I’ve been using Roon for a couple of years and recently purchased and successfully installed a Nucleus. My system is as follows:
Nucleus is connected directly to Ethernet;
I’ve installed and formatted a 4TB Samsung SSD internally in the Nucleus and moved a portion of my hi-res audio downloads to the internal drive;
I’ve attached a Samsung Portable SSD T3 (containing some hi-res audio files) to one of the Nucleus external USB ports;
I have a USB connection from the Nucleus to my MSB Analog DAC (and from there to a Plinius power amp and Vienna Acoustics Mahler speakers).
Other devices I use Roon on: iMac, a Macbook Pro, iPad Pro, and an iPhone X.
I have several issues that I’m unable to resolve:
I have a Samsung Portable SSD T3 attached to the Nucleus, but I cannot add new downloads to that drive. I’m trying to move the downloads from my iMac hard drive or from anther SSD T3 external drive attached to the iMac. What I get when I try to do this is a message that says “Items can’t be copied to “Music” (that’s the folder on the Portable SSD T3 attached to the Nucleus) because you don’t have permission to read them.” (screenshot attached)
I don’t understand why this should be the case. They are easily read when I move them around between drives on my iMac.
I’m unable to setup backups of my Roon data and preferences with the Nucleus. When I specify the location of the backups as the Samsung SSD T3 attached to the Nucleus, I receive a message that says “The operation can’t be completed because you don’t have the necessary permission.” (I’ve attached a screenshot)
Is it possible to have the Roon backups saved to my iMac or one of the external Samsung SSD’s I have attached to the iMac? I have no idea how to do this and would appreciate help. It may involve “Share Network Path” but I need some specific directions from someone who knows macOS. How do you set this up? How do you specify the exact path?
Following from what I’ve said above, I’m unable to link my iTunes music to the Nucleus so that I can play it on my various devices. Again, I’m unclear how to set this up and have attached a screenshot of where my iTunes music is located on the iMac.
Is there a way to have hi-res audio downloads stored on external drives attached to the iMac played through the Roon Nucleus?? If yes, how does one set this up?
I’m hoping for answers from someone who knows macOS. Thanks in advance.
First, can you confirm how the external SSD is formatted?
You can save backups to a network location and set a network folder as a watched folder in Roon (including your iTunes library). To do so, you’ll need to make sure that the folder(s) in question are appropriately shared over the network.
We have information on doing this in our Knowledge Base.
If you have any questions about this please let us know!
Thanks for your suggestions. Following your advice, I have been able to link my iTunes Library to Nucleus/Roon.
However, I still cannot find a way to backup Roon data and preferences. I have been using a Samsung SSD T3 attached to my iMac as the location where I backed up my Roon data. So, I first added RoonBackups in the Sharing Preferences as Roon Knowledge Base directs. Then I tried Add Network Share using the following path: smb://iMac.local/Music1_T3/RoonBackups (Music1_T3 is the name of the SSD). I’m attaching two screenshots to explain what I did. The first shows the path on the iMac Finder to RoonBackups; the second shows how I tried to capture that path under Add Network Share in Settings>Backup. In any case, there was no way I found to link to the Samsung SSD where I have my previous RoonBackups folder.
You ask about the formatting of the external drive (Samsung SSD T3) that is attached to the Nucleus. I don’t know, as I never formatted it. I’ve looked online and here’s what I found: the Samsung Portable SSD T3 uses exFAT as its default File System. I also found another web article that said it was formatted using FAT32. I think the Samsung Portable SSD’s are fairly common and there has to be a way to make these work with Nucleus so that I can drag and drop files to the drive from my iMac --??
Do I need to set up sharing with this external drive that is connected to the Nucleus to make this happen?
Can you try using the hostname instead of the SMB address to see if that has any effect? E.g. \\iMac.local\Music1_T3\RoonBackups? Typically you would also need to input your OSX username and password in the Add Network Share config (if you have a username + password set up).
I’m at work right now and can’t access Roon or my iMac. I will try using the hostname instead of the SMB address this evening.
Yes, I’ve enabled “Windows File Sharing” as outlined in Step #2 in the setup guide.
I did share a screenshot of my Sharing screen – see above posting. I can share another screenshot of the opening Sharing screen if you’d like. What I posted was a screenshot of the Sharing screen scrolling down to the attached SSD – Music1_T3.
I can try using Utilities to determine the format of the Samsung SSD attached to the Nucleus. However, please confirm that to do so, I will need to detach it from the Nucleus and re-attach it to the iMac, right?
I provided a screenshot in a previous posting of the message I receive when I try to drag and drop files from my iMac to the external SSD attached to the Nucleus: “Items can’t be copied to “Music” because you don’t have permission to read them.”
Ok, I was able to create a path to the external Samsung SSD attached to the iMac and backup Roon data and preferences! Your suggestion //iMac.local/Music 1_T3 /RoonBackups followed by username and password worked.
I still am not able to drag and drop music files to the external Samsung SSD T3 attached to the Nucleus. I used DiskUtility, which did not reveal any formatting. I am providing two screenshots from DiskUtility for the SSD attached to Nucleus (named Music2_T3):
You’ll note that the file system is Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
When I try to drag and drop files from the iMac into the Samsung drive attached to the Nucleus, I receive a message asking for my password, and then after I fill that in, I get the message that says the operation can’t be completed because you don’t have the necessary permission. Here are the two screenshots of that sequence.
I wonder if this problem might have anything to do with needing a password to access the Nucleus? Earlier today I couldn’t see the Nucleus in the Finder when I went to “Connect to Server.” So I rebooted the Nucleus and up pops a screen that has my username as marksalkind (which is correct) and then asks for a password. Someone at Music Lovers in San Francisco installed the internal hard drive in the Nucleus and formatted it, but to my knowledge would not have set up a password. My Roon password and my MacOS password did not work. So, I logged in as “Guest” and then I had access to Internal Storage and the attached SSD.
I’m hoping you can suggest a solution, as the Samsung are very good drives. If not, can you recommend other portable SSD drives of 2TB in size that will work with the Nucleus and with a OSX?
Due to it being formatted for mac you will need to reformat the drive to exfat or other supported filesystem of the Nucleus. Check the KB as it explains whats supported as MacOs formatted drives are read only.
Thanks for sharing those screenshots and glad to hear that using the path I listed allowed proper access to the drive!
As @Crystalgipsy mentioned, HFS/HFS+ (Mac OS Journaled) drives are read-only while attached to a Nucleus (also noted in our Nucleus Drives Knowledge Base) and this type of drive format will not support writing to the drive.
We suggest having a drive formatted as exFAT if possible, but do note that re-formatting a drive will erase the contents of the drive so please be very careful if you wish to go down this path.
If moving the data and re-formatting the drive is not possible, you may want to have it attached to the OSX machine when transferring new content or purchase a separate drive that can be formatted to a file system that the Nucleus is able to write to.
