I have and existing ROCK installation that the motherboard has failed on during recent heat. I have purchased a new NUC and have a new instance of ROCK running, but when I try to restore a backup it only lists one from 2018 and not the recent one from June 2025. Both drives from the original ROCK appear fine, but I can only mount the music storage drive from Windows. I cannot put the old Core OS drive in the new NUC and boot from that as it only has NVME. I have all my music, so all I am really trying to recover is my playlists built up over the last 7 years! Is there anyway I can access the database folder from the original ROCK OS drive from a Windows PC so I can try copying it, or are there any other options? Really frustrating as I have a backup and can see the 2025 timestamp on the _roon_backup_root file, but all attempts have failed - please help!!
Are you able to copy the Roon backup folder from your NUC to another device (e.g., a USB drive, Windows file system, NAS, or network share) and then point your new ROCK installation to that folder by navigating to Roon → Settings → Backups → Find Backups and entering the appropriate network path?
Let us know if you run into any trouble locating or restoring from the backup — we’re happy to assist
Hi, thank you for replying. Yes, already tried that. Same outcome, it only shows a backup from 2018. If I cannot get the backup to show then the only way I can think to get my playlists back would be to access the database on the original ROCK OS drive, but not sure how I mount this from a Windows machine? I have also tried to get a new motherboard for the original ROCK device, but sadly it’s too old and I cannot find one.
Are you able to select one of the Roon backup subfolders? Perhaps you created a nested folder and you’ll need to point Roon to the subfolder to get the backups to show. If not, you can copy the entire RoonServer folder over from the old ROCK to the new one and that should work, just ensure that RoonServer is stopped from the Web UI before the copy started and restart it after the copy started. Please also create a new backup after doing this to ensure stability.
So a lot of head banging on walls, but I found my own solution. For anyone else with the same question in the future, here’s what I did;
download Linux File System for Windows from Paragon Software (or use windows WSL).
attach the original Roon OS boot drive to your PC (in my case using an external SATA to USB adapter).
Install and run the LFS software from Paragon.
Mount the original Roon OS boot drive (main partition).
Access the file system and make a copy of the “RoonServer/Database” folder.
Access the Roon Web GUI and stop the “Roon Server Software” (important).
Browse to the new ROCK server using Windows file explorer (//IP Address/Data).
Open the RoonServer folder on the new ROCK server, and rename the Database folder (just append with .Old or similar, this just gives you a backout option to copy it back if issues are encountered).
Copy the Database folder and its entire contents from the original ROCK server the the new one (overwriting as prompted).
Return to the ROCK web GUI of the new ROCK server and start the “Roon Server Software”.
Open the Roon App on whatever device you normally use (you may need to choose “select another Core” and reselect the new ROCK server).
Wait (took about 3 minutes on my hardware) whilst the Roon logo animation whirs.
Eventually the App finished connecting / loading, and there in front of me were all my playlists, info, and evet the settings for my end-point devices. It’s playing as I type, so fingers crossed that is it - new Roon ROCK installed and recovered without the backup / restore process…
That’s great news! Sorry it took so much effort to solve this issue. We’ll leave this thread open for a few more days in case any problems crop up. If everything continues running smoothly, feel free to mark this thread as solved.