Several people have encouraged me to abandon my organized folder in favor of watched. Seems simple in principle, but not so in practice.
First point: I read this thread, including Mike’s suggestions on how to switch from organized to watched. In it, Mike says:
Backup your Roon database – this gives us a good place to come back to if there are any issues
Remove the organized folder from the Storage tab of Roon’s Settings
Add the folder as a Watched Folder
But when I look at the storage tab in settings, I don’t see an option to REMOVE the organized folder. I only see two options: “Disable” and “Force Rescan.” When it’s disabled, the only option is “Enable.” From the context it sounds like “Disable” is not what Mike had in mind when he wrote “Remove”.
OK, but here’s the real problem I’m having, and it seems likely that it’s related. I disabled (but did not remove, because how?) my organized folder. For good measure, I disabled my watched folders, too. And then I tried to create a new watched (local) folder with the same path as the previous organized folder. Even though ALL folders are currently disabled, I get this:
So it does look like I need to “remove the organized folder from the storage tab of Roon’s Settings,” but I can’t figure out how to do that.
@Mike’s reply makes the assumption that the orgainised folder has been added by the user, rather than being the default Roon folder, which can only be disabled.
I believe you have two options (with Roon not running):
Using the OS file explore rename the current orgainised folder. Then restart Roon and add that renamed folder as a watched folder in Roon.
OR
Create a new folder, move the content of the orgainised folder into this new folder. Then restart Roon and add that new folder as a watched folder.
Thanks Carl, that makes sense. Should have figured it out myself. I think what threw me off is that I’ve created several Watched folders, and they can’t be Removed either–only disabled. But as a test I just added an organized folder, and then removed it.
Thanks Keith. But I like to know what’s going on behind the scenes, and when the Roon folks themselves advise avoiding the organized folders, I take them seriously.
In the past there have been bugs that could have played havoc with the file system in an organised folder. I can’t recall it actually happening in an irrecoverable way but everyone is properly cautious of that risk.
It is, however, possible to have the best of both worlds by using an organised folder as a tool and then moving the file structure created by Roon to a watched folder for storage.
