Thinking of adding music storage to my Nucleus

My Roon Nucleus has just the 256g ssd, as when I bought it my 2tb of music was already on a QNAP nas. Now one of the WD Red hdd’s in the nas is starting to generate error messages, and so I’m thinking of putting a 2tb SSD into the Nucleus.

Question - if I do, what are good ways to back up that drive? I currently have the Nucleus backup to Dropbox, but it’s just the index that it backs up. Can Roon back up the entire music library to Dropbox if the library is on a drive inside the Nucleus? If not, what are the preferred options?

Any pro’s or con’s to ditching the nas and putting a drive into the Nucleus?

No. I do it this way:

I have software on a PC (you can use anything else… a NAS, a Mac, etc…) to sync from \\Nucleus\Data\Storage to a local drive attached to that computer. That’s you first backup of the content. Then I have Backblaze on that computer that backs up that PC, including the backup of the music, to the cloud.

The goal is to have 2 copies: 1 local (in case a drive fails) and 1 remote (in case my house burns down).

What software will backup \Nucleus\Data\Storage to a local drive attached to computer?

I use Acronis True Image. You have to pay for it, but I can vouch for how well it works.

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i use rsync, but it’s not a very friendly solution

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There’s a number of threads on the forum listing options; e.g.

I’m still using Allway Sync.

Thanks I use OS X.

Right now, my Nas backs itself up to Dropbox (there is a Dropbox app for Synology) and to a local usb drive.

I wont move the library to the Nucleus until I figure out how to back it up automatically and periodically (which for me precludes the use of a laptop etc.)

Can’t you backup to an attached USB drive?

I can probably figure out how to do that (does the Nucleus have that function?), and then I’d have to also get it up to Dropbox.

It’s just so easy now – my nas has a Dropbox app and as soon as I put a new album on it, it sends it up to the cloud.

Probably not automatically.

I just plugged in a USB drive to my laptop and made a RoonMusicBackup folder. Then I opened another instance of Microsoft File Explorer and went to \\Nucleus\Data\Storage\InternalStorage and did a drag and drop of my music to the Backup folder. While it’s not automatic, it couldn’t be much easier.

What NAS do you use? My Synology has Active Backup for Business and I use that to backup the Internal Storage on my NUC to the NAS.
I found this video by @guerph essential to get Active Backup working

I have both a QNAP and a Synology, but right now the Synology is just a backup and what I use to feed Dropbox. I’ll check out that video thanks!

It’s also not incremental. It does work . . . but something automatic and incremental is what I’m looking for thanks!

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FWIW… I’ve been at this for quite a while and I’m picky about the metadata, paranoid about losing work and I hate manual file copying. I also never want to be without music in my house. This is my setup and process…

I have the master copy of all my music on local storage attached to a MacPro. Any metadata editing is done on the MacPro using Yate. With Yate, I make sure there is album art, an artist photo, lyrics, the metadata is complete, and for classical I make sure it’s organized properly in work, section, part (and I have Yate setup to write the correct roon tags).

I use ChronoSync on the MacPro to do a daily music sync of the master copy of my Music on the MacPro to my Nucleus+'s SSD and to my Synology NAS (actually, I sync all my media files – music, video, photos to the Synology).

I have the Nucleus+ setup to do daily backups to the Synology NAS.

I use CloudSync on my Synology to sync a complete copy of my music files (again, actually all my media files) and my roon backups to Backblaze so I have an off site copy of both.

In order to have immediate access to newly purchased music on my Nucleus+ (so I don’t have to wait for the daily sync), I have my Nucleus+ setup to watch a purchased music folder on my MacPro where all newly purchased music (whether from Apple, HDTracks, Qobuz, etc) is initially loaded so I get near instant access to it when purchased.

Then, when I fully integrate the new music into my local master collection on the MacPro (after any necessary metadata editing), I remove the files from the purchased music folder and Chronosync then syncs the final new music to the Nucleus+ SSD and to Synology.

Finally, I have a 2nd Roon license with a Roon core running on my MacPro working off the local master copy of my music files so if my Nucleus+ has problem or dies I can switch over seamlessly to it from the Nucleus+ (and this did happen once).

So with this setup process, I get nicely edited metadata for new music. I have redundant local copies of my music. I have the music on my Nucleus+'s SSD for optimal access. I have off site backups. And it’s all automated except for any manual metadata editing. And I’m never without music…

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Hi Craig – I’ve taken a similar but slightly more laissez faire approach :slight_smile:

I use MetaDatics for OSX to edit all metadata and album art to my liking before storing it; I’ve not done lyrics yet but that might be interesting.

My Synology nas does backup instantly to Dropbox, so I always have a ‘last resort’ full backup in the cloud. Of course it would probably take me 3 days to download it all again . . . but at least it’s still there! I also backup automatically and incrementally to an attached usb drive.

I used to use dropbox for backups (i still do use it for files other than media and roon backups), but I actually back up all my photos, movies and music to backblaze and have about 9tb in total. For lots of data solely for use in a backup scenario (not daily kinds of access), backblaze is much faster, and much more cost effective than dropbox.

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Do you use Backblaze “business” option, or the B2? Obviously need apps for the nas’s. Looks like that’s only B2?

@Bart001 - I use B2.