External HDD drive for music streaming?

[Jacques Wegier]

Hello,

I have ordered a base Mac Mini M4 and should receive it next week. I have an unused 2TB external HDD that I would like to use to store music files and stream them via Wi-Fi to my stereo system using Bluesound streamer. Is, using an HDD for wirelessly streaming music an OK idea?

Should I format this HDD drive to APFS or exFAT? Is one of them to be preferred?

Thank you very much

 

[picpicmac]

Should I format this HDD drive to APFS or exFAT?

Unless you're going to use the HD also on a Windows system, moving it between computers, pick an Apple format.

Audio bitrates are pretty low compared to today's disk transfer rates, so it should work fine.

 

[Jacques Wegier]

Unless you're going to use the HD also on a Windows system, moving it between computers, pick an Apple format.

Audio bitrates are pretty low compared to today's disk transfer rates, so it should work fine.

No, I am not going to move files between computers. Thank you

An other question: if I am using this external drive only for streaming music to my Stereo system and moving files (videos, photos, and other files) from the internal SSD for storage, is there any advantage to using an external SSD over my HDD (speed-wise)?

 

[Boyd01]

I setup a 2012 Mini as an iTunes server with all my media (audio and video) on an external hard disk. After about 3 years, the disk died. No problem because I had a second disk connected and used Carbon Copy to automatically clone to it every night. Just swapped in the backup disk and kept right on going.

Two or three years later, same thing happened, replaced it again. Two or three years later, that also died. Got tired of it and replaced the hard drive with a 4tb USB SSD (which was quite expensive when this happened) but haven't had any problems since then, which was over 5 years ago.

That was enough to convince me to use SSD's, but I stream a lot of video which no doubt hammers harder on a disk than music. Will just say, whatever you use, get two of them and setup some kind of automatic backup if your media is important. Am currently using a base m4 Mini as a media server and also have BackBlaze to continuously back it up.

 

[weaztek]

An other question: if I am using this external drive only for streaming music to my Stereo system and moving files (videos, photos, and other files) from the internal SSD for storage, is there any advantage to using an external SSD over my HDD (speed-wise)?

For playing music files or music videos the HDD will work fine. Just understand, the read/write speeds of an SSD can be 9x or faster.

 

[MajorFubar]

Music, you should be fine.
In 2013 I bought a 4TB NAS to stream ripped CDs from, and I'm still using it.
At the same time my dad (RIP) bought the same device to stream ripped DVDs to his telly. Within 5 years it was dead, which I partly attributed to the additional wear and tear of streaming videos not audio (Boyd01's experience relates).

 

[Fishrrman]

OP:

Unless you're going to use the drive for time machine, a platter-based hard drive should be kept in HFS+ format.

In disk utility, that's "Mac OS extended, journaling enabled, GUID partition format".

I also recommend that you DO NOT use "case sensitive".
Case should remain "INsensitive".

The only time a platter-based drive should be in APFS format is if you use it as a backup created by either time machine, or CarbonCopyCloner, or SuperDuper.

But platter-based drives should not be used for booting the Mac OS on Apple Silicon anyway -- they're just too slow.

 

[BrianBaughn]

For this use case the main disadvantage I see for a mechanical HD is the initial seek time lag. The lag may also affect all Finder windows and open/save dialog boxes when the drive is connected.

Just one such drive may not affect things, though. I suppose the type of enclosure may also be a factor.

 

[Ray2]

For many years prior to the advent of ssd's, music streamed from hdd's via usb 2 was a complete non-issue. Use what you have, music is an easy load, including FLAC. The downside of using APFS on hdd's is fragmentation. For archived data that’s being read rather than written frequently, it’s a non-issue. Basically, use whatever. Keeping in mind Apple has a history of discontinuing supports on abandoned standards.