After running the Roon core on my QNAP TS-251 for a couple of years with moderate success (it was kinda sluggish at times), I finally decided to move it to a NUC to get it to perform better. With a collection of 7500 albums and 90000 tracks this was a very wise decision. It performs much better. Oh, I had it set up in 20 minutes thanks to the great installation guide. Great job!
My NUC is a NUC11TNHI3 i3 with 8Gb of memory and a 250Gb M.2 SSD in a silent case. There is space for a SSD but initially I decided to continue using my NAS storage. This is working very well, although I kinda miss the instant detection of new songs. Iām a musician/mixing engineer whoās in several (international) online bands and my NAS has folders that are synced to GDrives. I found it very convenient that whenever one of my bandmates uploads a new mix I instantly see it in Roon so I can play it in the living room. Itās not the end of the world having to wait for the hourly sync or do it manually, but still, it made me think of the following scenarioā¦
The NAS isnāt doing a lot anymore, now that itās retired from Roon duties. So I was thinking: what if
add a 4TB SSD to the NUC
set up HBS3 Hybrid Sync on the NAS so that it synchronizes in real time (one way) to the NUCās internal storage
wait 24 hours (Iām assuming first time will take long, but that doesnāt matter). Subsequent syncs should run very fast. Itās the NASās only job
switch ROCK to internal storage
With this scenarioā¦
I possibly have a better performance of the core (because itās all internal storage)
new file detection will be working the way Iām used to (this is an assumption, not sure if it works)
I have an extra backup (I already have two, but one can never have too many backups)
extra security maybe, because there is no link to a shared folder on my NAS on the NUC anymore, just the one way sync to the NUC from the NAS
I just tested it with a few files and the M.2 disk storage and it seems to work very nicely.
Other than the extra costs of a 4Tb SSD, is there anything I should consider before proceeding?
You can only put the OS, on the M.2 drive, so I assume you are āaddingā a drive to the NUC, not replacing the drive in the NUC. Also, if the drives in the NAS are spinners, using an SSD as the storage drive will help.
You may want to upgrade the memory in the NUC to 16Gig (2x8 Gig). If you put two 8 gig cards in for the memory the memory bus will run in dual channel mode, so faster (slightly faster, but noticeable).
The M.2 test was just to test the concept (syncing 3 files from the NAS to the /Data/Storage folder, which worked fine), I know I have to buy the SSD to do it properly.
Just for the sake of completeness, the 2.5" drive in the NUC can be an SSD or a HDD - for music storage, the extra speed of an SSD doesnāt matter. However, an SSD does have other advantages over an HDD: higher capacity and silence.
Only a SSD would fit, because itās a silent case. But this is a M.2/SSD household anyway. Only the old NAS still has HDDs, but itās in a closed room no one wants to be for a long time. All of the other equipment is all SSD.
Question is: will changing from networked storage NAS drives to internal SSD make any difference, performance wise?
This is an interesting strategy that sounds like it will serve your purposes nicely. One thing, though, that I am a fan of is something like RAID 6 storage for the canonical storage on a NAS, because you have multiple copies of the files on the RAID array and data scrubbing can be employed to ensure that all of your bits remain true. As a two-drive unit, your TS-251 isnāt capable of that sort of RAID.
Nonetheless, I think you have a good idea on your hands. Best of luck.
Thanks for your concern DDPS! But Iām already backing up to 2 external disks (one of which I keep at a friendās house for most of the year). So the current RAID 1 configuration with 2 backups and maybe another to the NUCās SSD might be over over the top but the longer I think about it, the better it sounds.
Iām basically twisting the concept of a backup, because Iām running on the backup. But it seems much easier than figuring out how to do it the other way around.
Btw itās good to mention that the library has become a very slowly changing entity for the larger part. The āmixesā folders change daily but most of the library only once every few months (each Bandcamp Friday ) I have a feeling that the syncing will never take a long time. Just a few songs daily and a couple of albums per month.
Well, every copy of your music risks corrupting the data; backups are not 100% assured to be bit-perfect, although they are certainly typically almost perfect for most. But having what are essentially multiple copies on a NAS in a RAID 6 or similar configuration for your canonical storage ensures that the data integrity remains top-notch.
I went to ZFS vs RAID when I started my Freenas NAS. Have had less issues with it and swapping out a failing/failed drive, IMO, is easier.
Have you looked at ZFS?
āYouā donāt as a user. That is correct. But with RAID 6 there are multiples of each part of every file. That is why you can afford to lose 2 of 4 drives. The subsystem uses these for integrity purposes as well as disk redundancy.
I always suggest the music be kept local to the RoonServer. I would read the library migration faqs so that you keep your edits, playlists, play counts, intact. If you do it wrong and Roon thinks that the files are ānewā then youāll have a bit of an issue. See:
As always do a good backup of the Roon database on the new PC before attempting.
Iāve done a few migrations before, so Iām aware of the dangers. I already ordered the 4Tb SSD a few minutes ago , so Iām hoping to install it tomorrow and see if my cunning plan works. The NAS with music library has been backed up yesterday and of course: if all fails I still have fallback to the NAS.
My intention was/is to follow the first 3 steps in my first post and then
backup the roon database
turn off the core
remove the access rights to the user I created for ROCK to access the NAS for the library folders (not the roon backup folder)
turn on the core
Roon will tell me it lost access to the storage folders and to enter the new location
direct it to the new local storage folders
it will do some scanning for a few minutes and everything should be ok (at least, this is how it always worked)
Iāll check out the documentation as it sounds like things may be different with this migration though. Thanks for the heads up.
Once you have copied the files the audio analysis will take a whike for 90k tracks
One trick is to set the no of cores to 1 or 2 during the day and then to max at night . That way you will get least interference from the analysis process
I have the same setup nearly 10i7 32 gb RAM 4tb SSD
I was assuming that if I do it right, there will be no audio analysis necessary because itās already been done? Audio analysis data is part of the roon database metadata right?
Another questionā¦my current setup is like this. I have made subfolder setups so I can use the bookmark function to quickly show me āonly classicalā or āonly mixes by TTBā (my band).
Oh, I had it set up in 20 minutes thanks to the great installation guide. Great job!
) I have a feeling that the syncing will never take a long time. Just a few songs daily and a couple of albums per month.