Best place to place your music files?

I recently did a few tests with my ROCK-NUC. I listened for audible changes when shifting between external USB (2.5" 4Tb, no separate power), metwork storage and also two different internal drives, one hybrid drive and one big fat SSD.
Differences were very small and i would not take a bet on my ability to discern any changes.

My NAS is on the other end of a WLAN bridge (as in router 2.4Ghz WiFi to access point, acting as a WLAN to Ethernet bridge) and if any differences at all i preferred the NAS solution.
However, when i moved the NUC/ROCK server to the same switch and location as my NAS i liked it with it’s internal SSD just as much…

Make of this what you wish, inconclusive at best, yes.
And to make matters worse, the same ROCK with internal SSD storage placed in my listening room (like when i tried the different storage solutions) sounded it’s best so far, with an Entreq Silver Minimus grounding one of it’s USB ports…

Many thanks for the helpful advice. Sorry, I wasn’t clear in my earlier post.

Using a NAS for my music library has the advantage that the disc redundancy offers a degree of protection from disc failure. This is not a back up which is why I make copies to HDDs some of which are kept safe by friends.

Now, if I transfer the music library to a HDD attached to the NUC core I will lose the first level of protection of the redundancy provided by the NAS. I can make a back up to the NAS which is protected by this redundancy. However, my understanding is that in order to effect this back up I have delete the old back up to make room for the new one. At this point, I have less protection than at present, although I still have the fall back of my other HDD back ups.

Is my only truly safe option to substantially increase the capacity of the NAS so it can contain two or more generations of back ups?

I wondered about attaching a Drobo to the core to achieve the same redundancy currently provided by the NAS, but that would be quite a costly option.

Not to put too fine a point on this, but the more discs you have the greater the odds of a disc failure. Of course, the redundancy of RAID 1 somewhat mitigates disc failure.

If you are talking about Roon backups of its library, you can specify how many backups you want to keep. Past that specified number and Roon will delete the oldest backup, automagically. You should understand that Roon only backs up its library. To back up your music files you will have to use some other backup software.

If you are running ROCK on a NUC or Roon’s Nucleus, you can’t run other backup software, but will have to use another machine

If you use your NAS to only backup Roon’s library, then you don’t need any redundancy at all. It’s just a backup. Unless your want to keep multiple differing versions of Roon’s library, losing the backup is meaningless.

If you keep your music files on either an external USB drive or an internal SATA drive, then you can use your NAS solely for backup. If you use your NASA solely for backup, then your don’t need RAID1 and can use RAID 0 to double the disc capacity you are currently seeing under RAID 1.

IMO, a NAS is really only necessary if one needs to access files from more than one machine.

On the subject of backups, there is always backup to the cloud. I don’t know how big your music file folders are, but 1TB of cloud storage on Amazon is $65 (?) a year. The first time you backup will take forever, but incremental backups after that will only need to backup newly added files since the last full backup.

You probably already understand all this, just underlining some points.:expressionless:

Thanks. That’s very helpful.

It’s the security of the music files that I am concerned about.

I’d still need more capacity with Raid0 avoid the need to delete the previous back up to make room for a new one.

Although NASs have served me well for the last ten tears or so, I would go down a different route if I was starting now. Unfortunately, I just bought a new ReadyNAS last year when my original one failed.

I am coming to the view that my best option is to stick with what I am doing now for the time being and revisit the issue again when I run out of capacity.

As you want, but if you use RAID 0 instead of RAID 1 then your capacity is immediately doubled.

Peace.

Roon core on my late 2012 mac mini. Internal 256gb SSD with internal 500gb HDD backup drive. Music library stored on two external USB drives; OWC Elite Pro 2x2tb HDD (mirror mode) and Elite Pro 1x2tb (HDD) backup drive. Easy, peasy. Automatic backup (kind of) in mirror mode and Time Machine backup every hour by the mini. All three 2tb drives are the same part number for interchangeability if need be.

Network bridge (SOTM) over ethernet 55-feet from my router. Could not be simpler. Works without a hitch; excellent sound quality with instantaneous switching from my iPad.

Last step not completed is to backup the roon library on the 1x2tb in addition to the 500gb HDD.

Russ

Time Machine backups may not result in a useable restore of Roon library.

