How many successive database backups do you keep?

Roon Software Discussion
1

Apologies if this has been done to death, I checked Roon’s back up FAQ but have some questions that I couldn’t find answers to using the forum search. I’m fairly sure I’ve misunderstood something basic so I appreciate your advice.

My current library backup is about 30GB consisting of 427 artists, 445 albums, 3816 tracks (a pretty small library round here I’d guess). This is mainly Qobuz/Tidal as I haven’t restored most my local files since switching server last December.

Saving each night’s backup to iCloud as a separate folder is running 600GB after 2 months. In a year this will be massive. Rather than keep all this in iCloud I’ve archived that first 2 months worth to a USB drive (also to TimeMachine).

I have 2 questions:

From Roon’s guidance, ‘Roon will only save the changes since the last backup’ (https://help.roonlabs.com/portal/en/kb/articles/faq-how-do-i-create-a-shared-folder-on-mac-and-add-it-as-a-watched-folder-in-roon#Accessing_Share_Settings_on_the_Mac)

Does this mean that the final backup is incomplete unless it can reference all previous backups, suggesting none at all can be deleted? (AFAIK this is how Time Machine works)

Assuming that this is NOT the case (or more likely that I’ve misunderstood), how many sequential backups would you keep?

Secondly (and with the above in mind), I read here recently that a user’s recent backups were corrupted. They were advised to use older ones to restore from- therefore if you’d deleted your older ones, you’re in trouble. So it seems reasonable to ask-

How do you check the integrity of a backup?

Can Roon write out a corrupted database, or must those databases have corrupted after being written?

So if Roon is relying on previous backups for a complete restore, can you delete any? And if yes, how do you verify the ones you’re keeping are good?

You wouldn’t want to unwittingly delete good, historic backups and keep more recent corrupted ones. (Presumably no backup that follows a corrupted one can be useful if it’s referencing a corrupt one to perform a complete restore).

2

You can create more than one backup schedule into different folders. Whatever you fancy, something like one folder annual and keep 2, one folder monthly and keep 6, one folder weekly and keep 4, one folder daily and keep 7. That way, you cover a lot of time with a manageable number.

Every once in a while, and before and after I make big changes, I also save a totally separate manual one.

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3

Thanks - so best to create fresh backups in new locations so Roon is forced to create a complete one (that doesn’t rely on previous versions in that location)?

4

I think this makes sense occasionally. Even better if they are on different disks.

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5

@Nadeem_Khan I’m not sure about Roon creating only incremental backups. I believe Roon creates a full backup when one is created. I have restored from a number of backups in a sequence and didn’t lose anything up to the date of that specific backup.

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6

You can set up auto BU to a frequency and to keep a number.

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Strictly the las BU is the only important one but we all keep belt and braces

Mine is

Auto Daily @ 14:00
Keep 20

After 20 I believe Roon writes No.21 then deletes no.1 to keep the "kept number’ right

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7

As suggested by others above, I use three scheduled backups all of which are keep 10:

  1. Nightly to a USB drive permenantly attached to my roon server.
  2. Weekly to my NAS
  3. Monthly to my NAS.

Thus, I can go back in time by between 9 and 10 months which I am happy with. I don’t see the need for a fourth scheduled backup cycle of 10 at six minutes month intervals - but I could add that as well.

Note. My NAS is as backed up to multiple destinations as well with a backup cycle that also goes back many months so, if necessary, I could retrieve a backup from as long as 18 months ago.

Note 2: I also have a nightly sync job keeping copies of my music library (the FLAC files etc) in sync between the master copy on my Roon server and the primary backup copy on my NAS.

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8

“How do Roon backups work?” says: “Each backup will only save changes since the last backup.”, so that’s incremental (within one BU folder)

However, even in a series of incremental backups one usually can delete one from the sequence as the BU software can take care of moving the changes to the next one in the series. (If not, surely the BU software would not allow this deletion)

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9

I’ve set my server to backup at 4am every day with a limit of 10 backups. I have 811 albums with 11,403 tracks and the total Roon BU folder is only 4gb. I back up my music files separately on multiple SSD’s. My music folder is 475gb so Roon is just backing up the index of everything I assume.

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10

The OP seems to be (possibly) combining a library backup with a Roon database backup. @Nadeem_Khan - your Roon database backup is typically in a separate directory from your music, and I would not try syncing your database backup to iCloud, as each database snapshot is comprised of possibly tens of thousands of constantly-changing small files and another many thousand folders.

So saving your music library to iCloud might make some sense, but the Roon database, not so much. Find a way to back up those backups to an external hard drive or something else that is local.

FYI to your original question. I keep 10 Roon database backups, all local.

My database is about 8.15 GB and is comprised of 11,222 files in 9,344 folders. My database backups are 32.68 GB and are comprised of 25,635 files in 65,713 folders.

My music is 2.5 TB - 5,148 albums and 55,325 tracks.

