Jpeg's and pdf's don't delete

My point was that this is not necessary to do. Roon has removed the album from the library.

An analogy would be if you were to delete a file from your hard drive, you would then bypass the operating system, go to the data blocks in the drive and erase all the bits yourself.

why so difficult, just remove the album from your hard drive and have roon indexed, I wouldn’t mess around with Roons data and you have the advantage that your files on your hard drive don’t contain unnecessary files

I think you are the one who is messing around. :slightly_smiling_face: Delete the album from Roon and have done with it. As I said, no need to do anything else.

After being a roon user from the very beginning and being the owner of a cd rip service I give up

I think the point the OP is making is that Roon’s behaviour doesn’t make sense, i.e. I would expect that ‘Permanently Delete’ would delete the whole album - folder, files and images included. What sense is there in just deleting the music files? I assume that this is programatically easier, and yes - no ‘need’ to do anything else - but it’s an untidy process.

Agreed. It’s untidy way of managing a db. The answer I was given when I asked support last year (or was it two years ago) was if you choose to add the album back, the art is already there. To me this is faulty logic.

I think it was simply programmatically easier to leave behind the images, etc. than to clean them up upon album delete. It cause db bloat that cannot be eliminated short of starting with a new db.

Untidy, possibly, but not, I would suggest, damaging. I seriously doubt that this would cause database “bloat” that cannot be eliminated short of starting with a new db.

There is no practical way to ‘clean’ up the leftovers from the db. Starting with a new db is not practical though I’ve done it twice now.

Switching from Tidal to Qobuz is a great example. Or when I first started with Roon, I added a bunch of albums I thought I might like to listen only to find out I didn’t care for many of them.

Now I add these prospects to a playlist to listen to before adding, though I’m not sure it really prevents the db entries (I suspect not as play count isn’t tracked, though it’s displayed, it always remains zero).

The last time I zeroed my db and started from scratch, it went from 16GB to 6GB. This was solely the purging of Tidal after 2 years.

Now one can say, who cares, what’s 10GB extra these days. It matters if running from ‘unsupported’ RAM mode but regardless I find it a lazy choice. And yes I have managed quite a number of databases over my 30 years in IT infrastructure career.

Absolutely spot on. Untidy for sure. Just another necessity to deal with IMO and add to evand’s list of details.
Of course, not one response from Roon…

For your information: I did the test: if you deleted an album with Roon then he only deleted the .flac files, the album title and his cover were not deleted from your hard drive. In fact, they become superfluous folders that in the long run make everything unclear

I also find annoying that roon leaves these folders behind. But that’s because I find it difficult to search in roon and impossible to navigate box sets so I don’t like the confusing clutter when I am using windows explorer instead.

I wouldn’t be keen at all on Roon taking the approach that everything in the folder(s) where the music files reside which a user decides to delete from Roon - and/or the folder(s) itself and all subfolders - should also be included as a target for deletion. Depending on the folder structure and users’ take on organisation, or lack thereof, it seems a recipe for potentially unrecoverable disaster.

From my perspective Roon takes a sensibly cautious approach, and it appears in line with their ‘we don’t mess with the files’ concept. This is separate from the issue of appropriate housekeeping of the Roon DB.

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This makes no sense…If I want to delete a file I want to delete everything in it…

I’ll offer a different perspective: don’t delete anything.
Ever. Under any circumstances.
Not music, not documents, not photos.

Disk space is so cheap, and getting cheaper faster than CPU, it is effectively free.

And who knows, you may change your mind and want to get hold of that old music or document or photo again, 20 years later. Who knows? It has happened to me.

Yes, sometimes I want to get rid of an album from Roon: the Hide command is right there next to the Delete command (and Hide doesn’t require any confirmations because it is non-destructive, it can be undone).

Ok, if you don’t find Roon navigation effective and need to navigate in the file system, then you may need to manage the file system that you use, so in that case delete folders in the file system.

I have never liked that Roon has a Delete command, no end-user system should have destructive, non-recoverable functions, Delete with Undo is the same as Hide.

In summary:

  1. Never Delete in Roon, just Hide
  2. Don’t bother managing the file system
  3. If in spite of #2 you want to, manage the file system in the file system, i.e. in the OS.
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I am glad that you have been a Roon user from the beginning and I am glad you own a CD ripping service. What does that have to do with your incorrect statement in the first quote above? All @Geoff_Coupe is saying is that you do not “have” to do any more than delete the album from within Roon for it to be removed from view. You, incorrectly, said otherwise…

Personally, I try to remove albums directly from the Roon server instead of using Roon to do it. Why? I don’t like have old folders and files hanging around.

Why would leaving the directory with jpegs and PDF files in place cause db bloat? Once the album is deleted and the Library cleaned up, there would be no reference in the db to the files left in the now unused directory.

Well, when I sell a CD or SACD, I can’t legally keep the tracks ripped from those CDs and SACDs. So I delete them. Also, I rarely keep a mastering of an album when I obtain a better one. I usually delete the inferior mastering even if I don’t sell it.

I manage the file system of music so I have something manageable in case, some time down the road, I need to do something else with my library of music.

That is what I do, i remove unwanted albums from my Nas , I ind this a good way to keep the Roon Database at my Nuc in a proper way

Wrt your selling CDs, yes, there are exceptions. I had once (stupidly) worked on corporate documents on my home computer (before laptops became the norm), and when I left the company I could not keep those documents anymore so I deleted them. And then I emptied the trash, and did some wiping exercises to clear out physical storage. And then I got good and drunk to wipe it from brain storage.

Wrt managing your file system, enjoy.

Images from deleted albums are not cleaned up.