So, do I just do a straight copy of one of the RAID 1 Synology NAS drives to the DAS drive then keep the Synology NAS drive just for backup?
I have 2988 music folders which given the way I have it set up means I have 2988 folders arranged by artist (composer in classical). These take up ~3.6TB of space.
This copy process will take a very long time. I could also just take a drive out of the NAS (which if I understand the way NAS means it won’t work, but maybe one of you smart folks know a way to make it happen).
My feeling is that the ideal system/backup would be having my music on a single DAS (probably a 5 or 6TB) or on two 4TB with classical and jazz on one and all others on the other. I would then have two full backups at home, one of which would be regularly (weekly?) taken to another geographic location and traded with a different HD
Regarding the copy process, I’d recommend (if that is not already your plan) to connect the DAS directly to your current NAS. This way you don’t have to bother about your network connection speed.
You could also take a look at Resilio (previously called Bittorrent Sync). It is a free sync tool and could be used to keep your files on your Synology in sync with your DAS (even when you are on a different location).
I appreciate both replies. Thank you very much. Sadly, now I am really confused.
To Mr. Rieke: I am not at all worried about my network speed. First, it is quite fast and second, I have too much spare time as it is. I am concerned over the fact that the little spinner in Roon kept going for over a year and never picked up anything on my NAS. Just doing a direct copy from the NAS to a regular HD seems like it might take forever. Still, it will have to be done somehow, unless I can just take one of the hard drives out of the NAS and use it. If I can’t, then I will definitely look into using Resilio. Thanks for your help.
To Mr. Stratton: The item you sent me introduced these questions.
“Roon has always been designed to track each file (and its associated edits) no matter what.” Except, it isn’t tracking anything on my NAS and that’s where all my music is. Except for a few pieces that Roon grabbed and moved to my Music->roon folder.
“the improved path-based tracking will ensure that when files are moved around, Roon will be able to track the files and preserve your edits in as many situations as possible” Again, how can the path based tracking work when it doesn’t have a clue where it is?
“Make sure you have a recent backup – instructions are here” I would be happy to make another backup of my Roon database, but what am I backing up?
“Confirm the audio extraction process has completed” I have had Roon since June of 2015 and the spinner only recently went off.
"If you’re moving an entire Watched Folder, go to the Storage tab of Settings, click the gear next to the folder, and choose Remove. Note that “disable” is not sufficient–you must choose to “remove.” I assume that means all of the watched folders?
“Unless you intend for duplicate copies of a file to be in your library, the most important rule to keep in mind is that Roon should not have access to two copies of the same file while it’s being moved.” So how to I deal with a RAID 1 NAS? And what about any accidental dupes? And what about albums that I have in multiple formats?
Thank you in advance for your kind efforts to help me.
Why do you think Roon isn’t tracking files on your NAS? Do you not see the music from your NAS in Roon? Roon doesn’t touch your files, but it does have to know where they are. Edits you make in Roon are stored in your Library/Roon folder on your Mac and point to those files.
Any edits you made stay in the Library folder. When you remove your NAS watch folder and then enable the DAS watched folder, Roon will find the tracks and the edits will still be there. How Roon does that, I don’t know.
Yes, all watched folders if the music in all those folders are all going to be in the new DAS drive.
I don’t know a lot about NAS’s, but you are only watching folders on one the drives. Duplicated might happen and you’ll have to find them after. Different formats are fine.
I think you want to shut down Roon and make a backup of your Library/Roon folder (or RoonServer) as per the instructions. You may want to do the backup after the copying, if it’s going to take a long time.
Then get all the music on to the DAS. Remove the watched folders and then Add the new DAS Watched folder.
I should point out that the reason I am even asking about the process of converting from NAS back to DAS is someone I know who is very smart about these things challenged why I was even using the NAS, telling me that most of the reasons I am using a NAS are unimportant and that a simple, wired connection from hard drive to my Mac would resolve all these issues I am having with the NAS.
I really appreciate your time and help. Here are the responses to your points.
Roon has never found my NAS nor any of the songs, albums, artists or playlists on the NAS. When I search for things that nine other music playing programs can find, Roon alone amongst them cannot find them. When I right click a song in Finder and tell it to play in Roon, I get a message back fro Roon that the file wasn’t found.
At this point, Roon really cannot even try to preserve any of Roon’s edits because they don’t exist. Roon has never made any edits because Roon doesn’t know the music exists. Whether I try to get into it from Finder or using the Settings-> Watched Folders setup, it doesn’t work. When I try to get it by right clicking the item(s) in Finder, Roon wants to drop the music in my Organized Folder->Roon Folder. The problem is that I have about 4TB of music and the HD on my Mac is one of the 1TB Fusion Drives. They say that the Organized Folder “will move the files around so that your filenames are kept sane, like your metadata.” I remember back when I only had about 5,000 songs and someone told me to try iTunes, which immediately started re-writing all my filenames and changing the way the files are organized. It took me weeks to set everything back to the way I wanted it.
Again, given the fact that Roon hasn’t found anything on the NAS, I don’t really know what would be in the database and so I can’t see a reason to back it up.
The watched folders are only finding things that are on the Mac’s HD, which means things I download and park on the Music folder until I can use metadatics to get the metadata and filenames set the way I want them, which is normally {DISCNUMBER} - {TRACKNUMBER} - {TRACKARTIST} - {TRACKTITLE} - {ALBUM}, or if I am ripping something, I use dBPowerAmp.
Regarding the NAS, I don’t know much about them either. What I am wondering is whether one disc is functionally the same as just copying all of your music files to another hard drive. Or, owing to the whole NAS process, is that drive basically unusable.
It’s beginning to feel as though what I am going to have to do is buy a really big hard drive, how it directly to the iMac, then spend days copying the files from the NAS to the new hard drive. When that is done, I’ll have to remove the two hard drives from the NAS, find new enclosures for them, then use all these hard drives I will have sitting around for various portable backups. Expensive, time consuming, and guaranteed to create some mistakes. Then, on top of that, I will still have to deal with whether or not I want to have Roon keeping me sane. After years of dealing with music player/organizers that have come and gone, the idea of redoing all the metadata and/or filenames on 3,000 folders (roughly 240,000 songs) is so daunting that I am afraid to allow any program to take over my system.
Hi Wes,
In case you would like to give the NAS a last chance:
Would you mind posting a screenshot of your storage settings (that shows the NAS entry)? Synology NAS are used quite often here and I do not remember a situation in which this combo did not work in the end.
I don’t want to persuade you to keep your NAS, but I think this setup should run, even though you were not succeeding in the setup yet.
After reading your reply, I think the best thing to do right now is get the NAS working.
One thing you want to do is only use Watched Folders. Disable the Organized default folder that Roon enabled when you installed. Also, do not use the Finder to find a song and get Roon to play it, Roon doesn’t work that way. You need to use the app to play a song. Of course, Roon need to find the NAS first.
Watched folder will not touch your files, so you won’t have to worry about that.
Roon’s Chief Tinkerer, Christopher @crieke, can help you get the NAS working.
To do a screenshot for Chris, With the Roon storage settings on the screen, click Command-Shift-3 will take a pic of your whole screen and put it on your desktop. Just drag it into you message.
