Okay, good to know. It may a week or two (or more?) to get my hard drive replaced and to set up my NUC again. I’ll chime in then.
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I got my replacement hard drive in the mail. Same model as before from the same manufacturer, from the same seller. If I get my NUC back up and running today, I’ll chime in.
I replaced my SSD hard drive in the NUC, flashed a jump drive with the Roon OS image, installed the codecs, started Roon from scratch. It took about 1 hour and 45 minutes. I started streaming a song from Tidal for a few minutes, but before the song finished, the Roon database crashed again. Same error as before: “There was an issue loading your database”. Huge bummer.
So…what’s the next step? Replace the memory stick just like I replaced the hard drive and try this all over again? If the database fails again with a new memory stick, do I replace my NUC? Do you wish to look at my logs or run any diagnostics?
I’m just grasping at straws here, but I noticed that this webpage outlines best practices for USB Drive music storage, noting that the format called exFAT is preferred. I have never heard of USB drive formats before, but I looked my USB drive and it evidently formatted as “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)”. Is the formatting of my USB hard drive a problem? I figured not because I have always used the same drive for music storage and I didn’t run into database problems until months later.
Wow, thanks for continuing to work on this with us on this Brice.
Apologies if it sounds like I am repeating myself, but just to reiterate how rare this is – I’m pretty sure we’ve seen single digit number of corrupt databases on ROCK, perhaps even less than five ever… and you’ve now seen this happen 3 times 
My advice at this point would to replace the memory and the NUC – if they’re under warranty and you can have them swapped do it, since clearly something is wrong here.
I completed the warranty claim on the Crucial memory card yesterday. The replacement should arrive Friday. Should I go about replacing the NUC now or wait till I can try again with the new memory card this weekend. I guess it does make me feel somewhat better knowing this is super rare. Cause man I am really scratching my head here.
No problem with the format of my USB music storage drive as outlined above?
FWIW, I never put my NUC back in that IKEA drawer during this latest round of use. I wanted to eliminate that question. The database still crashed even though the NUC was out in the open air.
Another thing I’ve not asked before (again, I’m grasping at straws) is it easy to install the hard drive and memory card incorrectly? I was very careful and watched a handful of YouTube videos to see where and how these components are inserted. I felt like I had solid contact at the connections points. And I guess it wouldn’t have worked successfully for months if I’d installed them incorrectly.
How rare do you think it is for a NUC to become faulty after 2-3 months of light use?
I don’t think the storage is related.
In my opinion, I would just swap the NUC is it’s possible. Your experience is such an outlier here that if starting fresh is an option, I would do it.
Okay. I’ll start the warranty return process for the NUC.
The warranty processer asked me a number of questions about my issue and one of them is “what operating software are you using?”. I told him, “Roon Optimised Core Kit, which is based on Linux”. The response I got from Intel thus far was that they don’t support any such operating system so they can’t help me out. I asked to escalate this case to a manager who will be calling me back later today. I’ll keep you up to speed, but I just wanted to let you know that however rare this case is (the database crashing), if Intel won’t honor a warranty because the NUC won’t successfully run ROCK, that’s a huge ding to the customer value position for using ROCK.
The guidance here on your website (https://kb.roonlabs.com/Roon_Optimized_Core_Kit) says:
More about ROCK’s hardware support…
•We have worked with Intel to support their Intel NUC line of products. They are low power high performance easy to install units that work very nicely as a Roon Core Server. The models we support are:◦NUC5i3XXX
◦NUC5i5XXX
◦NUC6i3XXX
◦NUC6i5XXX
◦NUC7i3XXX
◦NUC7i5XXX
◦NUC7i7XXX
•Any hardware configurations other than the above are unsupported. Although they may work now, they may also stop working at any time due to updates.
Hi @Brice_Lang ---- Checking in with you to see what the manager whom you spoke to said. If there is still a problem replacing the device please let me know and I will make sure we go through the proper channels to get this figured out for you.
-Eric
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The manager gave me approval to process a warranty return. She stressed again that they do not support running any OS besides Windows and said if I run into problems again based on an OS besides Windows, they won’t help me out. So…mission accomplished for now I guess. I should get my new NUC in about 10 business days.
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Okay so when I get my NUC, I will need to update the Bios. But will I also need to go though the steps I took to flash the ROCK image to the SSD drive and add codecs to the data folder? I already did that last week when trying to install ROCK (my hard drive is not out-the-box-blank. Would you advise I do that stuff again just to be starting completely from scratch?
Moderator Edit: @Eric
Hi @Brice_Lang ----- Thank you for touching base and my apologies for the slow response as I have been out of office on business.
I think the best course of action here will be to start completely from scratch and if there are any hangups during the setup process let us know and we will be along to provide assistance.
-Eric
Roger that.
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I’m setting up my new NUC tonight with new RAM and new SSD. Wish me luck.
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It took me roughly 4 hours starting from scratch, but I finally got my NUC set up running ROCK! I have streamed two Tidal tracks and so far so good. My god, I feel like Odysseus returned home from the war. It’s been almost a month since the last time I tried setting up ROCK. I’m not trying to set up every last setting or really put Roon through its paces tonight. Just listen to a few songs and come back tomorrow to incrementally incorporate new elements like volume leveling, max volume limit, attach my USB music storage to the NUC, set up all my remotes, etc. We’ll see if all this is stable and then I’ll start celebrating. I’ve been burned before!