I use Roon Core app locally on my Mac. All my music is Local (no streaming service).
I Download My Music In my local hard Drive. Then I update my playlists with these track (I am a DJ so i do this quite often).
At some time, I need to free space from my local Hard Drive, so I Copy the music In my Backup Hard Drive (external HDD). This Drive is also referred in on my Roon Storage Folder.
Before, deleting my track from my local drive (to gain space), I tried first to Disable the Local Storage Folder from Roon’s setting (Creating my playlist asks me a lot of effort I don’t want to lose everything). By doing that, Some tracks inside my playlists become unavailable
I am sure that the missing tracks also exist in my external drive.
I thought about the Library Maintenance Clean Up feature, but I am afraid if by doing that the tracks that are Unavailable inside my playlists would disappear.
At some point I remember that Roon was capable to automatically detect duplicates and switch automatically to files path in my external HDD but I seems that it’s not the case anymore.
What do you recommend me to do If I want to safely remove files from my Internal Drive and make Roon refresh the paths of the Unavailable tracks from the External HDD ones ?
Thanks for your help
Playlists are built on a specific version of the track, so if the original file is deleted, the playlist can’t locate the file, so it is marked unavailable.
The track will be available to your library after moving if it is in a watched folder.
Hi Martin, the files are already present is the external HDD (and its a watched folder) but still not available.
The only difference is that they are technically not moved : I just copied them from my internal drive into the external drive and then disable the internal drive folder watching (So i can revert what I’ve if I roon does not find them in the External DRIVE).
Maybe an example can be more clean.
Let take this song :
It is present here :
/Users/wasko/Public/Work Music/2024-01/2024-01-01/[Deviant Records - DVNT16CDS] Earth Link - Spectral EP - 1996/9A - 126 - Earth Link - Blink.aiff
But also here :
/Volumes/Wasko2T/Music/2024/2024-01/2024-01-01/[Deviant Records - DVNT16CDS] Earth Link - Spectral EP - 1996/9A - 126 - Earth Link - Blink.aiff
This file is unavailable because i disable the scan from folder : /Users/wasko/Public/Work Music/
But when I click on the Artist I Still find the track :
So file I found by roon on my external HDD.
I just want now Roon to be capable to switch reference of the track to this path :
/Volumes/Wasko2T/Music/2024/2024-01/2024-01-01/[Deviant Records - DVNT16CDS] Earth Link - Spectral EP - 1996/9A - 126 - Earth Link - Blink.aiff
If I clean up files will the unavailable track disappears from my playlists ? Or they path will be updated to their other location ?
I don’t want to lose my playlists content after clicking this button 
Or maybe do you mean, I should move the folders from locla to external drive instead of copying to external then deleting from local ?
Yes, if you move* the files to a new location, and both locations are available when Roon rescans, the playlist should be fine.
As you can see, you have 13,421 database entries that have no corresponding file. If you enable the storage location, Roon will identify the track, and update the database. Once this is done, you can disable the folder (but don’t do a clean-up.)
*Move is essentially copy then delete, so it shouldn’t make a difference so long as both folders are enabled during the operation, and remain so while Roon updates the database.
I don’t this this works everythime :
Demonstration:
This Album exists in both folders (top is external hdd and bottom is local hdd) :
I moved all the content from my local scanned folder outside roon’s sight
This Playlist has some of the files from this album (the 2 first ones) :
As you can see the are unavailable even if this Album is present in my external HDD 
But again when i try to look for the album, I find it in my library :
The problem is that it seems than Roon was not able to update the link inside the Playlist for this track
Have a look at this …
For some reason, Roon can’t see any media files in this folder. Therefore, check permissions and security settings on the Mac.
It’s not the problem, I removed all my local music from the “Work Music” folder on purpose. I want roon to scan my playlists only with tracks that are present on the external HDD path (all the files are present there too).
I want to free space from my local hard drive, so having the local folder empty is my goal.
Hopefully, I just moved the content of “Work Music” to another folder. So when i put them back again there, the track appear not available (at least i dont lose my playlists). So it’s not a question of file permissions.
I just wanted to test what you to told me : The track will be available to your library after moving if it is in a watched folder.. The files are already duplicated it the second watched folder : /Volumes/Wasko2T/Music. So removing them from local didn’t solve the problem.
I now i know that this wont work.
Do you have another solution for my problem ?
Thank you
If the playlist references the empty work folder, the tracks will be unavailable. A playlist links a specific version of the track. If you delete the track, it’s not going to be available. However, if you move the track from one watched folder to another, Roon will catch this, and update the playlist accordingly. You should not have duplicates.
Here is a brief 4-minute screencast of this behaviour. First, I create a playlist: I add two tracks. Next, I delete the albums: the tracks are unavailable. Then I put back the files: Roon sees them. Finally, I move the files to another watched folder: briefly, they are unavailable, but soon they reappear.
The command line is simply used to synchronize my laptop with Roon server.
Here’s the file. I hope this explains things.
The link expires after 30/04/2024.
