External Hard Drive Format

Anirban Banerjee

I just ordered a Bluesound Node. I would like to connect an external USB drive to this Bluesound Node in order to play the FLAC music files.

1) I believe the USB drive needs to be in NTFS OR FAT32 format

2) Unfortunately, I do not own any Windows computer or laptop to format the same USB drive in NTFS or FAT32. I use a Mac and all my files are stored here.

Any suggestions?

I believe, I can also connect it over Network share (Mac to Bluesound). If I do so, will there be any degradation in quality? I was thinking that having the source file plugged into Bluesound will be the best option in terms of delivering file quality.

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Comments

5 comments

Date Votes
  • Official comment
    Seppi Evans
    Hi-Res
    • Edited

    In Diskutil select FAT when you partition a drive, this is FAT32.

    There is no difference in audio quality if the files are on USB or on a network share.

    Using a network share is actually the better way of adding music to your Bluesound system, as detailed here…

    https://support1.bluesound.com/hc/en-us/articles/201158077-How-USB-Storage-Differs-From-A-Local-Library

     

     

  • Cameron

    I recommend that you format the external drive to Linux ext 4

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  • Seppi Evans
    Hi-Res

    Hi Cameron,

    Ext4 would be good however it’s not natively supported under MacOS so the the OP would not be able to format the drive nor read it unless he purchased additional software.

    -1
  • Alain DW
    Lossless

    Or Seppi, make good use of an obsolete laptop/desktop and install your preferred flavour of Linux.

    All free, no extra cost needed.

     

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  • Cameron

    Sure, but if he can get someone else to format the drive to Ext4, then he can simply plug it in to the back of his bluesound device and use the drive as a NAS on his home network and it will be accessible from his Mac or pc

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