Hello all, I am looking for some advise -recommendations for a good quality 2TB SSD hard drive to back my Melco N100 up to. Hoping someone can advise who has a SSD hard drive already set up. Thanks in advance.
I and most of my close friends use a Samsung 2TB SSD. Proved to be very reliable and compatible to all systems both Hardware & Software.
Hi QuickSticks, thank you for your reply, I will look into the Samsung.
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+1 to Samsung, I have 2TB SSD packed to 95% with FLAC/DSD files. Connected direct to Naim Uniti Star since December 2020, used daily. Not a single glitch or dropout since then 
Any drive will store the backup data. There may be differences in the write speed that could affect how long it takes to do a large initial full backup. Other than that, anything will do.
This is something I am interested in as I need to sort out back up for my Core. I have a Samsung SSD in the Core and so far it has been very good, but I have only had it a short time. I presume what one is looking for is an external hard drive with a USB connection.
My principal question is whether there is significant advantage in getting an SSD rather than an HD for back up. My expectation is that I would plug it in and back up every so often rather than leave it plugged in all the time.
You can buy an External USB caddy for an SSD drive. I have a Caddy for my Samsung and it serves very well.
Caddy is USB C, Cable is USB C to A
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That’s what I’ve done, a M2 SSD and an aluminium enclosure from Amazon makes for a small and very fast external drive
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Thanks - I’ll have a look.
Worth checking out Western Digital, their drives have a pretty decent reputation. They offer some neat off-the-shelf solutions like ‘MyBook’ and a data recovery plan if you’re really nervous about loosing data. Like others have suggested, you can just buy a cheap external drive caddy and pop in whichever drive you want in for much less.
Over the last twenty years or so I’ve never had a drive (SSD or HDD) fail from Seagate, Samsung, Western Digital so I can personally recommend any of those.
In terms of software to make backing up a bit easier there are things like Aronis True Image which can clone the whole drive if you’re wanting to backup an operating system for example and keep all the settings, files, drivers etc. Probably not necessary though if it’s just a music library that can be copied across.
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My principal question is whether there is significant advantage in getting an SSD rather than an HD for back up. My expectation is that I would plug it in and back up every so often rather than leave it plugged in all the time.
None that I’m aware of, SSD is much faster than HDD, these days with current gen NVME SSD drives are typically at least 35x faster than a HDD but as you’re probably only interested in longevity, HDDs are still best for long term archiving of data (much cheaper too!).
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If you’re looking for a back up, reliability is what you need. Plus the write times need to be quick. My choice would be a traditional spinning HDD from a reputable maker. WD, Samsung etc. SSDs typically have a limited number of " writes" so are not suited to being used as backups. But are good for being read quickly.
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I agree. I wouldn’t use an SSD for a back up. When an SSD fails it happens very suddenly and it’s pretty much unrecoverable in my experience.
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Our three Synology NASs are fitted with Western Digital Red HDD.
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NAS rated or even home security rated HDDs are designed for multiple writes and reads. Ones in my NAS are 7 6ears old with no bad sectors.
Hi all thank you all for the information, I had a QNAP fail and I lost a lot of music so after replacing the QNap with a Melco N100 I was looking for a safety net should it happen again. Thanks Richard I just assumed a SSD hard drive would be better, I will start researching HDD hard drives.
Just as a side note I have noticed that since changing to the Melco the sound quality appears to have improved (please don’t ask how to describe though), I find myself listening to the system more often and enjoying it more 
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Hi @Dougie, didn’t you have a Raid1 or 5 configuration on your QNAP? I’m surprised you lost a lot of music.
To be honest I don’t know if I had Raid 1 or 5 configuration, I noticed that it was taking longer and longer times to backup itself. Eventually it was taking days.
Raid is not backup. Even if it was, it’s pretty pointless to rely on another drive in the same NAS enclosure, as failure of a single disc is just one of many things that can result in data loss. Fire, theft, floid, lightning strikes and hardware or software failure can lose your data unless it’s in another location - or preferably several locations. Maybe several cheap HDDs, one in another room, one in a friend’s house, one in the car.
If you want continued access to your music while setting up a replacement, make one of the drives a NAS such as an entry level Synology, QNAP or Netgear. These can run a UPnP server so when your main one dies you can continue listening to a backup library.
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Technically Raid can be a backup ie Raid 1, 5 & 10 but I totally understand and agree the point your data needs to also be in, ideally 3 , different locations, not just in one box.
My main PC is the primary storage/editing location. I then back up to my Melco and to a Synology NAS which uses 2 x Seagate Ironwolf drives in Raid 1. In case the house burns down I have a further Ironwolf drive I update every 6 months and keep in the shed down the garden.