Are all external hard drives the same?

12-02-12: Rlwainwright
I have an Oppo bDP-93 and it plays quite well with my 3 Seagate FreeAgen 1.5TB drives and with my WD 750GB drive. All of these are USB 2.0 spec drives.

It will NOT recognize my new Seagate Backup Plus Desk 3 TB USB 3.0 drive. I would recommend you stick with USB 2.0 drives for your Oppo...

RW, I'm wondering if that might be due to the size of the drive, rather than to the interface. Drives larger than 2.19 TB utilize a different and relatively new partition table format, GPT, rather than the traditional Master Boot Record format. Older computer operating systems will not recognize GPT, and perhaps the same is true of the operating system firmware in the BDP-93 and/or BDP-95.

So I would suggest to the OP that he not purchase a drive larger than 2 TB unless an authoritative indication can be found that a larger drive will work with the player.

Excellent comments by everyone above.

Regards,
-- Al

Oldears, "asynchronous USB" refers to an interface between a computer and the USB input of a DAC. When the Oppo player is used to play files that are on an external hard drive that is connected directly to it via USB, the Oppo can be thought of as acting as the computer, with the computer-to-DAC interface being internal to the Oppo, and implemented in a different and more simplified manner than USB, asynchronous or otherwise.

As to how results would compare between playing a file from a computer into the BDP-105's USB DAC input, and playing the same file from a hard drive into a USB port on the BDP-105, that would be dependent on many design variables involving both the player and the computer, and perhaps even other parts of the system which might be affected by computer-generated RFI or digital noise. I doubt that the answer can be determined without trying it both ways in your particular setup.

Regards,
-- Al

Greg, unfortunately I believe that it is not possible to transfer most commercially made Blu-Ray discs and DVD's to a computer hard drive, because of copy protection provisions they utilize.

Also, even if it were possible in some cases I believe that you would have to subsequently process the files with a video editing program to convert them to something that the player would recognize. Files on computer hard drives and on optically read discs are structured differently. And the process of "building" a video file using a video editing program, especially with high definition material that would be used on a Blu-Ray disc, would be likely to require several hours or more per hour of material for typical computers to do the necessary processing.

Not sure what you are referring to when you mentioned Blu-Ray recorder cards. If you mean Blu-Ray drives which can burn Blu-Ray discs, their "recording" function is intended for creation of Blu-Ray discs from one's own material, in conjunction with video editing or other software.

Re your question about putting CD material onto your hard drive, for some particularly knowledgeable suggestions about what software to use see this page at the Empirical Audio website. Steve N. of Empirical Audio is member "Audioengr" here at A'gon.

Regards,
-- Al

John, good point about a RAID array of multiple drives not being something that should be counted on as an exclusive means of backup. Some additional reasons:

1)If the RAID controller circuitry fails at some point in the future, and if the same or a similar controller is no longer available, for RAID modes other than RAID 1 (simple mirroring) the data may be unrecoverable even if all of the drives are intact.

2)Although unlikely, it is certainly within the realm of possibility that all of the drives in the array could be simultaneously destroyed or corrupted by the power supply going into an overvoltage condition (although a *good* design will include effective protections against that possibility); by misbehavior of the controller circuitry due to undiscovered design bugs; or by misbehavior of software or firmware due to undiscovered design bugs, crashes, malware infections, etc.

Regards,
-- Al