Issue with loading database with latest Roon update Again!

Roon Core Machine

NUC i3.
500GB SSD, 8GB

Music stored in Synology NAS

Networking Gear & Setup Details

Wired connection for most of the devices.

Connected Audio Devices

Number of Tracks in Library

13000 tracks

Description of Issue

I updated Roon this morning, and now I get the screen of having an issue loading database AGAIN!!. Since Roon was updated to latest big version, every time there is an update this database issue happens. I know the answer that you guys going to give me again: “Can you restore a backup library…”. This has completely becoming a nuisance. This means I will have to backup my library every day so I can recover the playlist, added songs and anything new that happens after the last backup.
Can you actually find a solution for this? or give us the option to not update ever again…

Thanks,

Eduardo

Sounds like you have an underlying issue if it keeps happening.

Many would agree with you.

Yes, you should backup your library every day, for this and other reasons.

Don’t understand why that would be a hardship if you use Settings==>Backup.

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I agree, it’s quite frustrating, fortunately not so common but that’s no comfort to those that it affects.

Have you consider setting up an automatic backup? I have this…
image

Roon Settings → About → Cog icon (however, I don’t recommend never updating).
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I tend to agree with Ged, I wonder if the SSD is starting to fail?

Background info:

When a new version of Roon requires the DB to be updated every record in the DB is read.
It’s this reading process that finds the latent corruption, it’s not the update itself corrupting the DB, the corruption is already there.

Roon have spoken about building a DB validation system into Roon but I don’t have a status on that.

Hi @Eduardo_Alban, sorry to hear about the frustration! Frequent corruption definitely shouldn’t be happening, and in almost all cases we’ve found that there is an underlying hardware issue at play. I’d recommend running checks on your RAM and SSD.

Do you have any backups currently? If so, following this process and restoring them is going to be the best thing to try.

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The issue is not the backup in itself, but having to Restore the Backup Library all the time, and finding out that the none of the latest backups work. I might have not expressed correctly. I had to go to a backup of 6 months ago to restore Roon, so the backup was useless.

I am not quite sure that it is the SSD. I run it in Windows and I don’t see anything else crashing (in my experience when the SSD starts failing, other programs also start failing or even Windows does), but it is possible. I will look into it.
I lean towards that the DB is corrupted already (restoring recent backups doesn’t worked, I have to go like 6 months ago when I did), but I think the issue is how ROON is handling some filenames (I have music from different languages so there are many different characters that might not be part of the english alphabet, I use Jriver too and haven’t seen any issue with that). When the new ROON 1.8 came and I had the same issues, the recent backups didn’t work so I deleted the library following the instructions on the website and I started from scratch and added all the files again. By doing this, Roon works well unless I update it.
Any ideas what might trigger a corruption? Any special character in the filename or folder? Too long names in the files? Too big folder structure?

Thanks

I tried restoring a few backups. I have to go back to one from February to work. None of the ones after March work. Here is a screenshoot of some of them.

Regarding the SSD, I don’t think that is the issue since I was running ROCK in the same system using another SSD and I had the same issues (I moved to Windows with another SSD hoping that will solve it without success). I didn’t test the RAM, instead I decided to move Roon to another computer so the HW failure can be discarded.

I just want to point out that between Updates I haven’t had any issue with Roon, it works well and also I don’t think I ever had any issue before 1.8 version. It is only when it gets updated when it breaks. So, I guess I will have to wait until next update to find out.

What happens if you create a backup then immediately try to restore from that backup? I do this every month or so, to check for any latent problems. If it works, you’ll have a known good backup to restore from. If not, then clearly something is going on in your current setup to cause the database to fail.

2 Likes

Yes, because after February, your library had ‘latent corruption’ and that was what was being backed up from then on. Luckily, you were wise enough to keep that many Backups. Most people don’t and in a case like yours have to start from scratch.

Support always says to check hardware for problems or that a power outage caused your corruption. While a power outage cause is plausible, IMO, a hardware issue is (in most cases) probably not a factor, as you have thru experimentation determined for yourself.

I suspect, just looking at the black box from the outside, that there is at least one software bug that is causing the majority of library corruptions. This, coupled with Roon’s unfortunate decision to not check for library integrity when doing Backups, causes people to potentially lose years of curation.

Hi @Eduardo_Alban, looking back at our previous conversations, I see that it was in February that you first reached out to us about corruption. After that first case, did you start completely fresh, or did you restore a backup of Roon to get started? Are these backups from a new database or are they a continuation of that older database?

Are you using a “smart plug” or anything like that? Something we’ve found is that these can lead to corruption by cutting off power frequently during database updates.

Hi,

The first time that I got an issue, I remembered I started from scratch. The backups that I tried didn’t really work. The second time, I looked for older backups until I found one that works, same as this time.
I don’t have a “smart plug”, but Windows and ROCK before had automatic updates enabled. Maybe Roon doesn’t close properly when Windows restarts to install updates?

Hey @Eduardo_Alban,

Thank you for keeping in touch as soon as you heard back from Dylan. We are sorry that we didn’t get a chance to reply until today… :pensive: . Please, accept our sincere apologies. It wasn’t from lack of trying.

Am I understanding correctly that you found one older backup that finally worked? That would be really great :heart_eyes: .

Thanks for confirming that you’re not using a smart plug. It’s really hard for us to tell whether Roon closes properly. However, you can try manually choosing when to update so that you can control the process :nerd_face: