When connecting an external USB drive to ROCK for music storage, does ROCK impose any kind of filename length limit?
The reason I ask is because when I tried to move some folders into a subfolder, I received the message “The filename(s) would be too long for the destination folder”. I edited the registry as per some instructions I found online, but it made no difference - and so I was wondering if this is something to do with ROCK?
AFAIK no. Roon just uses the underlying OS’s file access API. Limitations should come from the underlying OS and it’s filesystem support. As you use ROCK you probably access the data in question over the network so limitations of the network file protocol in use (SMB) and it’s implementation details/limitations on the involved machines come in place too. This typically limits the path length (includes files, folders and separator characters combined) to ~255 characters.
A clear indication that this is a OS limitation of some sorts as you cant move files from within Roon so Roon can’t complain about any file/path related limitations. I assume you saw this on a remote machine that you used to move around the files over the network.
there’s a windows limit of 260 characters. I think samba adheres to this as well. Pretty sure there is a switch to override that when compiling samba, but it might limit what devices can connect. So I suspect that the roon folks aren’t doing that.
Are you using Win or Mac to do file management chores?
If Win, i suggest you map your Rock machine to a drive letter, such a X:
If you map
\\“ROCK IP Adress”\Data\Storage\InternalStorage
to your drive letter the path will be severely shortened, compared to using UNC paths.
That said, it is a good custom to keep path and filenames as short as possible. (This is a good reason for metadata, embedded in the files)
Thanks for these replies. To be clear, the music itself is stored on an external USB3 drive connected to the ROCK/NUC. This NUC is in turn connected via Ethernet to an SOtM endpoint. I am doing the file management on a separate Windows PC which is connected to the same home network. So the error message comes up in Windows, but the files are connected to the NUC.
I do like to keep the paths as short as possible, but I have the folder structure library/genre/releasetype/artist/album that I like to use, so the music files are a few folders deep. I occasionally consider changing this to library/releasetype/alphabet letter/album, which would shorten things by one folder at least.
I have noticed that the external drive is given a very long name by ROCK:
Musicstore_WD_Elements_25A3_4A454753354E534D_5F1A-BFBC-p2
But within Roon it just shows as “Musicstore”. Can this drive name be changed safely? If I changed it to just “Musicstore” then that would cut back on a lot of the filename length.
My response is useful here. You just map the full path, including the very tedious ROCK name for your USB drive, to a suitable drive letter.
(I wouldnt change the drive name)
Net Use X: \\192.168.N.N\Data\Storage\Musicstore_WD_Elements_25A3_4A454753354E534D_5F1A-BFBC-p2
Thanks Mikael - that seems to do the trick!
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