So, not being argumentative, but my thoughts on some of your points:
ripping the cds means you always have them, no matter if your streaming services go out of biz, or you finally tire of paying subscriptions or whatever. but that’s a personal decision.
i will point out that one can easily manage MANY more than 10 cds/day ripping. i’ve been known to manage 100. but that’s very variable.
also, there are ripping services which can do 100s/week for ~50-70¢/cd. just as an option. 5000 cds might run you $3k or something if you are so inclined. not super cost-effective, but… saves time, which is the real commodity here on this planet after all.
Anyway, just a couple points wanted to put in the mix. Thx
Yes, you should be able to back up to your MAC. It just needs to be running at the scheduled time of your backup. I like using a USB HDD plugged into the Nucleus because it’s always there and always works. If you ever need to restore Roon to a different device, just unplug it from the Nucleus and plug it into the other device.
Nobody needs a Nucleus it’s a one trick pony that’s a basic NuC in a designer dress. Its terrible value for money considering what’s inside costs a few hundred quid. If you want a dedicated core buy a NUC ready built and install ROCK on it, it’s not rocket science you will get the same level of support and performance and save a few bucks to boot to spend on something more worthy like music.
I don’t disagree. However, for those of us who don’t normally fool with computers and know little to nothing about them, a Nucleus might be worth the price. I was able to get mine for $1119 from Roon. So, if I paid $500 more to avoid potential DIY issues, it was worth it. Each person has to make that decision for themselves.
That has also been at the forefront of my mind. The ‘put them in an attic’ approach is also relevant here. I am old enough to remember the fear that very early (1980s) Hyperion CDs were flawed and would eventually ‘fade’ because the ink used on the label side would etch through. As a balance, multiple backups - some to the cloud and/or optical media in different locations - ought to take care of that.
That’s ten or so an hour, isn’t it. So if I did nothing else each day (ugh!) for, say, ten hours, it’s only 50 days!
The snag is the metatagging. I’m meticulous in ways associated with your first point, @ditch: Yate is excellent; and I know Roon takes over and does a good job as well.
But just checking my tags could easily take ten minutes. Usually twice as long.
But the two downsides there are the risk of loss in transit (unless Fedex? UPS?) and still having to attend to metatags.
Your thoughts much appreciated. I suspect I may continue to rely on Qobuz to get - often higher resolution - streams of all by my most treasured CDs
A file or disk level backup of the volume on which the Roon database lives would not ever be able to be restored. It’s a memory-resident database (out really a key value store) that stores some, but not all, things to disk at any given moment.
You can however take the backups that Roon writes to disk (via Roon / Settings / Backup) and copy those files periodically to another location.
But don’t bother trying to copy the Roon database itself. It’s less than useful because you’ll think you’re doing something that enhances your resilience and you’re not. Only do things that actually increase your resilience and do those things religiously.
I think this is understood by the OP, but just in case: the Roon data base is one thing to backup using the Roon backup function. But the actual music files of your personal library are NOT backed up by the Roon function. These should be separately backed up using some other standard file backup program.
I mean that - if I do ever get a Nucleus - I wouldn’t want to rely exclusively on just its own (dedicated) internal drives for my music files and Roon database to contain the only copies I have of each.
For my growing collection of FLAC files, which would take hours and hours to re-download; and for the Roon database whose metatags would take days to recreate.
IOW, more weight against Nucleus: currently, if anything should ever happen to such data now on my Mac boot Volume, I could restore it reasonably quickly from a clone created by CCC. If that’d be the case for a Nucleus, although it’s Linux, I’d feel…… ‘safer’
Thanks, @Johnny_Ooooops; Yes, all I’d want to do if I added a Nucleus AND moved all Roon data and original (FLAC) files to it and its Linux-based OS, would be to ensure that it was backed up in its entirety. As is the case now for those files on my Mac.
It looks as though this is… ‘debatable’; so it adds to the - at least not yet - argument against my adding or switching to Nucleus.
Don’t over complicate this. Regardless of what computer device you are running your Roon core on, you need to do frequent Roon database backups using the Roon backup function. You don’t back that up to a Nucleus, you back it up to an attached USB HDD or some other place. I backup every night and keep 30. I also backup every month and keep 12.
Your music is an entirely different matter. You don’t really backup your music files from within Roon. You should backup your music files as they exist outside of Roon. If they are really important to you, keep a backup drive stored off-site.
As far as ripping CD’s, I have no experience with this, but I would not use the Nucleus to rip to Roon. I would use a third party program and rip them to my computer. From there, I would copy them to my Roon “watched” folder.
Agree. Dbpa is secure. In fact it’s Owner/developer (@spoon) is the creator and manager of the very useful ACCURATERIP database, also used by EAC, which is high quality. As is CUETOOLS ripper.
Ah sorry I forgot. I had a lot of scratchy CDs (lived in the Pacific Northwest in the 90’s and a bunch got used as beer coasters), and the features of C2/sector level security were what drew me to EAC. DBPA is what I used for the “easy” ones - busted out EAC when I thought “that will never work”. Thankfully a distant memory.
