Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Streaming MC200 SSD

I’ve got an otherwise spare MC200 in my office at work and have been wondering about swapping in an SSD for the hard drive. I’ve cloned the HD in an MC200 before and swapped to a 1TB drive from the original 500 GB drive, keeping the original drive as a back up (I have no nefarious intentions). The MC200 in my office is the later version that came with a 1TB drive from new so the cloning process should be one or two steps easier (not having to extend partitions into the unassigned part of the new disc?)

I have a couple of questions, partly for simplicity of retaining a back up for either MC200, does anybody know if the software on the earlier and later units is the same? Or would I need to retain both original hard drives as back up for each? If not I can reuse the 1TB from this one for an old laptop I’m giving to the grand-children and just retain the original ones 500GB disc for a disc failure recovery on either.

The other question is do we know what the maximum size HD that will work in an MC200? If the price of the 2TB drops like the bargain 1TB unit I just picked up it would be the logical next step....

Mods if either question oversteps any of the boards rules please feel free to delete and put me right.

Many thanks

Richard

The unit was self-updating so you only need one backup HDD/SSD.

Maximum size is probably kernel dependent. 2TB should be no problem. 4TB could work but needs to be tested.

Whilst true for the Sooloos app itself I believe each OS installation has unique ID's / licensing so I would recommend maintaining a backup for each device.

Regards,
Carl

All is well with your post, the forum rules were adjusted a while back now to allow for this ... Regards,
Carl

Many thanks both really helpful. If I get chance I might try a disc swap and see if they boot just for personal education. If I do I’ll report back.

All the best

Richard

My MC200 which had the original 1TB hard drive has now got a Sandisk 1TB SSD. The “mark 1” with its original 500GB drive and the cloned and expanded 1TB HD is now with a new owner in the US so I couldn’t try the swap, but I was advised they run different software so it wouldn’t have worked.

The swap took longer than I expected as I hoped my ice-box type device might clone the drive without much effort. No such luck! In the end Macrium Reflect (free download, I’d used it for cloning laptop HD to SSDs before) took just less than 24 hrs but it works perfectly.

When 2TB SSDs get cheeper I fancy a go at that. This unit lives in my office at work so doesn’t get as much use as the 4TB MD600 at home, but the smaller collection of favourite albums could do with expanding.....

I’ve taken a picture before I screwed it all back together. I’ll try and upload it. Not sure the iPad image size might need modified first though?

Seasons best wishes to all

Richard

[img]https://www.meridianunplugged.com/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showgallery&Number=297578[/img]

If you change that image from Jpeg to jpg it should display....Happy Christmas

Thanks Chris I’ll have a go...

If you retain the 500GB as the backup - would that not mean you would have to go through partitioning again in the event of a failure? I went through the pain of this with mine and went as far as finding the OEM Hitachi Travelstar HDD to keep the system "original". I'm not sure if these Hitachi disks are any better than any other HDD, but I too would consider a swap to an SSD, retaining the original HDD for restore purposes.

From memory I think there was some chat on disc size limits due to the MC200 being fan-less. I'm not a tech wizard so would be interested to know if a larger SSD would produce less heat than a spinning HDD in the enclosure.

1TB will keep me going for quite a while longer, but given the MC200 is now discontinued, backups seem an essential step to ensure longevity. Just not sure how much more "robust" an SSD is....

An SSD produces much less heat than a typical spinning disk (probably less than a quarter overall), so you should be fine on the heat side of things.

Well-known brands of SSD's are generally very reliable (far more reliable than spinning disks) with the exception of a certain Samsung made a few years ago and another cheap and cheerful manufacturer who had a controller issue. Any modern Samsung should be fine (as would, I'm sure, many others).