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11

Remember to test your backups once in a while—it won’t matter how many of them you have if they don’t work. I have never had one work, not once, and roon couldn’t help last time I tried.

12

Does your backup NAS have to be on for the backup to succeed?

13

One on my Roon server drive. One on my home backup HD. Two on Dropbox. Created at different intervals.

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14

Yes. Of course. But this NAS is on 24/7 anyway for a number of reasons.

15

Thank you all for your replies. I think I’ll do something similar to @Wade_Oram, scheduling a max of 10 backups spread across different drives/time frames.

I admit I still don’t understand exactly how incremental back ups can work as per the literature if it’s possible to do a complete restore despite deleting some of the historical backups, but I’ll cross my fingers and trust the tech designed by folks way smarter than me.

As some of you have kindly pointed out, your backups are smaller than mine despite a larger library so I’ll look into what’s causing this.

And @DDPS you say ‘combining a library backup with a Roon database backup’-can you even ask Roon to do that in one go? I’m taking it that when you say ‘library backup’ you’re referring to local media files? Right now I have just 2 albums on the SSD as I haven’t added my ripped or downloaded files back since switching servers recently.

In terms of backing up the database to iCloud, it’s making a complete and separate copy of each (nightly) backup folder- resulting in sequential iCloud folders automatically labelled ‘Backup’ ‘Backup copy’ ‘Backup copy 2’ etc (rather than syncing minute changes to an ever changing single folder). Shouldn’t that be ok?

16

How would you go about this exactly? Simply do a restore and hope for the best?

17

DO NOT TAKE MY ADVICE FOR THIS PROCEDURE

My understanding is that if you quit Roon, and rename your main Roon folder, all you have to do to get back to where you were is rename the Roon folder back again and restart Roon. In between, you can try a restore to see if it works.,

I would absolutely wait for more knowledgeable folks to weigh in on this. If it were me, I would make a complete backup of the system, so that you have all the connections and preferences in place if something goes wrong. Losing your Roon database is terrible; playlists, likes, bans, preferences of all sorts are entirely wiped out. Why this information isn’t backed up separately, I cannot fathom; I live in fear that my DB will become corrupted again. I have conditioned power and backup power supplies in place, but I can’t do any more than that. As far as I’m concerned, it’s willful recklessness on the part of Roon. (Of course, it’s willful recklessness on my part to keep on using software that is likely to rob me of hours of work at some point, too.)

18

It depends on how it’s implemented. Theoretically, if you know all the changes from A to B and from B to C, and B is deleted, you can move all changes A > B over to C. It’s also entirely possible that a backup system doesn’t implement this and either deleting one incremental set is not possible at all, or doing so makes it impossible to restore anything older.

I would expect the UI to make it clear if there are consequences, e.g. by not allowing the deletion or issuing appropriate warnings. I don’t know what Roon does, I never tried it and can’t remember if I read anything about it.

19

Even if they are incremental, the database backups can be huge. One single backup of mine is 7.32GB, 9,523 files, and 9105 folders. 12 incremental backups is 47GB.

I definitely recommend having scheduled backups to multiple locations on different schedules. Where and how many may depend on where you have room. My Roon server has two drives (one for OS and one for media), so here’s my backup schedule:

-Every day to the media drive, keeping 45. This provides 45 days of history if the Roon database is corrupted or the OS drive fails.

-Every 2 days to the OS drive, keeping 20. This is in case the media drive (and the backups stored there) are corrupted.

-Once a month to a folder that is synced to cloud storage, keeping 15. This provides a year and 3 months offsite fallback if I need to go back that far. Also provides redundancy (tridundancy?) if both of the other backups are corrupted, the server catches fire and takes out both drives, localized EMP attack, etc. My music files are also synced to the cloud.

20

This indicates they are NOT incremental nor differential?

Differential backups in it’s true sense means:
Full backup → Differences since last Full → Differences since last full
One cannot use a Differential backup without it’s last Full backup, as i see it.

In corporate settings you sometimes use Incremental backups also:
Similar to above, but they only contain differences since last backup, whether full, inc or diff.
These require the complete set since a full backup whereas differential BUs can loose intermediate differential BUs as long as the last full is available.

From Amazon:

Summary of differences: full vs. incremental vs. differential backup

Backup types Data Backup speed Storage space Restoration speed
Active full Copies all data. Slow. Substantial. Fast.
Incremental Copies only the changed data since last backup. Faster than differential. Smaller than differential. Slower than differential as it requires a full backup plus all incremental backups.
Differential Copies changed data since last full backup. Slower than incremental but faster than active full backup. Gets larger especially with subsequent backups. Faster than incremental as it requires just the full and last differential.
Synthetic full Copies changed data incrementally but consolidates changes with the last full backup to create a synthetic full backup. Faster than active full as it copies only incremental changes. About the same storage as active full. Similar to active full.
Incremental forever Creates one full, then subsequent (forever) incrementals. Faster than synthetic full as it never creates subsequent full backups. Takes less space than active and synthetic full. Offers faster restoration than active and synthetic full.