NAS/Roon best practices?

Hi Guys (and Gals),

Ages ago, I bought my Sooloos system directly from Rob Darling himself and trucked all my CD’s by van down to his shop on Greene street to have him rip my 8k+ discs to 4-server setup (two 2-TB mains and two 2-TB secondaries) running off a Control:10. I still have correspondence from Enno stored in my email history, so I’ve been in this from the very beginning (I still have all my original Sooloos equipment, btw, in case anyone is interested.)

Point is, I’ve been upgrading continuously through my local Meridian dealer (I am in Denver) and I now have all my music stored on a QNAP TS-453A-44R 4-bay raid level 5 server connected to a 218 DAC using the iPad app, and rip using Control:Mac.

Despite my long, convoluted history with Meridian/Sooloos (all my classical metadata is still a mess from the original import) I only JUST DISCOVERED ROON!

I downloaded the Roon trial and was impressed, so I’m going to try something suggested elsewhere on this site, with a modification. I’m looking for suggestions, but it will go something like this:

  1. Export the entire Sooloos library to a backup disk (quickest way to do this?)
  2. Copy said library back to another 4-bay QNAP or Synology NAS (suggestions for models? What about the one I have?)
  3. Use 1 bay in the NAS for an SSD to run Roon, one for music library, one for raid, one for other stuff (videos, etc).
  4. rSync data files to an offsite NAS or cloud for backup (I’m a big believer in offsite backup. Where’s your precious backup if your house burns down?)
  5. Manage music with Roon from now on.

In other words, what’s the hot way to run Roon if you can buy all new equipment?

Finally, I’m looking for suggestions: Roon-ready DAC and/or Roon-ready headphone amp? (I have Sennheiser 800 S’s).

Thanks everyone!

Hal

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Hi Hal!

If I was starting out I would not use a NAS as my Core Roon Server. I would build a dedicated Roon Server and depending on what the final plan with it was either use Windows or a Roon OS Intel NUC, aka ROCK NUCK.

OR, If you are not technically inclined, I would suggest, especially given that you have 8K or more disks, that you look into Roon’s upcoming Nucleus Server, the Nucleus + would certainly handle your needs. The music can live on your NAS.

Hal, After test driving Roon on a Mac mini (no SSD) and an underpowered NAS, I “permanently” installed the Roon server on a NUC (i7 intel) ROCK. Read and accept Roon’s specs carefully. Overbuy where and if you can. Consider the incremental expense as insurance against some portion of the future.

The NUC has an internal bay for music files, but it is limited to 9mm 2.5" drives, which as of now max out at 2TB. Instead, TAKE ROON’s recommendation to go with an external USB drive. To move the files, I tried MacOS drag-and-drop, but there were errors related to folder/file naming conditions (i.e. whether CAPITALS are important in Mac versus Linux). Any error stops the entire job. So, after some false starts, I bought Carbon Copy Cleaner and that worked quite well, no hassle. It was an 8-hour job for a 15000-track library (lot of variables here).

The NUC build will take about an hour out of your life; you may want something ready-made instead. But it is not a heavy lift.

Personally, I am scarred with NAS drives, but mine is a dataset of one. If you go with a NAS combo server/storage solution, TAKE ROON’s recommendations and get nothing less powerful than their specs.

Nothing to add on the offsite recs, except that Roon’s hooks to DropBox look pretty convenient.

Good luck to you. You will be glad you made the switch. (No, I don’t own any Roon stock.) :grin:

Hi John,

Thanks for your input. Until Daniel mentioned it, I was unaware of the imminent release of the Roon Nucleus, so I think I’ll just get that (thanks, Daniel). Then I’ll export everything from my current NAS, wipe it, and copy the files back to it and use it as my server and the Nucleus as my core. The NAS can remain a raid 5, but I will rSync it to an offsite location for safety. This seems the easiest, cleanest solution unless someone can suggest something different.

Question: I know the difference between a Sooloos backup volume (preserves Sooloos file structure and DB) and a simple export (just makes copies of the music files). Should I keep a Sooloos backup volume somewhere, just in case?

Thanks,

Hal

I like a server that can hold the music on the device itself. I am currently using either my iMac or a Small Green Computer Sonic Transporter i5. (Looking at their new i7 model). The music server is not the master data storage. The master is on my Mac and backed up to a NAS using time machine and to the cloud. I also do “manual” backups to 2.5 in drives and put them in my safe deposit box.