For more info, search forum.

Or the last section in the KB article on Backup.

Thanks for the suggestion, Slim. That would give me an extra 1TB, but I have over 2TB of music. There’s no way round it, I need to upgrade the four 1TB HDDs in my NAS to 2TB or greater.

Unfortunately, the cost outweighs the benefit of having music file storage attached to NUC core. If I did buy the new discs, it would probably be worth stretching it to get a Drobo. I could reuse the old HDDs in the Drobo and attach that to the core. That would be the best of all worlds.

Four 1TB disks in RAID 0 gives you 4TB.

But half the reliability?

That is, increased odds of failure equates to less reliability.

Sorry I got into this thread.

Hy Everyone! I want to share my experience with my Roon server setup.
3 years before I decided to build a PC as my home server. Previously, I used a 2-bay Synology, which was great, but my media collection growed faster that 2 HDD can handle and 4 or more bay Synology NAS-es were expensive for me. Looking for alternative solutions I found Open Media Vault (OMV) and decided to give it a try. At this time I only hear about Roon.
Than, after the Roon experience and seraching for Roon server options I found, that my server with OMV is just fine regarding hardware for a Roon setup.
The trick is that OMV can be installed on a headless Debian minimal server as Roon server can be. No concerns with these two on one machine.
Currenty hardware: Asrock H270-ITX/AC mobo, Intel Core i5 7500T, 8GB DDR4 dual channel RAM, Samsung 860 Evo 256GB NVMe SSD + 3x8TB WD RED HDDs in a Fractal Desig Node 304 case.
This machine serves on cable my home network with samba and NFS shares, downloads, and of corse Roon to multiple endpoints.
It works with no issues. The OMV and Roon files/database are on the NVMe SSD and internal backup is scheduled to an internal HDD.
Data backup is on external HDDs, this is done manually by me. I know that this is not so good, but workiing on a better solution (possible a second OMV setup on a Cubox-i2eX, which can be also a Roon endpoint :slight_smile: )

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OK, my 2c worth.

My philosophy is to use the KISS principle and in that light the simplest approach is to use reliable internal SATA HDDs for music file storage inside this PC (the core). This has currently grown to over 6TB so I now use more than one drive.

I was tempted to use an NAS system but am unconvinced it gives real security - a breakdown of a constellation drive in a Sooloos twinstore a couple of years ago proved that. So I have all the music files backed up on two other HDDs. Currently they are on external docks linked via esata but I’ll soon migrate them internally in a new custom made ASUS motherboard PC (not by me but by my PC intelligent son). I’m currently on Windows 7 but will move to Windows 10 on the new setup.

The only wireless link used here is to to iPad remote control and it is the flakiest part of the Roon system. Quality LAN cable links this PC to a Aurilac G1 bridge via an ASUS router. Balanced digital is piped to different rooms using a Canare 3 way splitter. I hope to be at the end of the road re AQ madness and am content with using L.K.S. MH-DA004 DAC. But I’m getting off topic so will stop.

Thanks for pointing that out.

Russ

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Will do (now). Thanks.

Russ

Hi All,
Thanks for all your input, I‘ve made some changes on my setup and moved all the musics to a new NUC8i7, can’t say I have better SQ, but roon is more responsive interms of loading content. One point that might have changed is it seems to give me the impression it is a more relaxed sound… but just a tiny bit…very very very tiny bit more relaxed.

I was thinking does anyone use a LPS or power conditioners on their NUC, does that make the difference? If so what was your experience/results?

Thanks

Filipe

I have a LPS powering my Roon server PC, and am considering selling it and changing to a standard PC power supply. I’m not convinced using an LPS with the Roon core matters if you have a separate endpoint over ethernet (I use the SOtM), and the LPS really heats up and makes the storage space where the electronics are quite hot.

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Truly, I doubt whether an LPS has any effect on any digital device.

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Hi All,

My experience with LPS is that they matter, but depends on what you apply to.

If the server is a NUC, probably will not make much difference, but if you are running a dedicated PC it will probably make a difference.

On the lan (switch, lan converters and routers) side they will bring more stability, less noise on the network, which translate in less errors and better detail being given to the streamer/DAC. In the end the streamer needs to be able to pic this small changes, because they are small.