Replacing Early B2 Sdcard

[Rick Hanser]

Hello.  I have an early B2 Brennan (probably purchased in 2012) that I still absolutely love.  I received a replacement sdcard yesterday (ordered through the Brennan site), so I can stream music from Spotify. While I understand what needs to be done to swap sdcard, it is not clear to me what becomes of all my music previously imported. Can someone please confirm that I will NOT, or WILL LOSE music?  

On a somewhat related note, the Brennan B2 illustrates to me the power of a a Raspberry Pi.  Has anyone gone down the path of building a media server (photos, movies, etc) & can point me in the direction of some recommended operating systems/hardware configurations?

Thanks in advance,

-Rick 

[Peter Lowham]

Hi Rick,

You are safe to swap the new SDcard into your B2.  All of your music is stored on the B2's internal hard disk drive which is completely separate from the SDcard which is where the O/S and B2 software is stored..  So you will NOT lose any of your music collection by swapping the SDcard.  But I would emphasise that you should take regular backups of your music collection by using the B2's 'Export to C' function which copies all of your music to an adequately sized USB memory stick of USB external HDD.

I do store photos on my B2.  There is a little documented facility for uploading and displaying photos; I think that this feature is not officially supported by Brennan, but I do like it.  It is found through the web browser at:

http://192.168.1.20/jbv.html#       (substitute your B2's Ip address in the string)

Regards,

Peter.

[Daniel Taylor]

But do we know if Rick's B2 has a HDD, or is his B2 old enough that the music was stored on the SD card.  Rick, does your SD card stick out the right hand side of the case?  Or is it internal and you have to pull the back out?  Or a different way to approach it, what is the music capacity for your unit?

[Peter Lowham]

Hi Daniel,

That's a very relevant point; I had overlooked that totally so thank you for that. 

Rick's B2 is the early model with the SDcard sticking outside of the case (his B2 is a 2012 model and the internal microSd card models did not appear until early 2017).  So the only question is what capacity Rick's B2 is.

@Rick; I have located the web address of the documentation of the JBV photo viewer function which is;

https://www.brennan.co.uk/itemcontent.php/content/jbv

Regards,

Peter.

[Rick Hanser]

Hello all. Thanks for the responses. I’m starting to wonder if my purchase date is wrong now. My B2 actually has the internal sdcard. I also neglected to mention I purchased my B2 with 2TB. Currently, I’ve got 5,120 tracks imported which takes up about 185GB. Even with FLAC compression, that seems like a lot to be saved onto an sd card. 

Coincidentally thanks for the info regarding the Picture Bank.  I will absolutely check that out once I’ve upgraded my B2. 

[Rick Hanser]

I absolutely got the purchase date wrong. I purchased my B2 in August 2013 off Amazon. Sorry for the confusion. 

[fred.w....@gmail.com]

Hi Hans

As you say this  " I also neglected to mention I purchased my B2 with 2TB" we can DEFINITLY confirm that all your music is on the 2TB internal HDD and thus will NOT be affected by you swapping out the SD card.

My only concern is what SD Card did you get, if there is a card sticking out of the right hand side of your B2 you needed the (large format) standard SD Card, if not then you needed the (small format) Micro SD Card version.

Also if the latter you will need to take the back off your B2 to swap out the card as described here https://www.brennan.co.uk/itemcontent.php/content/Techy

Also a Peter recommends, if you have not done so PLEASE, PLEASE make a backup (Export) of your music. Also please not, if you are purchasing a large capacity USB stick to use as a backup device, then get one form a reputable supplier/make

and pay full price. The cheap ones on eBay etc are FAKE!  and have lead to terrible problems on this Forum.

Before you use it for you backup, use the tools in the B2's menus to format the device to FAT32 - nothing else will work!.

Finally regarding Pi based music/media centres, Yes I have built quite a few using Pi's,

Some I used Kodi    which actually has a Raspberry Pi foundation image (LibreElec)

Some I used Max2Play

With he Max2Play version builds I installed a HiFiBerry amplifier "hat" on the Pi and therfore had to search for cases big enough for the Pi, Hat and disks, While the LibreElec builds stream content form my NAS.

Actually there are a tone of maker projects for all sort of things using Pis - its great fun.

Fred