I would like to buy a new storage to put all my music and connected to Volumio. As far as I have understood the best is to have a direct USB connection but with an external-powered hard disk.
Most of 2.5 inch external hard disk comes with USB only connection.
Do you have any suggestion? Shall I use a powered USB hub or are there hard disk with their PSU?
Another question is regarding the file system. Which one shall I use?
I would like to find a solution to keep the drive all the time connected to Rpi/Volumio and sync the USB drive with another drive to have my music files at least on two devices.
Do you mean a proper NAS or can it be a hard disk connected to the router?
My router actually allows to have usb hard drive connected to it that can be shared across the network.
Your router needs also mediaserver functionality which commonly are not really comfortable enough, no search function, no gapless, even some have no Flac support.
Get an usb stick (don’t know how large your music library is) to your 1st Rpi and let the 2nd device phone or 2nd Rpi sync and retrieve there your files to play.
My router has mediaserver functionality (DNLA) but I did not activate it. I simply used another feature which allows to share a usb device as a network drive (samba share).
I had some trouble to connect to the share but finally I was able to succeed using option “vers=1.0”.
A cheaper option would be something like this: amazon.co.uk/Adapter-Cable- … 167&sr=8-5 with your own choice of (2.5 or 3.5) HDD. Also, with this, though they’re more expensive, you would have the option to use a solid state drive (SSD)
FLAC is the file type to use. MAKE SURE YOU BACKUP your ripped music / metadata / album art.