RoonServer (Nucleus One) sharing SMB for general (non-Roon) use?

Roon Software Discussion Nucleus
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I noticed that my Nucleus One shares its external USB disk via SMB, as well as its internal storage.

I wondered: in general, if I were to add an external USB disk to my Nucleus One, is there any reason why I shouldn’t use it as a general-purposes SMB server, e.g. to host video files for my video clients?

The advantage here is that the Nucleus One is already on 24x7, and it would save me setting up a Samba server on my Linux server.

I’d probably use a USB hub on the Nucleus, as it already has an existing external Samsung SSD on it, used for backups (but which is a bit small for video).

I know that serving SMB might affect the Nucleus performance; but I wouldn’t normally watch video at the same time as listening to music.

Any thoughts pro, or against, this idea?

thanks very much indeed.

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If you want to do it, why ask – just do it. If you already have the hardware then trying it is for free.
The Device is not optimized or even designed for such a use case though. The drives are not shared separately, just as folders inside the share, this makes it even hard to track free space left. If you really do not have any other requirement than that it just works somehow and don’t expect any of the features a samba server may offer then go on. I don’t see the point though, as you already have a Linux server running, why to not use it for it instead and have access to the advanced sharing options (authentication, ACL, …).

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Thanks, yes, I wasn’t asking for permission :slight_smile: Just wondered if there were any known issues that might bite, and indeed you’ve raised a few.

Agreed my Linux server would be better; in fact, it’s an NFS server, which is equally fine for my media clients. One embarrassing problem is that its disks are full, and I can’t get within 10 feet of it, out in my cluttered study, so can’t plug in the new disk I’ve bought. I really need to do a massive clearout.

So I wondered whether I could just be lazy and plug the disk into my Nucleus, which is in the living-room.

Thanks for raising the points though. I don’t think any are a problem for me, so I might just try it.