a SSD can run trim.

 

[assassin]



Quote:
Originally Posted by stuartlee /forum/post/20826609


Ok, it seems that HDD can have corruption issues which would damage the precious music you have.


So I would think that an SSD would be a more "stable" solution to storing music, without worrying about data corruption.


Other than price, any thoughts on this? I'm not really concerned about price v. performance considerations between SSD and HDD.


Naturally, I would think that there is a far less chance of data corruption on an SSD, when compared to a rotating platter.

I would think that storage on a hard drive and then unplugging the hard drive and storing it in a cool, dark and dry place (like a safe) would be a pretty good option if this is really that vital to you.

 

[allbizz]

I second you theory on saving the original data on a hard drive. fort knox safe.

 

[hceuterpe]



Quote:
Originally Posted by Calcvictim /forum/post/20826687


Not sure where you get your data from but storing music on either medium will be fine. DVDs/bluray will most likely outsurvive a hard drive if both are stored in a safe place

Don't forget you need grade-A media with a good burner for this to be the case.


I don't trust SSD for long term storage yet. They are not a proven medium yet since they are so new. Plus for cost, I think they use MLC, not SLC chips, which are not as reliable.


Out of all 3, I trust burned grade-A media, stored properly over the other options.

 

[lovemyram4x4]

If your that worried about corruption maybe you should thing about ZFS.

 

[jonnythan]

"Corruption" isn't really a problem.


Just use a good old hard drive and keep good offsite backups. A $50 hard drive and $50 USB hard drive are more than sufficient for even the largest music collections.

 

[ru4real]

Cloud storage.


You can even get 100GB of online storage free from Symform , if you donate 150GB of unused local storage. The redundancy is better than RAID 5.

Free: 100GB of cloud storage!

 

[stuartlee]

Because of my setup, the PC is in a warm place. In the past, I've stupidly filled all the trays with HDDs in that PC and later saw poor diagnostic scoring on the health of the HDDs, probably due to the heat buildup inside the PC (older Dell PC with proprietary motherboard and screw holes, I think, hence, ruling out a new better-ventilated case).


I actually re-installed my music in one of the HDDs that was in that hot PC and I'm seeing several errors four out of five times I've run chkdsk.


One reason I am looking for a stable storage is due to the difficulty in making good backups. It seems to me that when you make a back up and then later buy/rip some new music, you could make another new back up of the entire music drive/folder. But if there has been any corruption of a previously stored music - that you don't listen to very much - and you are not permanently storing old backups, then you could be stuck with a back up of the corrupted song.


I'm also not much of a fan of incremental backups because of the reliance on older incremental copies. If you need to restore and one of the intervening incremental backups (i.e., your incremental back up two back ups ago) is damaged for some reason, I'm concerned that everything since that damaged backup would not be recoverable.


So far, it seems that having a HDD that's offline and cool, would be best. But there would be the hassle of reconnecting the HDD when you want to manually backup just the new music.

 

[stuartlee]

Quote:

Originally Posted by lovemyram4x4 If your that worried about corruption maybe you should thing about ZFS.

A bit too exotic for me, a joe schmoe with a masters in EE.

 

[Mrkazador]

Snapraid, software raid that can run on top of


Linux

Windows

Mac OS X

Solaris

BSD


It can check files for corruption so they are bit perfect.

 

[stuartlee]



Quote:
Originally Posted by Mrkazador /forum/post/20830539


Snapraid, software raid that can run on top of


Linux

Windows

Mac OS X

Solaris

BSD


It can check files for corruption so they are bit perfect.

Thanks, this is very interesting. I have posted to the snapraid thread about my situation and we'll see what they say.

 

[stuartlee]



Quote:
Originally Posted by ogormask /forum/post/20828669


I have no idea where you learned about "corruption" but its pretty much impossible or improbable at best. You can defrag a regular hard drive to keep things healthy and a SSD can run trim.

I've run defrag on a HDD and after the defrag, a bunch of my word documents opened up to mumbo jumbo. While I sometimes write mumbo jumbo for class notes, but the text was no longer recognizable and the document was not even recognized as a Word document. That was in 1999 and perhaps the technology has improved, but that is my experience.


To be clear, I am seeing "errors" when running chkdsk. I am assuming that these "errors" are not just errors in pointers or addressing, but something that modifies the actual song, so that you would hear a hiss, snap, or something. I would presume that this is corruption.

 

[rockytt]



Quote:
That was in 1999 and perhaps the technology has improved

You think?

Honestly, I've run probably 40 HDDs over the past 10 years and only had problems with one of them (I know others here have run more-it's not a contest

)

Feels like you're overthinking/analyzing the whole situation and trying to force the answer. You're intrigued with SSD (I run a couple in my systems, btw) and it's like you're waiting for one post to confirm (in your mind) that it's the way to go so you can justify the purchase.

