I have a question regarding migration of data to a new larger hard drive. I did read the FAQ on the strategy for this, and I understand that I should copy/move active watched folders while they are not active to avoid duplication. But I am a little unclear on the connection between the database info recognition being tracked and backed up by Roon. When all is copied, do I have to edit the current watched folders that exist in order to keep the database info, or can those two be deleted, and a new watched folder (the new drive) simply be added. Are the drives themselves totally irrelevant to keeping the database info, or do need to edit the current watched drives to read the current location. They would both be pointing to same drive, which wouldn’t make sense so do I assume that all I have to do is delete the current watched folders and add the one new larger drive location that now has everything?
Hello @Richard_Levy,
You’ll want to use these instructions for the migration process. I would highly suggest performing a Backup of your current database before starting this process as well. The database is saved in the primary drive where Roon is installed (usually C:)
Basically what you would want to do if you’re moving a lot of files is:
- Make a backup of current database
- Disable storage locations to media
- Exit out of Roon
- Move files
- Start Roon again
- Edit storage locations in Settings -> Storage to point to new location or remove previous folder and add the new location (either will work)
- Enable storage locations again
Please let me know if that works and be sure to make a manual backup before starting this process just in case anything goes wrong.
Thanks,
Noris
Thank you Noris for reply. I have one more question, based on my ignorance about what preserves the useful database. I would prefer, when moving music to the new drive to update the folders on this new drive, and wonder if this would make the existing database useless.
Does changing the folder names for the albums break the link to the database info?
If, for example, track names and metadata associated with each file stay the same (i am not changing those), and I decide, in order to make finding stuff easier by changing their folder names, will the database info stay in tact. I can give you an example of what I mean.
On the current drive that I am replacing, there is a folder called ALL Native DSD. In it there is a folder called CCSS24313 where that album resides.
I would prefer to make the sorting of the folders more descriptive, so I would would, when I copy it over to the new drive prefer to rename it from CCSS24313 to “Amsterdam Sinfonitta Shostakovich Chamber”. Does that disrupt the database from finding the file edits that are stored in the database. In other words, do the folders have to remain identical, or is all the data associated with the specific music files themselves? Hope my question is clear and if not, please let me know.
Thanks again.
Hello @Richard_Levy,
Tracks are matched in the database by their file contents and not the file name, specifically a type of hashing is done to assign a fingerprint to an audio file in the database, so as long as Roon does not see two copies of the same files at the same time you should be fine to rename your directories as you see fit (provided the Roon app is not open).
If Roon does however see two files at the same time, the second file will be interpreted as a new file and will not have any of the previous edits associated with it anymore. Changing the folder name will not impact Roon if it is closed and if the new folder is existing or added under the Watched Folder directory in Roon Settings -> Storage, the metadata is tied to the database fingerprint and not to the files themselves as I mentioned above.
Please be sure to have backups before attempting the file migration just in case anything goes wrong but otherwise you should ok, you can also try a small subset of changes first if you want to make sure the process is working. Let me know how it goes 
.
Thanks,
Noris
I did greatly appreciate your reply today. Thank you so much, Noris.
I backed up and just before I did I took note that there a total of 1214 albums and on my two drive locations there were the following items
Drive location one - 5008 items
Drive location two - 8390 items
total 13398
I disabled all locations exited Roon and moved it to one SSD drive then logged back in and pointed to new drive with everything on it.
I noticed two things immediately. Firstly, it seemed like all the albums that I had previously corrected as separate albums were separate again and needed to fixed.
And two, the numbers don’t add up as it now says that I have a different total
Total 12361
So that somewhere along the line, and I don’t understand how, I now show 1037 items less than I had before I moved them, and also 47 less albums. How could this be explained do you think?
What explains the fact that I had fixed mistaken items which Roon thought were different albums and when I moved them, they were again seen as separate. Isn’t that what the database is for … to keep the changes I make? Is there a bug? Or, is Roon unable to hold on to these fixes if the albus are moved? It’s got to be one or the other, I figure, right? Or is there another possibility? Do you have any thoughts on the fact that there is less in Roon then there was before I moved the files?
