I need some advice on how to backup my media to an external hard drive.
I have Roon/Rock running on a dedicated i7 nuc, with rock on a dedicated SSD and the media on an internal Hard disk.
If I browse to the rock from a laptop I can copy my media from the nuc to the external hard drive, but it takes over 48 hrs to copy.
Is there a quicker way to backup my media?
I’m gonna bump this (though I suspect it never received a reply because it’s in the wrong forum / location): I, too, would like to know the best way to copy my music files from the internal storage drive on my ROCK to a USB attached drive. I currently am running a copy via my Mac on the same network; however that means that all files from my ROCK go to my Mac and then back to the ROCK to the USB drive. It’s moving at between 16 - 30 MB/s, so extremely slow compared to the speed of USB3.
Any better options?
Where are your music files located before you transferred them on to the Nuc? The first step is to back up your music before adding it to your Nuc. Anything that is on my computer is backed up 3x.
Use a backup software to backup your music the same that you would do for anything on your computer. Do it before sending it to NUC. Why would you want to back up over the network? Maybe I am misunderstanding your question.
I don’t understand the question, either.
Can’t you put the USB drive on your Mac, along with the backup sofware, and link to the ROCK drive?
BTW - Mighty Mouse, a good childhood memory. 
So the files start on my Mac, then I move them to the NUC. In hindsight I should have had a better system, but previously didn’t have the time invested in the music files that I do now.
I could do that. However that would be another device hanging off my Mac, whereas if it’s directly attached to the ROCK it can be tucked away where it won’t be seen.
Why would you want to back up over the network?
That’s exactly it: I don’t want to backup over the network. I’m trying to find a way to send the files on the internal drive of the ROCK directly to the attached USB drive (also connected to the ROCK).
Since a ROCK machine can only run ROCK and therefore no backup software, then the only recourse is backup over the network.
You asked whether there was a quicker way to backup your music because you don’t want to make a double trip over the network with your files, but you don’t want to have another device hanging off your Mac.
So, whether there is a quicker way, I guess the answer is no. 
So does this mean you don’t backup your computer?
Not much to backup the way I use it. Documents are stored in Dropbox, the handful of apps I use have configurations backed up to Dropbox, and there’s not much else to my machine. Any work I do I either commit to github or have stored (you guessed it) in Dropbox.
If my machine were to die I just need to re-install macOS, download the handful of apps I frequently use, and point them to Dropbox for me to be up and running again.
Well that’s a bummer 
Before you copy your music files into your NUC, they reside on a hard drive of some sort located somewhere. Get another USB drive and plug it into that device and copy them over once a week, once a month, etc. By the way, you said you moved them to your NUC. I hope you meant you copied them to the NUC.
I am assuming you still have all your music files you purchased or ripped on your computer. It is so easy to take a usb and copy everything on it and be done with it. How often are you adding newly purchased digital music files to your Nuc? For me it was a big transfer when I first got a Nuc and now if I add an album every three months that’s a lot.
In Windows, I have created a Powershell script that I run from the Task Scheduler to backup my internal storage on my Roon Rock to USB. I use RoboCopy (which is also available on Mac) in my PowerShell script to perform the backup (I’m sure there is some automated scripting that can be run on a schedule on a Mac). While not super quick RoboCopy is pretty quick and can copy 1tb in about 2.5hrs.
I run 2 scripts - one to copy to the external USB attached to the NUC, and another to copy to a USB raid attached to my notebook.
I have the one script scheduled to run the 1st Sat of every month, and the other script to run the 2nd Sunday of every month.
Example Powershell script: (It creates a new folder using the current date)
$folderName = (Get-Date).tostring(“dd-MM-yyyy”)
$dest=New-Item -ItemType Directory -Path “F:\MUSIC_BACKUP” -Name $FolderName
$source="\rock\Data\Storage\InternalStorage"
robocopy $source $dest /E
If you only want to do an incremental backup, RoboCopy has a switch to only copy new files (don’t know what the switch is off the top of my head)
That’s a brave assumption lol
The answer is: no. The files were created or acquired on my main machine and then copied to ROCK and deleted from my main machine. Again: never really felt worried about music, but I now have considerable time invested in organization and acquisition. Ultimately I assume my situation will be like yours: large initial investment in the backup, incremental later on being not as big of a deal. I’m more focused on the technical aspects of if it’s possible for me to backup from ROCK directly to the attached USB drive or if I have to use an intermediary device to do so.
I had hopeful wishes for you. I believe it has already been said that Rock’s sole duty is only to run Roon. The only backup software option available in Roon is back up of our settings NOT our actual music files. My suggestion is to go on your computer’s finder look for your Nuc in the attached network devices. Select it, open it up to reveal your music folder and copy your music files back onto your computer. From there you can start fresh with a backup solution of your choice.