Apologies if asked before, but all topics I found concerned backup size, not a feature to enable setting a maximum total size for Roon backups.
After a catastrophic experience with Roon backup back in June, when even my earliest backup did not restore Roon to a working condition, and therefore I lost all personalisation (Bookmarks, Tags, History, Merged Albums, Playlists) – please take a moment to consider the grief caused to a user that had put quite a lot of work into all these Roon features – I have been even more meticulous with backing up (I already was before; the backups that failed to restore Roon to a working condition were up to 6 months before!).
But, the Roon backup process is greedy, taking up all available space. Please consider making it work like:
Time Machine, where if it occupies the given space it starts deleting early backups.
Setting for, well, setting a desired maximum size.
Thank you.
Backup are incremental, and you can specify the maximum number of backups to keep. If you locate the Roon database, you can find out the size of your Roon library and determine how much space is needed.
Ideally, you should back up to another machine or disk drive.
The amount of space a Roon Backup requires is dependent on the Roon library size, which in turn is dependent on the number of albums it contains (note both local and streamed content count).
To get a feel for the this size on your system, set Roon up to preform one back, to a new location.
Then use an OS tool to find out how much space it is using.
Next force a second back again to the local, check how much space is now used.
With little changes in the library (between backups), the incremental difference will be relative small.
Let me check the sizing on my system so you have a reference.
I suspect @xxx might join in on this one, but to pre-empt: Roon’s lack of any way to check the integrity of its database worries me. My ‘solution’ (hint, this isn’t a solution) is to restore Roon from my most recent backup about once per month. If the restore is successful, then the backup is good, as are all the previous backups before it. If it did fail - and this hasn’t happened … yet - then I’d restore from the last known good backup. Short version: in the absence of any way to check the integrity of your backups, … be wary.
Agreed. I have around 6TB of local music, backed up to two separate hard drives - one on-site, one off. I have four backups of Roon’s database - two local, one off-site, and one in Dropbox. I’ve been burnt too many times to trust to luck.