Might have been duplicates between the original drives that were kept separate and are now being detected as duplicates. Under Settings/General is "Show Hidden Tracks and Albums " set to Yes or No? If it is set to NO, Try setting it to YES and see if those missing items appear.
I have two separate album listings for track ten of Alisa Weilerstein and Inon Barnatan’s Rachmaninov, Cello Sonatas. I suspected that perhaps there were two copies of track 10, one in one folder and one in another but when I checked track location, they were both pointing to the SAME folder. That’s rather odd isn’t it? And, if deleting the album deletes the files from the hard drive and both are pointing to the same track in the same folder, then I can’t delete the album to solve the multiple listing, because it will delete the file (of which there is only one there for track number ten. So what does a poor boy do?
I have a feeling I have other strange stuff happening, and I fear this is not the last problem I am about to find after merging all my files onto one hard drive. Hope I am wrong, but I have a funny feeling there are more issues to be found. I should say that I never had problems like this before using the previous version.
In addition the problem above, I have an album that is on the correct drive, but doesn’t show up. I deleted it and re-added it, and I can see that the number of files increase while on the storage page, but the album doesn’t show up at all. I did try closing Roon and restarting it, adding it and removing the folder several times, but still the album doesn’t show up as installed.
I was mistaken. The files are there but Roon wants to regard it as a different album by the same artist and also no matter how I edit the file, shows the cover graphic for that wrong album (the one it is not). I tried editing it, but it reverts back to the wrong album. I can identify it with the correct album but that doesn’t help fix the wrong cover image, and I can try to use my own and not Roon’s choice but it still shows the wrong album cover. Also there are duplicates for about four tracks, even though the locations of all point to the same folder and there are no duplicate files in that same folder. At first I thought, because both duplicates look like they are actively playing at the same time that there I could put up with the double listing, but … it does play the item twice, and that is not going to work for me. I need a fix for these duplicates that are showing up. I don’t understand why they are there because there is only one file in the folder, yet a number of files appear twice even so. Have you seen this problem before, and do you have a suggestion for me?
Rugby,
As much as I love the Hyperion recordings, I have notice metadata issues with their downloads before, especially when downloading only part of an album. I am wondering what your thoughts are for me to return to their site and try downloading the entire album again and trying to load it onto my watched drives.
After spending quite a long time trying to fix this album to show up properly, I was finally able to get it to show up (at first only a tidal version showed up when searching for it. Now I have the 24bit version showing, and finally with the correct graphic (though I had to use mine), but I still have duplicates showing that are not visible while inspecting the file location that the supposed duplicates are pointing to. So I am wondering if you would recommend delete and downloading the complete Signum/Hyperion album and trying again. What that be a useful experiment, or would that be a waste of time? Or do you have any other additional suggestions that I can try at this point. The issue is not that album doesn’t show (which was the issue before) but that there are unexplained duplicate file listings. I’ll be curious as to whether you think it makes sense to try removing and then installing the entire newly downloaded album.
By the way, most of my albums seem to be there and absent of any duplicates or wrong album titles whatsoever, which I am quite pleased to see. I have another thousand albums still to load, but I didn’t want to start that without a better understanding of what could go wrong and how to correct issues should they appear. I thought I knew all this from the previous months I’ve used Roon, but these issues were new to me.
Thanks in advance,
Richard
It sounds like the meta-data for those files might have issues. Can you give examples, album info and screen shots? That might help the devs investigate the meta-data.
Well, I think starting from a good baseline is important and if something is wrong then I tend to want to fix things and not leave issues. So personally, I would want to get a clean import.
To clean out the album, after you remove it from the Roon watched folders you have to clean the library to remove that album from the Roon database. Once clean, and BEFORE you copy the files back to Roon, I would look at the file’s tags to verify that the file’s meta-data is good. (All same album name, album artist, album number, different track numbers, etc). I would also look the album up in AllMusic and make sure that the track names/artist are consistent between the file and that website. Then I would copy the album back into the Roon watched folders.