Since my Rossini is away being Apex’d and I can’t listen to music, I am logically doing the only sensible thing to occupy my time which is to buy/download/rip music (!)
As a result, I recently noticed that the 4TB internal SSD inside of my Nucleus is at about 82% capacity. (Some of those DSD128 downloads are 1GB per song / 6GB per album–Yowzer!).
Has anyone else faced this problem and how did you handle? E.g., run a full back-up to the cloud, pop the drive, install a 8TB SSD, reformat, then restore to disk?
I’d highly recommend moving your music files to a separate NAS platform, with RAID (or ZFS) based storage protection instead of attaching more direct storage on the Roon Nucleus.
It’s trivial to configure Roon to continuously monitoring and catalog music files off a NAS on the network, and stream performance will not be an issue as long as the NAS is wired directly to the same Ethernet Switch that your Roon Nucleus is on.
Perhaps better in a separate thread, but I was wondering what the forums recommendation is for ‘cold storage’. I expect many of us now have large digital libraries and no matter how good a raid or NAS solution is - neither are 100% infallible as a backup solution. Right now I have a series of 2 1/2 and a 3 1/2 drives I overwrite a couple of times a year.
NAS to NAS backup (1 NAS at Home, the Backup one at my Office). I use QNAP but Synology are just as good. There is a built in backup App that will link 2 NAS boxes together either on the same network or over the Internet. I have clients setup similarly either Office to Office or to the Boss’s House - very useful when Cloud isn’t an option for Business Backup.
I also use Cloud as a backup target but selectively due to having TBs of AV data which isn’t practical to backup to Cloud, smaller libraries could be backed up to Cloud over reasonably fast Internet.
I also have USB Hard Disks attached for an extra local backup target. Typically very large WD Desktop or Seagate ones from the likes of Amazon.
I run an IT company so work with a lot of this kind of thing for business clients but there’s a total overlap for audio these days with us having huge libraries of rips/downloads.
Thanks @Anupc
My one concern is that separate RAID platforms usually have a fan, and right now everything is dead quiet with the Samsung SSD. Your (and others’) thoughts are very welcome!
People should not mistake a RAID configuration as being a substitute for a proper backup. RAID can be achieved in various configurations ( you can look this up). It purpose is to provide a continuity of service in a multi drive configuration should a drive fail. This is important if you are an online bank or service but not so essential for home audio where interruption of playing may be annoying but not much more.
What RAID cannot provide is protection from theft, fire, flood or lightning strikes. If you only have RAID and one of these occurs your RAID will be toast ( if flood, damp toast). You need a proper backup which is stored away from your audio system with preferably one copy off site. Incidentally I have found that the easiest way of creating backups is simply copy and paste to a USB HDD. Then just copy and paste any new additions and rescan the UPnP software.
The other issue is that a RAID configuration other than RAID 0 may involve a sonic penalty. (obviously I can’t speak universally). Something I have experienced personally and have had confirmed by my NAS manufacturer.
Yes indeed. My point exactly. First rule of storage is that RAID is not a backup. I’m interested in a reliable enterprise grade 3.5in HDD suitable for cold storage. This is one I’m considering. Probably best to start a separate thread. not fair to derail @keiserrg original request.
Angus is spot on, storage is so cheap and reliable these days that it’s rather cost-effective to backup a NAS with another NAS. Depending on the RAID level you adopt, it could work out to be as much as 200% protection with RAID1/mirrored VDevs on ZFS.
Coupled with Cloud based backup, like Backblaze B2 Storage, which is somewhat cost-effective at $6 per TB/Month, $0 cost for retrieval, with 11-nines of durability, and 3-nines of availability. All of the NAS Vendors have apps that make backing-up to Backblaze a breeze
Ethernet networking makes it easy to locate your NAS somewhere other than your audio room. However, if thats not really an option, then there are quite a few fan-less SSD-based NASes that offer completely silent operations. Like QNAP’s TS-410E which supports up-to 4 SSD bays. These days 8TB SSDs are rather affordable, even a RAID1 configuration will get you 16TB of totally silent storage capacity.
Sorry Pete, RAID-level affecting sound quality is another one of those bogus audiophile myths. Even the lowest-end NAS can easily supply read-throughput with high RAID levels far in excess of any streaming DAC/Roon consumption capability. There’s absolutely no way your DAC can know the difference between RAID levels when it consumes a stream via UPnP or Roon/RAAT.
I read about the possibility in the trade orientated magazine HiFi Pig when they reviewed the Melco N1. Having the more or less same and as it offers a couple of RAID modes I thought that I would try. The result was a notable change and one I would count as beneficial. No golden ears required. Later I was talking with Melco Europe and they were also of the opinion that RAID 0 sounds preferable to the other options.
So you may not know why or how but I can assure you that the above is not imaginary .Admittedly this may only apply to Melco.
Well, I can’t speak to what you personally experienced, and this is a narrative from the Melco folks to try and differentiate themselves from other consumer NASes.
But it’s very easy to show objectively that there’s absolutely no difference, from a streaming DAC/Roon perspective, with the various RAID levels.
After a catastrophic failure of one of my newly purchased 4TB HDD’s I was so so glad I did not know anything about sonic advatages of RAID 0. My RAID 1 configuration saved the day. Seagate (bless them) gave me a new drive after receipt of the faulty one. In it went, drives automatically rebuilt - still working four years later.
Note:
Of course, additionally, I do weekly backups to remotely sited online storage.
I’m so glad that you said that as otherwise I would have had to…
Your NAS manufacturer has said that using other than RAID0 incurs a hit to sound quality?
/me raises a quizzical eyebrow as that would suggest that your NAS manufacturer is suggesting that different levels of RAID affect the data that is being pulled from the drives and is being sent out across the network and this would be a very interesting state of affairs…
They are aren’t they? I bought two of the 2.5" Samsung 8TB QVO drives a couple of years ago and they were almost £700 each (and that was on an Amazon deal) and now they’re less than half that cost …
Although I do get what you’re saying here it’s also really good from my perspective that you did because I find it interesting what sort of claims get made…
There’s been some other curious ones that I’ve come across in my time such as “You should copy audio files using USB sticks not Ethernet as Ethernet copies degrade the audio quality” then when I countered that WinDiff shows that the source and destination files are exactly the same it was countered with “The data might be the same on a compare but they still sound worse than the original…”
I don’t doubt it! and good advice from you and @GusGus - but many may, neither have the space nor the budget to do NAS to NAS backup. Even with the nice space saving QNAP you mentioned – two of them with multi drives could creep into the thousands $$.
Personally I run a 4gb M.2 drive off a Mac Mini for playback and back up to a 2.5 in HDD and a 3.5 in HDD (hitachi I think). I guess easy enough to replace every couple of years for next to nothing!
The Samsung QVO 8 TB SSD is less and less expensive (about 540 € in France currently) and reliable. Apparently you reach almost 4 TB on your ROON NUCLEUS and you want to upgrade it to 8 TB. In this case and beyond 4 TB it will be necessary to increase the memory of the Nucleus from 8 to 16 GB for example. You have to go to the ROON community website, the question is discussed in broad and cross.
For backup and as far as I’m concerned, I’m far from 4 TB, Western Digital hard drives (my Cloud Home, … or equivalent) will do just fine once time in a week.
All this is certainly less “elegant” than a solution with NAS and NAS backup but it is less expensive, less hassle and IMO at least as good in terms of sound quality.
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