External hard drives and sound quality

Aren’t the File Allocation Tables written & rewritten as they are accessed such as a log of sorts?

Jim -- I think you might be referring to the fact that FAT32, NTFS, and many other file systems store information about when each file was created, modified, and most recently accessed. However what I was referring to were the file tables that define the location(s) of each file on the drive, which are updated whenever a file is written or modified or moved. Those file table updates typically require considerably more than one write operation, and if a power dropout or system crash occurs during that sequence of writes, the file tables of non-journaling file systems such as FAT32 can easily become corrupt.

NTFS, on the other hand, is a journaling file system, which means that it keeps track of the changes it intends to make in a journal before committing them to the main file system. The journal normally allows a crash or power dropout to be easily and quickly recovered from, invisibly to the user.

Another disadvantage of FAT32, btw, is that defragmenting a FAT32 partition is a much slower process than defragmenting an NTFS partition of comparable size.

You are correct that NTFS incorporates file permissions as metadata, while FAT32 does not. I have no idea, though, how the problem you ran into might have happened, in which permissions were somehow changed. I've never heard of that happening before. Just your luck!

Best regards,
-- Al

Live and learn I suppose. The wireless security precautions seem to have eliminated that nonsense.

Hello all. Would like to offer a tweak that everyone above will find beneficial. Every piece of gear mentioned above suffers from internal vibration plus digital jitter which lowers the fidelity of your system. Putting your drives (internal or external)and receivers on 3 brass footers supported on a wood plinth (preferably maple) and rubber/cork supports under that will provide significant gain in the quality of the sound produced. Mapleshaderecords dot com can provide pictures of the above solution. I use isoblocks (rubber/cork) to support my Logitech Duet Receiver and home made wood blocks (2 pieces of 1"x1"x8" with 2 deck screws through each) under my PC to penetrate the carpet and drain the vibration from the hard drive. This solution is very cheap and produced positive results for my system. Happy Listening.

It depends mainly on the software you are using for playback, using external hd's with a good music playing software is very effective and i dont hear differences between.

Really depends on the resolution ability of your system the audio signal is going through.

On many systems, you wont hear a difference. On a high res. system, a NAS has a less darker background than a spinning HD, which is not as quiet as a solid state HD.