Good evening. I am back at this after dealing with other (non-stereo) stuff. I am getting ready to replace the broken hard drive in my Nucleus+ machine. From before, Wes from @Support told me to contact him once I’ve replaced the hard drive. Wes said that he will need (on his end) to change my code from Rock back to Nucleus. Am I remembering that correctly?
Any other advice before I undertake this job? Thanks, Ken
Sorry, I should have noted that I need to replace the M.2 drive.
Will this be a difficult job? The hardware install looks like a breeze – the software side I am a little more concerned with.
It’s not very difficult. You will need a USB Keyboard, a USB stick (not too small and make sure it’s reasonably new), and a TV to connect the Nucleus to (by HDMI)
Essentially you need to download the ROCK installer, put in onto the USB stick by following the instructions, plug the stick into the Nucleus, start the Nucleus (connected to the TV and keyboard) and follow the instructions. When you are done, tell @Wes so that he can enable the Nucleus magic.
I don’t know. Performance rarely is an issue, but reliability is. RoonOS runs from RAM and doesn’t swap, so from this point of view should be quite benign to SSDs. It does write the database though, and writing is what over time kills SSDs, and you want as few issues as possible, as you already found out
I have no idea how this one fairs in reliability tests, and it is generally a difficult topic because it differs between models of the same manufacturer and even build dates of the same model. Don’t try to save money here, it’s not worth the hassle.
With 250 GB you will have plenty of free space, which is good because the SSD firmware can automatically assign working cells to replace broken cells as the SSD ages.
Many people use Samsung and they are generally ok but also had certain batches that were not great. The 970 Evo is, I believe, generally good. I have the older and slightly slower 860 Evo and no issue so far in 2 years, but one never knows for sure. Or get the Pro for more money and higher reliability. This may be helpful:
You may want to try to google for SSD reliability tests
Good point. It does have a higher value of TB written before failure, though. On the other hand, the non-Pro already have a lot if they don’t fail prematurely, anyway. And a Pro can fail prematurely just as well
I don’t see a need for the Plus at all, though, the speed difference is negligible compared to the non-Plus, and the TB are the same
Because my work life is computers and I have absolutely no interest in trawling SSD test websites and screwing around with hardware in my scarce free time
The Cirrus guy knows what he’s doing, I think, and I did what they recommended
what ssd is installed in your unit?
Can’t remember for sure without looking up the receipt, and I’m still at work…
I think an 860 of some kind and I forgot completely what the music storage is, some other Samsung
I can look it up at home if you want to know? At least I can say no problems since I got it, whatever that means. Now I’ll probably find a fried SSD when I get home
In my custom self-built Roon Core I use a Samsung EVO 970 Plus 250 GB… This as of today has had 20,1 TB written to it and has resisted 166 ‘unsafe’ shutdowns… this is power outages before I had an UPS to bring the Core server gracefully down. This drive is going strong and I can recommend it.
I recently ordered a replacement drive, just in case, because I live far away from where these things are easily available. The 500 GB version is now standard and cheaper than the 250 GB drive.
Edit: Forgot to mention the important part… this drive was installed in February 2020…
Edit 2: Samsung’s warranty for this drive is 5 years or 150 TB written, whatever comes first…
There you go. Clearly I confused the model numbers as well (this whole Nvme/M.2/SATA business plus the associated SSD model numbers makes my eyes glaze over after 10 seconds)
M.2 Slot 1: Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus 250GB
SATA Slot 1: Samsung SSD 860 EVO 4TB
