Internal HDD greater than 2Tb?

I have a very large database and would need more than 2Tb of drive space. Will Rock support internal HDD greater than 2Tb ? What does it format the drive to ? GPT or MBR ? File system used ?

thanks in advance.

From the knowledge base:

The largest hard disk that you can currently fit in a NUC is 2TB, and the largest SSD is 4TB (and very expensive).

See: https://kb.roonlabs.com/ROCK:_Storage_Basics

This is because of height restrictions inside the NUC – technically, ROCK can address larger drives. Please note any that internal storage will be repartitioned/formatted by ROCK.

1 Like

so drives like this won’t fit inside a NUC ?

I have a PC spec’ed similar to NUC laying around and would like to experiment it. Can you tell what does ROCK format it to ? what file system is being created ? If its FAT, then we are limited by 2Tb, irrespective of the drive size.

This seems like a good bet. I m yet to get my stuff. But this is what i m looking at. Also from KB on Storage, “Best Known Methods” would still be to use external HDD through USB. My db is very small so I should be good with this one below.

Max. drive height in an NUC is 9,5mm.

Not sure about the file system (pretty sure it isn’t FAT though ;-)). Perhaps @danny would care to comment?

1 Like

I will load Rock tonight into an existing system containing 4tb hdd and see what happens. will keep posted.

1 Like

I’m not sure what I can add here… The kb noted the limits well I thought, and reasons for the limits

I believe the open question was about the file system ROCK formats the disk in.

Internal disk is formatted ext4

1 Like

I think the Akasa case allows a deeper 2.5 drive than the standard case so that’s one option.

I have noticed that above 2gb, usb3 drives seem cheaper than internal so I’m using a 4gb usb3 drive and apart from a slight delay when it first wakes, it’s seamless, I think any drive would need to spin up so the delay would be similar if internal. One less bit of heat in the case to not worry about and I bought some tiny sorbothane feet for it so it’s effectively silent.

1 Like

@Debjit_Ghosh I think you probably mean your library is large. I have an 8tb library but the database is contained on a 256gb Ssd and would easily fit in a 128gb if I had one small enough at the time.

@wizardofoz, thanks for correcting. Yes, I meant library size. Is there a easier way to find out how much space is needed to fit the database given the library size ?

So I installed and formatted the internal 4Tb disk from the web gui and tried copying around 700gb of music files overnight. If I am not mistaken it limits the partition size to 2Tb ? Is there a way to remove this restriction ?

and when mapped to Windows network drive, it also shows the limit to 2tb.

i believe this is a reporting error, and not an actual restriction… i will verify and fix.

tell me more about your setup… how are you getting a 4tb drive into your machine? which nuc (or otherwise) is it?

@danny, I am coming from Daphile & HQP/NAA setup and use up-sampling to DSD256 heavily. Before I would get the suggested NUC, I wanted to experiment out with ROCK for its sound quality and performance. The install was made on a i7 based fanless pc (in a Streacom case) spec’ed very closely to the NUC which I had laying around. It uses a 64Gb SSD for the ROCK and a 3.5" 4Tb HDD for the internal storage. It got cpu/memory/storage/networking working which is all is needed. I use a separate low powered system to run Roon Bridge which is then connected to the USB DAC.

Irrespective, if we can fix the size limits or reporting error, that will be a great addition to ROCK since tomorrow we might be able to find a NUC which can fit a drive larger than 2Tb.

and all seems to work? that’s great!

ah ha! I need to get a bigger drive to test this out… it should be working, but clearly something is wrong.

2 Likes

Yes :slight_smile:

Sounds good. I can test it out for you if you have some fix that you need me to try.

I’m interested in getting a fanless PC with a Streacom case/cooling. What CPU did you use?

And what Mobo too

Not sure if I am being entirely serious here, but the height restriction means that a fatter drive will not allow you to screw the baseplate back to the NUC. Therefore, fit a fatter drive and operate the NUC upside down with no baseplate fitted!
If you got creative with some longer screws and spacers you should be able to fit the baseplate back, with a gap of course. :slight_smile:

1 Like