Backing up music database from DAS connected to mini Mac to DAS connected to NUC (with Roon)

I apologize in advance for the length of this post but I know there are a number of community members with more amazing technical knowledge who might be able to advise on a very specific technical question.

I have Roon on a NUC 12 and up to now I’ve connected it to a copy of a music data base on a Synology NAS over my network. The original source of the data base is on an OWC DAS connected to a Mac mini. I use the Mac mini to manage the source data base, eg add new files and manage metadata which I then backup to the Synology which then serves as the source for Roon. This has worked well for me other than the Roon response time accessing the NAS is not as fast as DAS would be.

I’m thinking about getting a 2nd OWC to use as 1) a backup to the 1st OWC connected to the Mac Mini and 2) to use as the source for the NUC 12 and Roon connected via thunderbolt.

The reason for my post is to ask for any advice from the community on how to backup the first OWC (connected to the Mac mini) to the 2nd OWC (which would be connected to the NUC12). The OWCs have 2 thunderbolt connections but I’m assuming the same OWC can’t be simultaneously mounted on both the Mac mini and NUC 12 or the 2nd OWC mounted on the NUC12 and simultaneously daisy chained to the 1st OWC. However, the Mac mini and the NUC12 would be on the same network and I thought the Mac mini attached to the first OWC could probably share files with the 2nd OWC mounted on the NUC and so I could use Carbon Copy Cloner to copy database updates on the first OWC to the 2nd OWC which Roon could then access.

Again apologies for the lengthy question but any advice anyone could offer would be greatly appreciated.

You can always use the forum search. Example: Search results for 'OWC' - Roon Labs Community

You need RoonOS (Nucleus / ROCK) build 261 production or newer if you run Roon OS on your NUC (and of course a NUC with a Thunderbolt connector) to even have some Thunderbolt support. It is unclear if Roon OS can fully support your desired DAS.

NOTE: The OWC DAS’s are AFAIK designed for Apple MAC. Using it with anything else is at your own risk and without guaranteed success or support from OWC. IDK if anyone can tell if an OWC DAS with RAID will work on Linux, let alone a minimalistic Roon OS. Roon OS also offers no way to format external storage, Apple stuff usually comes with an Apple FS of some sorts and Roon OS likely has read support only for Apple FS’s (at best).

If you really want to use third-party Apple accessory products, better stay with Apple – buy a suitable Mac Mini for example as your machine for Roon Server.

Reread also:

PS: I can still not see a good reason for using a big, multi-drive DAS for a library that fits a single drive.


Why assuming anything? Does OWC not provide manuals and support for customers that can be used to answer such questions. Maybe there is even a user forum for OWC owners?

It has read support only for HFS and HFS+ and no support for the current APFS. Linux support for APFS is only through APFS-Fuse or the proprietary Paragon, i.e., not in ROCK.

External storage (USB) can be the most popular filesystem format, and will not be formatted, so you can put your music on it and just plug it into the box. Filesystems supported: EXT2/3/4 VFAT/FAT32/FAT16 EXFAT NTFS HFSPLUS HFS;