Moving Roon database to SSD

I am running Roon 64 on an HP dv7 laptop with Windows 10 and Intel I5 dual core. The dv7 has dual drives –

  1. HHD where Roon is installed
  2. SSD where I’d like to put the Roon database (as recommended by Roon)
    I cannot find any instructions in the Roon KB on how to move the Roon database from the HHD to the SSD.
    Can you provide some assistance?
    Thanks.

As you’re running Windows the only way to do this that I can think of would be to stop Roon, move the Roon database folders to an alternative location on the SSD then create a symbolic link pointing to the SSD folder.

There’s no way to specify an alternate database location right now, so either use the SSD as your Windows system drive or you can try @evand’s suggestion.

Thanks for the quick response.

Based on what I’ve read on line (http://www.2brightsparks.com/resources/articles/NTFS-Hard-Links-Junctions-and-Symbolic-Links.pdf) –

  1. Hardlinks cannot be used across different volumes.
  2. SymbolicLinks and Junction do not use any space on the destination drive. Therefore, they cannot take advantage of the SSD speed, since the source directory/files are not on the SSD, but remain on the HDD.

My SSD is too small to use as a Windows system drive.

Why can’t Roon be reconfigured to allow the Roon folder containing the Database to be in an alternate location other than “C:\Users[name]\AppData\Local\Roon”?

Try this: http://www.traynier.com/software/steammover

Just to feedback on this in case it’s helpful to others, I haven’t yet done a Roon upgrade with the junction point in place, but so far the solution appears to work fine - just move the roon folder to your target, then:

mklink /J C:\Users[name]\AppData\Local\Roon TargetDriveLetter:\Roon

The speed improvement was considerable.

Where would that command be placed?

Just open a command prompt, running as an administrator - see, for example, https://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/cc947813(v=ws.10).aspx. Upgrades all worked fine (though I’ve actually now moved to ROCK).

Mike, I don’t see a full explanation that I understand. When I started using Roon I installed everything on a Synology Diskstation, including the core. But now I’ve read about the advantage of having the core on a SSD which I’ll attached to the Diskstation using USB3. Why can’t I just move the core files over to the new destination? Is there not a way in the program to tell it where to locate the moved core? Do I have to start from scratch? If so for the CD’s I’ve burned I guess that is not a big deal. But what will happen to my playlists? What will happen to the TIDAL albums I’ve added to my library? Seems that moving a core is something everyone will do from time to time. There should be an easy way to do this. Thank you.

Nope, you’re just going to want to migrate the database.

First backup wherever it’s running now. Then get Roonserver running in the new place, and restore the backup. More details about migration here.

There may be an easier way on Synology, but @crieke would have to confirm that.

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No, that’s also the correct procedure for Synology devices.
Working with a RoonServer database backup (as mentioned) is probably the easiest route.

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Thank you all for your help.

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Hi,

Trying to get this done but one of the instructions on @crieke website says:

If you’d like to use a SSD as a storage volume for RoonServer’s database, you’ll need to rename its name from something like usbshare-x to RoonServer (external volumes can not contain multiple shares and they are a shared as a whole)

But what I’ve read on Synology forms is you can’t easily rename external drives. I’ve been trying to find a solution but cant figure it out. Can you provide more help? Thank you.

Sorry, I realized the sentence was a little bit unclear. It was only meant for usb connected volumes. I just edited the sentence:

If you’d like to use an external, usb connected SSD as a storage volume for RoonServer’s database, you’ll need to rename its name from something like usbshare-x to RoonServer (external volumes can not contain multiple shares and they are a shared as a whole)

USB volumes can be renamed in the “Shared folder” settings, where you also create new shared folders. You’ll find USB volumes normally as usbshare-1 in the list. If you select that volume and click “Edit”, you should be able to rename it to “RoonServer”.

I’d also recommend to have USB volumes formatted with an ext4 filesystem, before using it with RoonServer.

Thanks for making it clearer. That worked just fine. Thank you @crieke

The info an ext4 filesystem was also very helpful because the is one of the first issue I ran into when connecting the SSD. It would be good information to add to your instructions that the Diskstation does not come with ext4 but it can be added as a package but costs $4USD. It was my first experience paying for a package but worked fairly easily all right within the Diskstation Manager.

One more thing that is less than clear to me, and that is the next step. I’ve done my backup, but what I think what I need to do is uninstall the roon package in the package center, delete the current shared folder called RoonServer so I have only one shared folder called RoonServer, then reinstall the RoonServer. I’m guessing that is the way the RoonServer will find the new folder. Is that correct? I’m concerned of deleting the current RoonServer folder because it contains information.

I don’t think my scenario will be unique. I’m new to roon and my first inclination was to try out roon and see if I liked it. I loved it and then decided to start investing the money to make it work at its best. I bought an additional RAM module to take the Diskstation from 2 to 4MB (that was easy), and I bought a SSD (that gets a bit harder to figure out). The only issue with doing things that way is now dealing with the migration. Thank you so much for helping me step through this process!

You are mixing this up with exFat. I don’t recommend using exFat for the volume that holds the database. On a reboot of your Diskstation the exFat driver will load after RoonServer has started and RoonServer needs to manually be launched again.
Ext4 is the common and native filesystem of Linux system (and also of your Diskstation). It can be selected when you format a drive in the “external devices” section and does not need to be paid for.

RoonServer will check its database location on every start of the app. When you stop RoonServer and rename your “RoonServer” folder to something else, it will be ignored and won’t be used anymore. So you don’t need to delete it and can keep it for the migration process under a different name. When you create a new shared folder or rename an USB volume to “RoonServer” it will directly be used when you start RoonServer again.

The RoonServer app itself can only be installed on internal bays of the Diskstation due to the architecture of the Synology operating system. So there is no need to reinstall the app.

Thanks again, @crieke!

Thanks for the clarification on the file format. Oh well, $4 is less than a Starbucks so I won’t worry about it.

So do I need to do the migration process since I’m not really installing a new roon server? Can I just move the files inside the old RoonServer folder into the new Roon Server folder on the SSD? The migration instructions are not clear to me. I’ve not been asked to login again and don’t see the option to restore from a backup. Is that because the server is still the same?

Thank you so much for helping me through basic questions. I hope this helps others too.

Followed Christopher’s instructions on how to format the SSD and rename it. Followed the instructions concerning migration. Everything is back in order and working great. Thanks, once again, Mike and Christopher for all your help. Even though the 1513+ uses an older Atom processor it works well most of the time and only pegs the resource monitor CPU chart once in a while. Where there are issues is if HD Homerun is recording a show while someone is watching a movie on Video Station while I"m trying to listen to music on roon. But otherwise, roon works great on this old Synology NAS!