My Salkstream and Roon are back up and running. Now that I can use Roon Backups to look for backups on my two USB external backup drives, I can see multiple backups on each drive, yay!
Mr. Salk recommended I not restore a backup because it might be corrupted. I’m finding this a hard pill to swallow as I would lose years worth of edits! However, I certainly don’t want to deal with a corrupt backup database either.
So I thought I would try these steps but would like feedback first (waiting to hear from Salk as well):
Do a backup now to save the current “fresh” settings in Roon.
Confirm Roon can see the new backup.
Restore a previous backup. Maybe the one (Oct 25th) instead of the last one (Nov 1) in case the most recent is corrupt? Which backup would you choose from the ones in the above screenshots?
If restoring from a previous backup doesn’t work, then restore today’s “fresh” backup and start over from scratch .
I’ll set up an automatic backup tonight. It should leave my older backups alone even though it’s a new Roon install, right?
Question, when setting up Auto Backup, what do I set Backup Period to so it will back up overnight (2am local time)?
I don’t think I’ve done alot of edits lately, so maybe I’ll go back a couple backups. The last backup was Nov 1 and my problems started Nov 2, so I think I’ll skip that backup.
Right now I’m not going to do any backup restorations until I get more feedback and hear from Mr. Salk.
This would be a question for Salk — They should be able to advise you on stopping RoonServer on their setup.
No, these will only be added when your watched folder has been set up in Roon.
Once you’re up and running you can log in to Qobuz at any time without issue.
You can do this at any point. If you have to re-add your music to the actual drive, it’s probably easiest to do the restore after the music has been added.
Yeah, this sounds like a good plan. It’s hard to say exactly when the failing drive started corrupting the database, so you can try older backups and see if that works. If you don’t have backups that predate the corruption, restoring the “fresh” backup will be the best bet.
At this point the Salkstream is up and running, music files have been transferred to the new internal HDD, and Roon is up and running.
Roon finished importing all the music files in the new watched folder yesterday. It’s slowly working it’s way through analyzing all the music tracks; it’s about half done now.
I haven’t tried restoring a Roon database backup yet. Should I wait until Roon finished analyzing all tracks?
Salk expressed concern that restoring from possibly corrupt Roon database could “break” something. Should I be really worried about this? Or is a restored corrupt database easy to recover from? I would greatly appreciate you input on when to backup the current “fresh” database and how risky it is to restore from a possibly corrupt backup.
Btw, how do I tell if a restored backup is corrupt. Is it obvious?
Restoring a Roon database won’t break anything in terms of hardware — You can always start fresh and recover the new backup that you created in the event that things don’t work out.
Corruption can be latent, meaning that it doesn’t show up in day-to-day use until something touches the corrupted data, but when you’re updating Roon or restoring a database, every part of the database is touched. Essentially what this means is you can try restoring a previous database and if the restoration works, and you don’t see any issues when using Roon, great! You’re good to go with that restored DB. If the restore fails, or you’re seeing issues like missing media or audio devices, you know that the corruption exists in that backup and you can return to the “new” database.
Ultimately I don’t think there is any risk in at least trying the backup. If it works, great! If not, you can return to the new DB without any issues.
Should I wait for Roon to finish analyzing the music tracks (at the current rate probably another day or two before it finishes) before saving a new backup then restoring an older backup?
I went ahead and waited for Roon to finish analyzing all the tracks (didn’t take as long as I thought).
I did a fresh Roon database backup first and confirmed it showed up in the Backup Manager. I then restored an older backup dated Oct 4th thinking it might be safer than a more recent backup since we don’t know exactly when the internal HDD started to fail. It seemed to go without a hitch and as far as I can tell it’s fine (yay!). I was so happy to not lose years worth of edits! I did have to redo about a month’s worth of edits, but it wasn’t too much.
So my Salkstream III/Roon is back up and running. I did a Roon database and music file backup to two USB drives to make sure all current database and music file information are current everywhere.
A big thank you to everyone here and to Mr. Salk for all the help and advice!
For anyone following this thread, this is an overview of the order in which things were done (essentially answering my question in the first post):
Install new internal HDD
Salk logged into Salkstream remotely to set up the new drive and installed Roonserver
Before logging into Roon, all music files were transferred to the new internal drive
Log into Roon, set up the Watched Folder location, then wait for Roon to finish importing all the music files
Log into Qobuz; Roon imported all my favorites from Qobuz
Wait until Roon finished analyzing all the local music files
Did a “fresh” Roon database backup (just in case previous backups were corrupt)
Restored all my settings and edits from an earlier Roon database backup
Did another Roon database backup and local music file backup to my two external USB drives
Spinning hard disk drives, in my experience, seem to be sensitive to power fluctuations. A good UPS that provides some power regulation and protection from brown-outs can extend the life of an HDD significantly.
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