Hello Do I need two hard drives for installing ROON ROCK, one for the system and one for music storage? Can I achieve this with one hard drive divided into two partitions?
With ROCK, you need two disks. The primary disk is exclusively for Roon OS and you can’t store music (or backups) on it.
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Question is - still a relict from the pre-SSD era?
Does not make a lot of sense intuitively.
It’s not a bad idea to keep the OS on another drive.
There are some situations where you might need to trash / reinstall the OS - and having a dedicated drive makes this easy.
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So, yes there is some advantage. But why rule out partions? Back to does not add up.
You need a second drive somewhere if you want to store music. It doesn’t need to be an internal drive at the ROCK computer – it can be on network storage or a USB storage device.
If you want to partition, install a lightweight Linux distribution, and partition however you like. Then install Roon server.
For those who want a turnkey solution, install RoonOS.
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Then they’d have to offer Nucleuses with different primary disk sizes. If the user runs out of disk space due to their music collection, they have to replace the one disk that holds the OS as well and need to reflash it.
All to avoid the users having to buy a music SSD of the size they want and installing it by opening and closing 4 screws.
Can be done but doesn’t seem worth it to me.
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Roon would then need to provide tools for partitioning which would add overhead and complexity to the OS. They chose not to.
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Thank you all for your responses, it seems I can only add an additional hard drive.
If you going to do it, do it right. Install a SDD for your music files.
I’m genuinely curious why you consider an SSD the right choice for music files? I’ve read many posts indicating an HDD is perfectly fine for music files, though not recommended by Roon for Roonserver.
Am I missing something?
Totally quiet if placed close by. I see no reason not to use a SSD.
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Rock: one drive for the OS and database, one drive for your music. That’s the way they made it, that’s the way it is. No need to argue about it - don’t like it, use another option.
Music drive: solid state or spinning iron? It’s totally up to you! No need to argue about it - choose which ever you prefer for what ever reason is important to you.
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HDD is fine , even the highest res source is easily within transfer rates , the only difference is noise from an HDD , none from SSD but a massive price difference
I have a 4Tb SSD inside a 5TB USB HDD outside covers all bases
My only reservation regarding HDDs vs SDDs is the noise. This is totally irrelvant if the Roon Server (whether ROCK or any other platform) is located remote from the listening station but it can be an issue when the Roon Server is co-located with the listening station.
The noise is often not too bad when just one zone is in use where typically, only the spining of the platter is heard. However, it can, depending on the drive in use, get worse when multiple zones are in use with independent music selections. Under these circumstances, there cal also be a lot of seeking noise which is more irritating.
Only relevant when ROCK is in plain sight in the listening room.
Even then, locating and reading a media file while music is playing won’t be audible unless your preferred sitting position is laying on the floor, six inches from the hi-fi cabinet. 