Searching for advice of usb use

[PatLogan]

Hi there,
I have a SB Duet but my PLC are broken and I do not want to use my PC anymore, hence the idea of a SB touch.
I have about 200 Go of flac files on an external usb drive.
I have read in some places that a SB Touch is very slow with the usb drive if the capacity is a bit large.
Any advice will be very appreciated!
Thank you,
Pat

[dasmueller]

I am but a novice at best in this field but have read these forums quite extensively absorbing what I was capable of. Those who have more experience than I feel that the best way to use the Touch is w a wireless network for increased functions, speed etc. There are many posts in these forums regarding this which you would do well to review. That being said, I use my Touch in standalone mode with a USB HDD powered by the Touch-the recomendation is to use a drive with an external power source if one is going to pursue this path. While not perfect, I find it to fullfill my needs very well.
If you could be more precise with your questions perhaps forum members might be able to offer more suggestions.

[PatLogan]

Hi there,
Thank you for your nice reply.
In fact, I do not have a lot of details to provide, just the fact that I have read in some places that the sb touch can be quite slow when reading usb drives.
So I'm a bit reluctant to buy one without gathering some advices from people who use it this way.
Would you mind giving me some more details?
1. What is the size of you music folder on your usb hdd?
2. How many files do you have?
3. How is it slow?
3.1. in parsing files?
3.2. exploring folder or artists or albums, etc.?
3.3. display of covers?
4. Pbs of buffer?
Many thanks!
Pat

[tank121]

Pat

I've been running the Touch from release date with an Iomega 500gb 2.5" HD ( powered by USB) with 2,600 tracks (flac)(currently about 86gb) with no real issues.

Occasionaly you may need to stop and start the inbuilt server software more than once when you've disconnected the drive.

[PatLogan]

Hi tank,
Thx for your contribution, I have much more but I'm not sure there would be some big difference from 86 to 220 go.
Any other testimonies?
Cheers

[dasmueller]

I am still in the process of ripping and converting to FLAC. I use a 1TB Toshiba Canvio. At the present I have 380 GB and 17500 files on the drive. I did a complete rescan yesterday as I added files. The complete rescan once I got it started took approx 1.5 hrs which is not a big deal because its something you only need to do when adding files or correcting tags. I think speed is fine. The album art is a tad slow to show up when searching but not a killer.

Be fussy about your tags, develop a system and stick to it. Have your files backed up to a 2nd drive. The operating system on my PC crashed a few weeeks back and I almost lost 65 GB of files.

Good luck !

[iPhone]

If one isn't expecting to much and realizes that TinySC is not SBS running on a PC, then TinySC can be a means to listen to local tunes. I use TinySC in my SUV and at the cabin every weekend.

I have used both large drives (2TB) and small drives 320 to 500 GB with 99 percent being FLAC so we are talking about 16,000 to 125K in total tracks without issue. Album Artwork can be an issue also. Make sure that the artwork is all under 600x600 and no huge file sizes. TinySC also seems to do better with -5 compression (besides one really doesn't gain anything by using -8 in the first place).

BUT, there are some things to know and realize. TinySC is NOT SBS. It has limited resources and is of course slower then SBS running on a PC. If you know what you are doing and do it straight forward and wait for each command to be completed, TinySC is completely usable. If one is the type that changes their mind halfway through something and inputs command after command, one will have issues with the built-in server.

The type, model, and brand of USB drive can be important also as some drives just don't work. I have had great success with the USB Powered Toshiba USB drives. Older external powered USB drives that don't have a bunch of features tend to work well. Drives that act like an Optical drive when plugged into a PC just don't work. Avoid drives that spin down or sleep after each access.

One very important thing to do is not to fill the drive up completely with music. After the drive is formated, only use about 85 percent of the formated total for music for there needs to be free space on the drive for TinySC to use. Granted TinySC doesn't need all that space but the drive will perform better if its not filled to the brim with music.

[hpk]

Just got my Squeezebox Touch today, and connected a LaCie 640GB USB powered disc with 60'000 MP3 files. It took about 8h to read all in, but now it's als fluent as on the Squeezebox Receiver ...

[hpk]

Just to add the experiences of the first days ...

Once the database is built, it's not bad to work with, however, changing to the music from the NAS it is faster. And taking off the USB disc to add new musictitles is a nightmare. Everytimeit starts to rescan the music library again, and this takes hours.

THerefore, most of the time I use the music library on the NAS and not the internal with the music on the connected USB, as I add new music every second day ...