Unplugging a USB hard drive from NDX 2

Streaming Audio
1

Hi everyone,
I have just tried plugging a USB hard drive into the rear USB socket on my NDX 2 streamer. It seems to work well and can be accessed under “Local Music” in the Naim app.
My question is how to unmount/unplug it? The hard drive takes its power from the NDX 2 bus. Unplugging it when the NDX 2 was in standby (hard drive power light stays on) produced a rather unwelcome mechanical sound from the drive.
Does this mean that I have to completely power down the NDX 2 whenever I need to remove the disc drive? The NDX 2 is in turn powered by an XPS DR, so that would have to be powered down as well.
If that is the case, would this be solved by buying a drive with an independent power supply?
Thank you all in advance for any help.

2

Buy a SSD drive instead.

3

You only have to worry about dismounting a USB drive if you might be writing to it when you unplug it. The NDX won’t be writing to it, so you can pull it whenever you want. You could play safe by not reading from it at the point of unplugging too. (It makes no difference whether it’s an HDD or a SSD obviously).

Best

David

1 Like
4

Is it possible that the drive was spinning when you removed it? Even then I’m not sure why it would make an unusual noise like that, and I would suspect that it might be faulty.
If you don’t have a backup of the drive, make one now!
I’ve never had any problem removing a bus powered drive, and I’m sure you don’t need to turn off the PSU to do it, although you may want to talk to Naim support just in case.

1 Like
5

Was the sound a sudden thud, which would just indicate the disk heads parking themselves?

1 Like
6

Thanks David. That’s reassuring. I think, at the time, the NDX2 was possibly building an index of what was on the hard drive (quite a lot!).

7

It was very brief and sounded something like a spring uncoiling. Lasted about half a second.

8

The drive probably was spinning as I think an index was being built, as it’s the first time I’ve connected that drive to the NDX 2.
The drive is actually a safety backup of my NAS which has its own built-in backup as well. So it’s not critical.
Good to know that it’s generally OK just to unplug a drive though. On my computer I would need to unmount it before unplugging.

9

I guess the lesson learnt is that it takes a bit of time for the streamer to scan the USB drive and index the content! Maybe best to check the content is all there before removing it - if you even need to remove it.
If the drive had been mounted long enough for the streamer to fully index it when you removed it, I would be suspicious that there’s an underlying problem somewhere. Hopefully not another manifestation of the faulty relay issue that has been plaguing some Naim streamers :worried:

1 Like
10

It was the first time I’d plugged a hard drive into the USB socket, either on the NDX 2 or my previous ND5-XS. Previously I’ve only used an iPod. It will take time to index as there are almost 2000 ripped CDs and HiRes albums on there. It still hasn’t finished indexing. I think it was probably unhappy at being interrupted.
Thanks for your help.

11

This topic was automatically closed 60 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.