That’s what I have been doing on my Mac Mini until it dies this week. I had 3TB of memory in the Mac Mini. I downloaded music, got iTunes to “add them” and had Roon pointed to iTunes library. So if I got a new Mac Mini with 2 TB drive and had iTunes sore the music on the external drive this would work?
I see no problems with that. Don’t want to be rude but why do you need such a big internal ssd if you are storing most of your data externally? Just trying to save you money.
My understanding is that Roon itself should be on an SSD (solid state drive) which are fast but expensive - the music itself can be on a standard hard disk, and external is fine - the faster the connection the better in general, so Thunderbolt 3 ideal. External doesn’t need to be an SSD. Internal should be but the smallest you can find in a Mac will be ample… Have the OS and Roon on there, and you’re good to go,. Can then add other external disks as needed. Or even a NAS, I’d guess (you can run Roon on just a NAS but many are not powerful enough to do it well). If you’re buying it just for Roon, then looking at a NAS with appropriate spec may give you much more storage and enough processing power for less money.
I’ve had two Mac Minis that were used almost exclusively for music storage and playback. The first lasted nine years (though I still have it!), the second has been going for five.
I always max out the RAM, as that gives it a bit more longevity. And I use an external hard drive for the music library. And a second external for backups.
If I were buying today, I’m not sure I’d get the second external, as there is probably a cloud-based solution that would be fine.
I leave them on all the time and rarely use a mouse/keyboard/screen with them, using apps on my iPhone to control iTunes (prior to Roon) or Roon.