Seriously-fix the heat issue, and keep a (separate) external HDD for backing up your music files. Two copies of the same file on HDD will be enough, particularly if they are valuable enough for you to store the backup offsite

Quote:
Naturally, I would think that there is a far less chance of data corruption on an SSD, when compared to a rotating platter

Why? We're talking about long-term storage, yes? If you will be doing a lot of writing/rewriting of data then the SSD is a very poor choice.

 

[jonnythan]

Actual small-scale data corruption on a modern hard drive is extraordinarily rare. It's silly to worry about, frankly. It's not like your .flac files will develop dozens of single-bit errors over time. It just doesn't happen. If single-bit errors were common, computers would just not work for more than a few months at a time.


Just keep your files and keep a good backup.

 

[Laserfan]



Quote:
Originally Posted by stuartlee /forum/post/20830394


A bit too exotic for me, a joe schmoe with a masters in EE.

Quote:
Originally Posted by stuartlee /forum/post/20831036


I've run defrag on a HDD and after the defrag, a bunch of my word documents opened up to mumbo jumbo....That was in 1999 and perhaps the technology has improved...


To be clear, I am seeing "errors" when running chkdsk...

I can't tell if you're joking, or...? You ran a defrag in 1999?

If you run chkdsk and you have errors, it should fix them, or tell you if it does not! And you should never run defrag on a disk with errors, though most (all?) check for them first before going-ahead with the filesystem adjustments.


There are a lot of problems right now with (at least) Sandforce-controlled SSDs that have caused folks' data to disappear without a trace. Yes, it happened to me too, and that's NEVER happened with a mechanical hard drive. I've lost data for sure, but never just "all gone" with no hope for recovery as with SSD.


You won't like this comment either: At worst, "precious music" can be acquired again. No big deal. Term papers and family photos are something else again.

 

[Somewhatlost]



Quote:
Originally Posted by hceuterpe /forum/post/20828990


I don't trust SSD for long term storage yet. They are not a proven medium yet since they are so new. Plus for cost, I think they use MLC, not SLC chips, which are not as reliable.

SSD's are so new? since when? SSD is nothing more than a bunch of flash and a SATA controller... both have been around since the beginning of time... well, they have been around a very long time at least... how old do they need to be before they are not "so new" anymore?


flash/SSD's do have an issue with repeated writes (in the 10K for MLC and 100K for SLC range)to the same bit, but SSD's have wear leveling to make sure you don't keep writing to the same bit over and over again...


if a flash bit fails, it usually does not change state, you just can't write to it anymore... not a horrible fail mode really...


but, none of the above should be much of an issue in this case as a 'music storage/server' would presumably opperate more in the write once/read many type of mode I would think?


flash does have an issue with read disturb that could be an issue with the music storage/server write once/read many usage that the OP was asking about... but that's easy enough to solve, just keep a backup, and when you listen to "stairway to heaven" for the 10th million time, just 'refresh' the flash by restoring the backup...

just curious, but assuming you really like "stairway to heaven" how long will it take you to listen to it 10 million times?

I just did the math, assuming "stairway to heaven" is 8:02, that would be about 153 years of continuous "stairway to heaven"... you might get a bit sick of "stairway to heaven" long before you need to 'refresh' the SSD...


one nice Pro of SSD is the low power/low heat...


SSD very well could be the perfect music storage... (assuming cost is a non-issue)


personally I just went with 2 HDD's in RAID 1... seemed cheaper at the time, and works just fine for me...

 

[cybrsage]



Quote:
Originally Posted by stuartlee /forum/post/20831007


Thanks, this is very interesting. I have posted to the snapraid thread about my situation and we'll see what they say.

I use FlexRaid, which is Windows and Linux.

 

[crtach]

Um, I have several machines with several different generations of SSDs and I wouldn't consider this as a medium for storing data.


The SSD medium will most certainly not last as long as a hard drive, these are flash memory chips tied to a controller chip with (hopefully) some cache and stuck into a 2.5" case.


I use them for boot drives and keep my data elsewhere, especially temp files, swap etc. Writes degrade performance of SSD, even with TRIM enabled, and there is a limit of writes that the flash memory will take before dying out. The main advantage of SSD is really fast read, no moving parts, low temperature and no noise.


Ideal for a notebook, or a boot drive. Not sure it's quite "safe", there's plenty of them dying out there, especially the new ones. I wouldn't keep my precious data on them.


There are plenty of online storage options that you can get for free, which I'd imagine is enough for a music collection.


As for HTPCs and media collections, plenty of people chose to leave drives in a NAS box, properly cooled and placed somewhere else where fan noise is not an issue (attic, cellar etc), with a fast network connection. You can reuse some old hardware to build one yourself, or just purchase one. Some of the popular operating systems for self-builders are Windows Home Server and Unraid.


The biggest advantage of going with something like that, if properly configured, is redundancy, automated backups, versioning etc. You also remove the heat and noise from your HTPC. And some people choose to boot off the NAS, so the HTPC has no hard drives at all.


Assuming you won't be looking to read gigabytes of your music collection in seconds, you don't really need the speed of SSD.


I personally have two big slow 3.5" drives which run pretty cool and quiet in my HTPC, and it boots from an old 32GB SSD.