ROCK on Intel NUC - Do I really need two hard disks if I want music on device?

I am thinking of buying Intel NUC for Roon Rock but one thing is what gets me confused: Do I need two disks if I want to run Roon Rock on NUC and store all the music on same machine?

This part at least sounds like that:
. **The SSD can not be used for music content.
If you want music content in this device, use another disk (see below about “internal storage”)."

So if I want to get Roon Rock on Intel NUC I need two disks in it? One for Roon Rock OS and another one for music? If so, how much space is needed on OS disk? Music of course depends about how big my library is (currently around 300 GB or 400 GB).

Yes you do need 2.
One for Rock, M2 as small as you can get.
Second for music storage.

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Thank you very much!

It doesn’t have to be internal disk though, a lot of people use USB Hard Drive’s with their NUCs for music storage as it allows you to buy the smaller unit’s (if you prefer that).

Personally as well as having the M.2 Roon I prefer having an internal SSD for music and having an external USB spinning drive for one of my Backups

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Some also use a thumb drive for storage so does not necessarily have to be an SSD or spinning disk.

External is much much easier to deal with than internal for the music files themselves. I have a tall case NUC and it no longer has an internal library drive in it, have moved to a cheap external usb enclosure (for the same Ssd that used to be inside the case). Pure convenience.

Well, for me it is more convenient to have all songs internally stored without any external USB-sticks, USB-hard disks etc. so better to buy big enough disk if I go to NUC route :slight_smile:

Now I have noticed tho that it could be even better for my usage to buy Mac Mini M1 and use it as a Roon server since it seems to be working as well and there is possibility to get 512 GB also on that. Or maybe to put that external USB stick even I don’t like that idea very much.

Don’t know yet, prices in both cases (NUC or headless Mac Mini M1) will be quite close to each others but Mac Mini is available immediately just by going to shop and get the Mini & resell value is quite high on Mac Mini in future as well. Hard decisions!

Both are quiet, small and both have very small power consumption unlike my NAS. Well, gotta think about this option as well!

When looking at NUC and if you are wanting an internal drive, make sure you get the “tall” version that has space for the second internal drive.

If you are not wanting an internal drive and will use external storage then you could get the “short” version that only has the M.2 slot inside.

Just went through this with another user that bought the wrong one and ended up needing a thumb drive to to put their music on.

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Thank you all for answers! In the end I just went to shop and got Mac Mini M1. Now is the first album playing (AC/DC - Ballbreaker in case somebody wants to know :smiley: )

I noticed that the price for NUC would be almost around the same than M1 Mac Mini, but I can instead start to use this M1 Mac Mini as my main desktop computer instead of my power hungry gaming PC so it will be better for electricity usage as well. Surely not the best option maybe for Roon as a server when I run some other apps here as well and might break something in future, but in my usage I think it will be more than enough if that works 99 % of time.

At this moment Roon is adding library items and music is playing on this same machine + Mp3 files are copying from external USB hard drive to internal disk and the processor usage is still 75 % idle on all processors, Roon is surely using one core more but it is stilll less than 60 % even when it is doing all the metadata grabbing etc. so all seems to be fine :crossed_fingers:

I also got only 256 GB model, thought that I will try to use mp3’s instead of FLAC’s and see if I will miss FLAC or not. My whole collection fits well on 256 GB Mac Mini as a Mp3 and I don’t hear the difference probably anyway. Gotta be realistic, only reason for FLAC in my usage would be FOMO if I lose something :smiley:

Surely I rip all my CD’s in FLAC and store those in my NAS (I just boot it only when needed) but then I will also convert those in Mp3. One benefit for Mp3 in my usage is also that I can just copy-paste those to my Sandisk Mp3 player without need for converting. Less hassle and it just works.

Time will show where this goes in future, but so far so good :slight_smile:

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