I am looking for the best way to backup my Roon Rock. It’s on my Intel NUC.
All information I found so far are from people that had difficulties backing-up or that had a back-up but could not put it back. So now I am even more curious one how to do a proper back-up that one can use if really needed.
Fist of all:
what will be backed up? The catalog
the modifications and choices I made.
Just the Roon software
or also all my music including the album layouts end any other modifications I may have made.
Will the actual music also be backed up?
What size HD do I need? Is the back-up full size or is it compressed, and my be the music has only partially to be saved on a HD.
Do I need a fast SSD via USB-C or does a standard USB work, or even wirelessly?
Hi Olivier and hopefully I can answer a few of your questions.
On the the Roon database is backed up and this includes all Metadata and changes made to albums.
I have several backups with my Nuc running on Roon Rock. I have a 2TB USB 3 drive connected that has daily backups and keeps 30 of them (or so).
Then I have a Synology NAS that has 3 day backups and monthly backups in different folders. This is just total paranoia, but at least I recognise it as such
Many people keep another master copy of their music database on another PC/Mac/Server as well. I keep mine on my PC that I use to rip and manage the music as well as the aforementioned Synology and an external portable USB drive (see I told you I was paranoid). I use Syncback to update my music to all the devices on PC but there are plenty of options available.
For backup of the Roon database a smaller 1TB or 2 TB drive should be more than enough.
I don’t really care about my DB, all of my edits are done inside the metadata in the files and they are organized logically. If the worst was to happen I could get Rock back up and running in just a few minutes and then it would take a day or so to re analyze my music.
I do care a lot about the music though. I have a working copy, 2 local backups and then I synchronize with iDrive every night for off-site storage. My local files are about 6tb in size in total. Currently I’m using an internal 7200rpm 18tb drive for the working copy. For local backups I started with external WD EasyStore drives, they have worked perfectly but I have recently removed the drives from their enclosure and have them mounted inside my case now.
I use rsync for local file transfers and the Linux scripts that iDrive supply for the off-site stuff.
The answer depends on where you store your (local) music today. You didn’t say if you have internal storage for music files or if you’re using an external USB drive or a NAS.
The answer depends on your choice of file format but most people use FLAC or similar lossless compression. If that’s you, the music files are already compressed. You will generally not be able to compress them further.
I don’t understand that last bit about partially saving the music. If it were me, I’d want a full backup, but I guess you could exclude certain folders or files if you really don’t care about them. Although, if that’s the case, I’d just delete them now rather than waiting for a storage failure to lose them.
Here’s a post I wrote a couple of years ago that discusses one approach to backing up music files that are on internal storage.
Edit: as @Jim_F pointed out, a backup initiated (or scheduled) from within Roon will not backup your local music library. I had assumed that your question was more general in nature rather than relating specifically to Roon’s backup feature. As others have said, Roon’s backup feature only covers the database.
A Roon backup using the Roon backup routine will not backup your music regardless of where it is stored. It will only backup your Roon database that does not include music.
That would be a pretty big database. I have what I consider to be a “normal” sized library of around 3,000 albums and 35,000 tracks. I have configured Roon to keep up to 25 backups. In my current backups folder, I have twenty backups going back to December 25th, 2022. This backup folder contains a little over 37,000 files and is using 23 GB of storage.
I imagine that for most subscribers, Roon’s database backups will require less than 100 GB of storage. Exceptions would be folks with huge libraries.
In addition to the recommendations above, since you are using Roon ROCK, I recommend that you also make a full backup of the SSD with the operating system. It will also include the Roon library.
If Roon ROCK becomes non-functional, this backup saves you from reformatting the music disc, copying the music files and rebuilding/restoring the Roon library.
There are several software that back up operating systems. I have successfully used Acronis (bootable USB image). Note: Such a backup requires connecting the Intel NUC to the keyboard and monitor.
I see. So the local music is copied on a newly added SSD internal HD that I added to the Roon Rock.
My music is all in FLAC. I definitely keep a copy of all my music on 2 other separate HD. I want to make a backup as I am worried that all the editing I did in Roon might be lost. From all the comments to my post I read here I understand that the backup is really a back-up of Roon and the music itself I will have to make sure myself to back it up.
I thought that Roon might understand all the regular CDs I have and it would bring them back like for example a backup is made by a MAC. The software is not “backed-up” It simply downloads the software again if needed. But I guess Roon does not “own” that music and can not do the same.
So I think I will need the same size HD to make an identical copy of my Roon Rock music and add the backup there too.
The good news here is that Roon NEVER modifies your music files. This is a very different model from systems like JRiver Media Center. All of your “edits” are stored in Roon’s database. Roon Labs refers to this as a “metadata overlay.” Sounds fancy, but all this means is that it’s not necessary to backup your music files to preserve these edits. Just do regular Roon database backups and you’re edits are protected.
However, as you have suggested, it’s always a good idea to maintain several complete copies of your music files…especially if you have a lot of them. This where tools like that rsync program that I mentioned come in. You could just drag your entire library to a backup drive each time you make changes, but completing that copy could take hours if you have lots of files. The rsync program is smart enough to not touch files that have only been backed up. It only copies over the new files, saving loads of time.
Yes exactly.
I want a backup of Roon and all the changes I did to “cleanup” the mishandled album.
And I want ideally a copy of my music to be able to put everything back in case its needed.
I get the picture. I will need to find a way to make a backup of Roon and my music so it would work again in combination if it was needed. Unfortunately this seems not so straight forward.
It’s not too bad. Just think of Roon’s database and your music files as completely separate things when it comes to backups and restoring from them. Although Roon uses them together in daily operation, the backup and restore process is quite different for each of them.
For Roon’s database backups and restore, you have to use Roon’s Backup feature. For your music library, use whatever tool you find works best for backing up any other types of data on your home network. Being a Unix/Linux guy, I really like rsync, but there are many other free and commercially available tools that folks use for backing up their files or syncing data from one drive to another. I’m sure folks on this thread will be happy to share what they use.
You might be making this more complicated than it is. Just back up your Roon database to an attached USB HDD. Use a third party program or whatever method you choose to make one or more backup’s of your music files outside of Roon. Maybe even store a copy offsite.
Worse case scenario, you reinstall Roon, restore your Roon database, and reload your music files into Roon.
Thanks Jim_F. I see what you mean. My issue is just that I am in the middle of the process of “uploading” everything to my SSD and I clean up as I move forward. So I just want to make sure that I at least keep the status of what I did so far.
My total size of the existing music drive is 8TB, of which I uploaded currently about 2TB to my Roon Rock.
As you say I guess I make that Roon backup on one side and find me a way to backup the folder inside Roon Rock that contains all the music to make sure I have it identical to what is there.
I use a MAC, so my be something like ChronoSync might work for that.
thanks again. I slowly get it. Will have to figure out an automatic way. But now that I understand that the two have to be treated separately it makes things clearer.
This is not necessary. A full reinstall of Roon OS and the Roon software on to the M.2 SSD using the ROCK installer does not require reformatting of an internal drive used for music storage. Once such a drive has been initially formatted, no further action is needed.
David that is for keeping lots of backups (paranoid as I said and I had one lying around)
You struggle to buy a external disk under 1TB now when I last looked.
