Hi TWG,

The 3200 ought to work just fine without the HDD, although I've not seen one fail yet.  In that instance you're taking no greater risk than someone buying an original BeoSound/System 2500 and wondering what would happen if the CD drive failed...or the cassette deck for that matter.  B&O seems to take care in choosing the elements in these systems, and have been largely successful.  

The issue with the 3200 has always been that you have no backup of the HDD contents, which is a fair point; but I think the target market was a bit older and not really as tech savvy as some of us here.  The expectation was that the HDD would really only contain copies of CD's which the owner already had, as opposed to files downloaded from the 'net.  And no offense intended to those here who have the 3200, I said 'target market'. 😎

With the BS-5, I think its important to think of the internal HDD as a backup, in its own right, of the music held on the administrating computer; and to remember that other backups can be made across the household LAN.

As an example, from another environment, I purchased on of the original all-in-one G5 iMacs a little over 4 years ago.  During its tenure it experienced 3 failures, the mid-plane/main board, the AC power supply, and fatally, the logic board.  I replaced it about 2 months ago.  Through all of that I had also replaced (because I wanted more storage), the internal HDD and kept the old one.  When it finally died, I pulled out the 'new' HDD, and combined it with the 'old' HDD in an external enclosure.  Both work great!  And that's with the cheap, consumer drives which Apple use.  Don't B&O boast that they purchase 'Server Grade' drives somewhere in there marketing materials?

I would like to think that it would be possible to install another hard drive, but is it?

It might be useful to put in a larger capacity drive, but is it possible?

@Russ:

Thanks for the explanation. That means I still can use a BS3200 if the hdd is broken?! Great news.

@casdave:

The problem will be: In about 5 years we will have different interface standards for harddrives etc. IDE will be gone and there's just S-ATA etc. and THAT will be the problem with those components.

TWG wrote:

@Russ:

Thanks for the explanation. That means I still can use a BS3200 if the hdd is broken?! Great news.

@casdave:

The problem will be: In about 5 years we will have different interface standards for harddrives etc. IDE will be gone and there's just S-ATA etc. and THAT will be the problem with those components.

 

Beomaster 5 is a computer, so it will be very easy to install a new HDD in it even in 5 years time, unless HDD technology changes radically - you never know with computers. SATA HDDs can still be installed in computers that are 5 years or older. However i guess the USB interface will probably be around for years, so even if HDD changes radically, it will be adaptable to be USB interface compatible with eg a caddy, so there won't be a problem. For BS3200, there will always be the potential problem of new interfaces making it obsolete in installing new HDDs. Having said that I think you can still buy the older IDE HDDs from around 5 years ago.

And don't forget the BeoMaster 5 is expected to support NAS drives as well, so the EtherNet connection on the back is the interface of the future.

So tell me Russ, how does a NAS fit in in a BM5/BS5 setup. 😂

Systems based on hard disks face an interesting dilemma.

Hard disks fail, more often nowdays then previously. In the IT industry we have RAID, image backups, tape backups, offline storage etc to mitigate some risk. Standard drives on average fail in the 2-3 year mark.  B&O warranty is 2 years here.  The cost of replacing something out of warranty is very high. - Just found out with my BV7-40 DVD drive...

A previous poster was struck with a disappointing price to replace the Beosound 3200 hard disk, plus he had the loss of music to contend with. Not the position I would like to be in with a $5000 piece of kit...

The Beosound5 may allow some backup which is a step forward but what about the disk replacement should or when it fails? Bet the unit is a little more difficult to disassemble than my PC or laptop... Then there is the recovery of all the music.....

Not sure what others think of this....

beoaus.

i guess ssd is the future , hopefully bno will implement it asap

Yes, someone recently wrote about being quoted about £750 for replacing the ruined disk on a BS3200.

Someone else complained sbout HDD noise on their BS3200.

Things to think about.