I’ve belatedly decided to move music files from 2 HDDs (6TB & 5TB) onto one 8TB unit… The 6TB unit is full and there are 1000 files (about 1TB) on the 5TB one.
The files on the 6TB unit are no problem, they will be copied acoss to the 8TB unit and its drive lettering changed to that of the 6TB so Roon will see no difference there and all digital booklets will be there OK.
Transferring the music from the other drive is not so easy. If I export the albums via Roon to the 8TB HDD then all editing, tags etc with go across. The stumbling block is any attached digital booklets as these are embedded in Windows explorer, not Roon, so do not export. A first inspiration was to export via Roon and then do a file copying but that does not work as it seems the file label alters after an album is exported from Roon.
At this stage I cannot see an easy answer. It seems that exporting albums from the old drive to the new using Roon is desirable as it preserves all editing but it looks as if the digital attachments will have to be laboriously copied one by one across to the new drive via file explorer.
The booklets should just be a booklet.pdf file in each album folder. If you follow the instructions, you won’t export anything, you will just copy the folders from the old disks to the new one, and this will copy the booklet files as well:
I’m still trying to get my old head around this. What I have now is -
6TB Drive K fairly full
5TB Drive J with about 1TB of music files on board.
I want to move BOTH to an 8TB HDD
So, if I interpret I should turn ROON off and then transfer all files from both K & J onto the new 8TB.
I then change the drive letter of the 6TB drive to something else so ROON does not see it.
The new 8TB HDD is changed to be drive K
Access of Roon to drive J is removed.
Roon is powered on to see the the new 8TB drive, now drive K + two other 8TB HDDS which have not been touched.
Roon has no problem reinstalling everything that was on the old 6TB drive because the new one has the same drive letter. But does Roon see all the editing etc previoiusly done on the old 5TB HDD??? That is the bit I’m not fully comprehending.
You just copy everything (in windows) to the new drive. Use a different drive letter to the existing 6TB and 5TB drives. There is no exporting or anything like that in roon.
Turn off roon.
Make two sub-directories on the 8TB drive. It will be simpler if the drive letter is different to 6TB and 5TB. You can call the subdirectories anything. Typically I would call them Old_6TB and Old_5TB or similar.
Copy 6TB and 5TB to the new subdirectories on the 8TB drive.
Disconnect the 6TB and 5TB drives from the network so that roon cannot see them
Turn on roon.
Map your new 8TB drive in roon.
You will see error messages’ in the storage locations in roon as roon cannot find your old 6TB and 5TB drives .
Just go to the three dots next to the errored file location and click:
When all complete would it then be possible to merge both these new folders by simply moving all contents from each folder to the drive? Maybe not really necessary but it appeals to my (corrupted?) sense of neatness and offers just one less strep for Roon to negotiate when accesiing files. Or would that upset Roon?
Well here is the issue. If everything on the 5tb drive is unique in terms of artists and albums then it would be something you can do. However, If you have some albums in a Beatles folder on the 6tb drive and some on the 5tb drive, then it could mess up your entire library doing it that way.
Either way, I suggest getting the files moved over, music recognized first; sorting any issues. And then revisit merging them. Roon doesn’t care where the files are so this would solely be for you.
So the problem would be that in your Beatles example, merging would create two Beatles subfolders so Roon would be confused about which one had the required album. OK, best to let sleeping dogs lie.
As @Rugby says get everything transferred and recognised by roon first. Then make a backup so you have a new baseline you can always wind back if you cannot resist the temptation to further tinker with the folder structure.
Personally I wouldn’t bother. I understand the urge to get everything neat and tidy but roon doesn’t care and there are many posts about terrible roon performance caused precisely by that urge to reorganise your files in a single flat hierarchical folder structure. So there is a lot to be said for leaving as is.
“Fools rush in where angels fear to tread” is VERy applicable in this situation so heaps of thanks again for your advice so this fool can retain his halo. [Problem is. no-one else acknowleges they see it!]
I finally got around to reconnecting Roon to the new drive points after hours of copying 7TB of music from the 2 older drives onto 2 folders in a new 8TB Seagate Firecuda. One moment of hesitation about success was a kindly update of data by Roon to the latest format - a possible problem as all that was updated were two previous drives [the whole exercise was to reduce 4 drives down to three, the first 2 drives being updated, were unaffected by my messing around]. So the question was would Roon accept the “new” drive?
At first it looked like I had problems as the album count escalated to well beyond what was there prerviously. Then the penny dropped that not only was Roon addressing files in the two new folders but was also looking at all albums in the new drive again and treating them as new ones. A check to storage settings showed I had inadvertently connected the drive as well as the two sub folders so that was easily remedied and hey presto, my halo reinstated - SUCCESS!! All previous editing on the 2 older drives, now successfully displayed via the newer single drive.
Bottom line question, was all this worthwhile? My response is a resounding YES because the access to roon is now lightning quick as had been experienced before. That access was being slowed down by my scrooge attempt at using two older drives and my experience suggests drive quality is a more important factor than generally recognised. The firecuda drives are not cheap but they are looking to be extremely good (contrary to a very negative post on Amazon portraying them as troublesome).
I’ll now remove the old 5TB drive out of its bay and replace it with the firecuda (currently in a dock). If all remains stable I’ll format the 6TB for other use and backup the firecuda.
Thanks again for the clear instructions. There are many posts about this process but none make it as clear as the directions posted here so this old brain had difficulty interpreting what was the best way to do things. I now know, but will not face this hurdle again. There is over 20TB of music files onboard now so enough is enough!!
