If you are buying a dedicated storage device for your network player, there are a few things to consider that should help you choose what it going to work best.
- When looking at any sort of drive, having a completely separate backup is by far the best option. Please be aware that RAID drives (that have two internal drives with mirrored content) are not a perfect option in this case. RAID is designed to give high availability but if an error occurs in one database it will occur in the other- potentially ruining both. Buying a single drive NAS that backs up to an external drive is a more robust solution in terms of an audio network.
- Then- is the drive going to be nearby in your equipment rack or elsewhere? If the drive is not going to be in the same room, it doesn’t really matter if it has a fan and makes noise or not. If it is in the same space, you might want to consider a fanless design that gives you lower overall noise levels. We have worked hard to design network products that are able to treat information sent from any source in the same way but the noise of a drive in your listening space can be intrusive.
- If you are ripping a CD collection, you might want to consider a RipNAS that contains a CD mechanism and the software to identify and tag CDs. Some models have the drive on board and others support a USB one being added. These are ideal options if you don’t have a CD drive in your computer any more.
- One final option to consider is if you are considering using Roon. More powerful NAS drives have the option of being used as a Roon Core which means that you can control everything from your phone or tablet and have not need for the Roon software on your computer.