The SSD inside would have cost 4 times more (6 if it was a Samsung MLC, and much more if you bought it from Apple) on a per-GB basis, and a p/e cycle of probably 3 times more (i.e. much better).
So, the answer to the question in the thread title is this: price pressure.
In the case of SSD for roon music storage use its less of an issue as the SSD is predominantly in a DATA READ ONLY mode. This is not the case for Roon ROCK or Nucleus boot drives and are probably rather actively being written to often.
Couldnāt agree more. I live in a country that has numerous power outages , either planned (āload sheddingā) or unplanned.
We are seeing normal domestic appliances taking the strain , our dishwasher needed a new board etc. Even surge protection plugs are failing , I suppose they are meant to.
If you can afford a UPS use one. Also research battery life , the deep cycle batteries suffer longevity problems if run down too low . And they are not cheap to replace maybe annually !!
We have 2 UPS one on PCās the other on AV stuff. We rarely use them to ārunā kit just to allow graceful shutdown. The only exception is occasionally to keep the router/modem on power to provide internet access.
Just my 2p
Has a root cause been established for the M2 failures in Nucleus devices? I seem to have another. The lack of information from Roon on this topic is concerning.
I have been advocating the use of Samsung 970 to be a boot m.2 SSD for a while now, but this happened. Again.
Not good. Perhaps buying something like the 970 Pro like @Rugby uses is safer, but that of course is much more expensive, for good reasons.
I agree with Peter and Danielās observations regarding boot SSDs. The boot drive holding the operating system of a computer is continually accessed and undergoes many read/write cycles during normal operation.
But I think there is a place for SSDs with lower tolerances, just not as boot drives. SSD longevity is measured in write operations. Read operations are regarded as trivial and not contributing to SSD wear and tear. So a write once, read many use is one where a lower tolerance SSD could be used without significantly increasing failure rates. Music storage is exactly such a use. Obviously it would continue to be prudent to have a backup of music files in any event.
Danny posted this some time back, WRT Trim mainly but his comment is implying writes are kept to a minimum on the Boot Drives for Rock/Nucleus
Why there seems to be a rather high failure rate on Nucleus would perhaps appear to be something to do with the source/manufacturer for these units of the m.2 SATA component (not NVMe that I am aware of) so this is something Roon needs to chime in on.
Clearly there is some issue so just unlisting this thread is not going to resolve anything.
I have no idea how may Nuclei have been sold or the percentage of failed SSDās in the field - but certainly there have been a spate of them showing up in the community and 2 just this week, and while I have seen many of these posted and the treads get taken private (Im OK with that as resolution is best done one on one).
This is not the reliability of an appliance that I would expect - yes I own a Nucleus too and its rather old, used much as a Roon endpoint with HDMI to my AVP (use a windows Core now), but we are also seeing Rev B units with only a few months of operation failing too - so this leads me to suspect a supplier defect perhaps on the SSDās being used.
Well if SSD suppliers/manufacturers canāt be trusted, eg, Crucial and Western Digital selling QLC as TLC, or Samsung using an inferior drive controller, Iām not sure what we (or Roon) can do about it. Sad situation really.
Buy MLC drive(s) when you still can.
Roon says theyāve received my Nucleus for SSD replacement (no power issues, it just died after two months). Iāve asked for a refund, but so far theyāve said that 30 days was it.
What they currently seem to be ignoring me about are these questions:
What will be done to the unit? Do you replace the SSD with the same model?
What happens if this happens again? I see one owner who has had three failures. Does the warranty reset? How long is it?
Anybody have any ideas on these? Thanks.
The issue being, it is not good enough for the task, clearly.
Some of them donāt fail. Thatās great, but hardly a recommendation.
This BTW has nothing to do with it. It is their supplied SSD running Roon, period. No internal library. A backup of Roon OS does not help in this situation.
I am not new to streaming. Iām running it on a Mini as I was before getting the Nucleus. Thanks for the advice, but it is largely non-responsive to the issue of the thread, or my questions that Roon is not answering.
They have replied they are using a different model SSD for replacement.
its a worryā¦personally I think Roon being a heavy database process its writing and updating the SSD a lot, this will wear on SSDās more than most applications on domestic desktops.
This applies not just to Nucleus but ROCK and also Windows and MAC installations. but ultimately it might just come down to inferior SSDās supplied on many of the Nucleus machines.
Personally I use Samsung Evo SSDās on my cores
Sure I read that Roon is designed to minimise SSD writing for ROCK/Nucleus (that being the process that wears SSDs). Probably in the White Paper or something @danny posted?
The db is loaded and running in memory, which would be part of that. Of course if you donāt have sufficient memory then disk attackā¦