Operate & boot Roon Rock from SD-Card

Roon Software Discussion ROCK
1

Hi Community and happy new year!

I am currently exploring different ways of optimizing my system.
An experienced friend of mine recommended me to run the OS and Software from outside of the Server (NUC, Core) via a Card-Reader and SD Card to minimize any Noise and EM-Interference.
This logically seems to make a lot of sense to me.

Can Roon Rock be installed and operated from a Card Reader, that is connected to Roon Core or other Servers or NAS? Has anyone done and tried this? And if yes, how do I implement this correctly?

Thanks all!

3

Nope, this won’t work. Roon Server requires that a fast SSD is used for performance reasons. A slow and failure-prone SD card is simply not good enough.

And personally, I am raising my eyebrow at the suggestion that any minimisation of noise and EM-interference is needed. IMO, it’s snake-oil territory.

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4

SD cards are way too slow, read and write speed. The number of write cycles of SD cards are very limited too.

Technically this solution is possible, but the pleasure won’t last long. I doubt you will get reasonable results.

Other question: Where do you store your music files? How many albums/tracks do you have?

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5

Even if it did work (I’m not sure it would), as said above, the experience would be very poor.

On top of that SD cards do not do wear levelling whereas SSD’s do. As consequence, your SD card would be extremely prone to premature failure.

It’s best to avoid adopting non-standard practises as a ‘solution’ to ‘problems’ that probably don’t exist.

6

What is he experienced in exactly?

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7

Software doesn’t run on a storage device, it runs on the CPU. As others have mentioned, there is absolutely no upside to storing an OS and software on an SD card.

8

“to run … from outside of the Server” is nonsense of the highest kind. Was is inside and outside? Inside and outside of a housing? From the perspective of function the SD card is “inside the server” as is an SSD or other kind of hard disc. From “outside the server” in a sense would be booting of the OS and loading the software via LAN, but thereafter the OS and the software is “inside of the server”.

9

You could boot from a SSD drive (more liable than SD) via USB and this would be external.

A internal mechanical boot drive could possible create noise but this is no go with regard to Roon specs because of performance. SSD is required.

I do not believe that there would be any added benefit for a external boot. A SD card and also a SSD are solid state with no moving parts and no interference.

–MD