Does anyone have a preference for external HD for MAC for downloading music from Qobuz offline listening? I would rather save my dedicated HD on my Mac for other things and my photo/video drives for that. I just wondered if anyone had a preference for a certain reason for specialty HD for music vs. traditional other uses?
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Interesting and I wait with you for some ideas
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I thought I would ask! You never know, so many smart people on here.
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Hi Marcello, @MRHifiReviews
Also for @MartinTransporter
I have experience with a few different external drives, it depends on how much storage you are looking for? For myself I currently use a 1TB Solid State Drive for my MacBook Pro (for time machine backups etc.) that external drive is the WD - My Passport SSD 1024GB External USB 3.1 Gen 2 Portable Solid State Drive with Hardware Encryption. It’s currently on sale at BB. The benefits to this type of drive is that it is Solid State, no moving parts to fail and it has a very fast transfer rate compared to regular hard drives, lastly it is small, I’ll include a picture for reference.
Second option would be a “regular mechanical” hard drive, they normally cost quite a bit less for the same amount of storage. I currently use WD - My Book 4TB External USB 3.0 Hard Drive for my Xbox One X. This drive has been good so far and it has pretty fast transfer speeds, no issues with the little bit of gaming I do. I will say that I have had a hard drive similar to this one that in the past did fail and I lost everything on that drive, I should clarify that I had previously backed up that drive to another so I didn’t actually loose my information, but that drive did fail.
Hope this helps, I know it was not for the purpose you inquired about but hopefully this will give you some useful information.
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@MRHifiReviews, @MartinTransporter
Music is a low demand use case, so any current or recent hard drive will be fine. They are all fast enough for audio, and most are relatively huge for even high quality files. I prefer solid state drives because they are incredibly fast and small. However, old fashioned mechanical drives are fine in a stationary home environment.
Go with a reliable model (i.e., check the negative reviews) in your budget.
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I like solid-state for portable/travel uses simply because they’re largely impervious to physical shock (and they’re smaller and lighter). But, absolutely, speed is a non-factor here!
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I like the thought process of a small 1 tb portable solid-state drive. This way it is portable and doesn’t take up much space. It’s 100% going to be used for downloading music from Qobuz so I can play offline. Not any actual purchased music. @jb77 @generic @Torq for weighing in! As always I appreciate you guys.
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Honestly, unless cost is a big factor, or you’re using a machine with only USB-C ports, I’d just use this:
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I bought one of these Samsung solid state drives a couple years ago:
Its transfer speed over USB 3.0 absolutely blew me away (500 GB).
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You guys seriously rock all great options! Forgive me for my ignorance as I haven’t tried this yet, but if I get an external drive and download music for offline listening from Qobuz’s desktop application to a portable drive can I bounce between my Macbook pro and Imac with that drive for offline listening between both computers without issue?
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Glad to try and help
I belive going back and forth between your iMac and MacBook would be a non issue, as long as you have Qobuz download on both.
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Also the Samsung Drive that @generic listed would be another great option to the WD that I listed, the main difference between the two is the WD is plastic and the Samsung is metal, I purchased the WD because it was on a really good sale (when I purchased it a while ago) and was less expensive then the Samsung. Either should be great for your usage.
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They all look like awesome options! I will read some of the reviews and check to make sure they all play nice with OSX. Thanks again for all your help!
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My Samsung has only been used with OSX – including a MacBook Pro purchased in 2019.
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Maybe.
Test it with a cheap, simple, USB-thumb-drive first.
Offline storage is notoriously tightly controlled for this to be a given.
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And this is why I used to hand-maintain folders of open format files back in the day…now the monthly fees (and hard drives) are so cheap that it’s not worth my time. I download files to multiple devices…
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I thought it could possibly be an issue if the Qobuz software might not allow it. Worse case I guess I could create two folders via Qobuz for offline listening and title one Macbook offline listening and one IMac offline listening and use with Qobuz.
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