Will Roon software enable me to play music from an external hard drive

You can also find a good start via this forum.

Roon plays in all worlds. Has own servers (Nucleus), tinkering projects and software to play music without or with other devices. I started only with this investment of 30 €. As the matching post shows, the sky is the limit.

Roon runs on Windows, Linux and on Apple products. It can also connect to Android…

You can always accommodate a BlueRay player, but Roon likes to certify devices, as Roon Ready or Roon Testet, to avoid any problems.

There is a recommendation to separate the system hard drive from the music (external USB solution or second internal).

Here is the entry:

https://help.roonlabs.com/portal/en/kb/roon-labs-llc