Roon Linux install vs ROCK

Interesting, Sergei…

Does switching out the system disk make a difference in search speed?

I used to run Vortexbox when I wanted to tweak stuff but got tied of having to maintain updates and workarounds to get something’s to work. I decided for music I don’t want to meddle with the backend any more and want something that’s made to do one thing run Roon and nothing else, ROCK is that, if you want to tinker use something else you have a choice, there is no need to slag ROCK off because it’s something it’s not. It was never conceived as anything other than it is so it amazes people expect it do more. Do you buy an iPhone and expect to get under the hood no you buy android.

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That’s probably a terrible idea. Instead, connect the drives to your Windows PC and have ROCK access them over the network. I realize that this means you can’t use ROCK without both computers switched on, but from what I understand, ROCK was never intended to function as a NAS. SMB support exists only for simple maintenance use cases, like updating codecs.

Been using it as I suggested since getting the NUC and I’ve had no problems. Needing to have the PC on defeats the entire purpose and expense of having a NUC/Rock. In that case I may as well have just run the Roon core on the Win PC.

Why do you need to have the files accessible from your Windows PC at all?

I rip CDs using the PC and copy them across to the ROCK’s attached drive.

Ah. I’ve not tried it yet, but, apparently, with build 175, you can attach a USB optical drive to ROCK and have it rip CDs automatically. I get what you’re saying though. I prefer to use dBpoweramp for ripping and organizing files as well. The ROCK solution for this is very new and has room for improvement.

Yeah, I’m a long-time user of dBpoweramp (and before that EAC) and do my ripping/tagging on the PC which also hosts one of a number of mirrors of the music collection. It’s a workflow I’ve had for a long time and seems to work well.

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You can see the storage on the NuC via SMB on the network so you can copy files across no problem. You can mount it as a network drive in windows if you wan to, but I just type in \\rock and then navigate through the folders to the music.

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Perhaps. Moreover, the tendency to add new non-disconnected features to ROCK does not suit me at all because I chose ROCK as an absolutely minimalist system designed for only one thing - audio playback.
There is one difference in my ROCK setup — the use of two ethernet controllers, one built-in to connect to the Internet and a second external usb to directly connect to my ethernet DAC. However, a year ago there were no delays when working with Tidal. So I think the case is exclusively in ROCK. Perhaps the latest versions of ROCK don’t match my setup well.

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Changing the system disk, I change the OS. And the OS affects the search speed in my setup as it turned out.

Although my iPhone SE is already three years old, but it still works fast enough even though I constantly update the OS. Therefore, I have no reason to climb under his hood and change something :wink: .

26 posts were split to a new topic: I would like to install ROCK on the Linux Ubuntu

FWIW I am running Roon Server on a linux server without GUI. This is purely because for some reason I cannot get the latest ROCK installer to work, it’s not installing grub.

With ROCK probably nothing. But maybe with some drives installed? I mean, HDD tend to fail after some time, and SSD would not last forever either. Was wondering if it is possible to implement a reliable redundancy and backup routine when running ROCK. How do you ROCK guys take care of your precious music files?

I have some 15+ TB of music files which are irreplaceable. Over the years I experienced several incidents of data loss and drive failures. My sleep is much better since everything is running on RAID1 volumes plus additional one-click backups stored outside the house. These are no.1 and no.2 reasons I stick to a dedicated NAS running roon.

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I back them up to two locations - one of them being HDDs held offsite in case the house burns down.

You have to back up the database and music files separately. The database should be backed up by the Roon feature,

and the resulting backup files can be further backed up by any regular backup system like on a NAS.

For the music files, any regular backup system works as well, but details depend on where you store your files. I treat my ROCK’s internal storage as the primary and this is where I copy new stuff. Then the Qnap’s Hybrid Backup System makes a daily sync of the ROCK’s storage to the NAS, and after this an additional HBS tasks copies this mirror to properly versioned backups.

Of course, you could also have the music files on the NAS in the first place and make ROCK access it there, then you can run the backup just on the NAS.

An additional occasional backup to a cloud service such as Backblaze is advisable for both database and music file backups

Absolutely makes sense but means an additional external system like a NAS in your network. I see you opted for Qnap which was also my choice especially because of the in my understanding ideal and convenient backup, RAID restore and snapshot routines.

The question is why do I need a separated Roon Server running on ROCK in this case? Can simply install Roon Server via app center on the QNAP and I am done.

Backups should always be on separate devices anyway. You can also do the same thing by running a backup software on your main PC and syncing / backing up to this one.

Well, first of all not on my QNAP from 15 years ago with an Intel Atom, which however still satisfies all my other needs.

Plus I like the appliance nature and separation of tasks. The ROCK just works and I can spend my time on other people’s problems.

Good point. That’s why I like the one-click-backup option with a chunky 3.5" USB drive for daily or weekly backups. Would love to see such option on a ROCK-based solution.

That’s certainly true as only in recent years really powerful CPUs have appeared in affordable NAS. And I personally like having everything in one place.