Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Streaming Sooloos to NAS Backup

Hello. I'm new here and have little technical knowledge, so I'm hoping you may be able to help me with a couple of questions. I own a Meridian MD600 and a MS600.

I am wanting to backup to a Buffalo NAS with two x 2TB SATA drives configured to RAID 1. When I am backing up through Control:PC should I use the 'Backup' option or the 'Export' option, or does it not make any difference which I use?

Once I have backed up, and have subsequently added further albums to the system, will another full backup create duplicate albums, or will duplicates be skipped?

I have only recently seen information on Roon. I'm not really interested in - to quote Roon - "finding photos, bios, reviews, lyrics, and concert dates, and making connections between artists, composers, performers, conductors, and producers." Are there any other reasons why I should possibly consider Roon?

Generally, I am very happy with my Sooloos system, but if I have one criticism it is that the filing system is a bit clunky. I would really like to be able to create separate 'Folders' containing files for different groupings of music. Might this be possible with Roon? And, finally, would it be much of a job to transfer from using Sooloos to Roon?

Many thanks for your assistance.
Jeremy

Backup/restore is for use with Sooloos. Export is for use with other music players.

Surely this already exists in Sooloos, It is called "Focus". However the clunky bit you mention depends on the metadata.

It depends on the size of your library and available time if you wish to optimise this function to your specific needs.

Hector

Hi Jeremy

A backup from Sooloos will store your files in Sooloos encrypted format that can only be read back by Sooloos, after you have done your initial backup all subsequent backups will only be of files you have added so what is called an incremental backup, people have found the Sooloos backup to be a little unreliable and had to have several goes to get it to complete but you may not have any issues. Also note that if you delete albums from your library they will still exist on your backup and will be restored in the event you need to recover, the only way to avoid this is to do a new full backup.

An export will export the library or part thereof to a format you choose, MP3 or native which is the format it was stored in originally, usually FLAC, you would use this if you were moving to Roon for example.

Another possibility is to clone the disks in your MD600 using an Icybox, this would give you an exact copy of the disk in the event of failure, this is permissible as there is no Meridian IP stored on the disks.

As far as Roon and storing files in separate folders you can achieve much the same in Sooloos by using tags, if you tag all your classical files with 'classsic' blues with 'blues' and so on then you can use focus to look at just one tag or any combination of tags.

Reasons you may want to consider Roon are ongoing development and choice but if you are happy with Sooloos then why change, try a Roon trial and see what you think, plan it for example Server, music, storage before you start the trial.

Russ

Thanks to everyone for your comments, and particularly Russ. A great forum with helpful people!

Russ, I've asked a couple of questions below and will much appreciate further comment. Thank you. Jeremy
Never having heard of an Icybox I have googled it and note that it seems to be essentially an external hard drive with two or more interchangeable drive units. Is there any particular reason to use something like this rather than a standard external hard drive?
You talk about "cloning the discs in my MD600" but I'm not sure about the use of the word 'cloning' in this context. Does it mean that I would remove a HD from my MD600 and put it in a Icybox to copy to another drive, or does it mean using the export facility rather than the backup facility to copy FLAC files to an Icybox/external hard drive, thus avoiding the Meridian IP? I suspect I'm a bit confused here!

Sooloos tags and focus are useful, but ideally I would prefer to be able to locate albums of different genres within discrete folders in the main menu rather than searching for them subsequently. I guess I'm being a bit pedantic!

I assume from your comment that Meridian are not likely to be spending much time on ongoing development?

Hi Jeremy

I will try to answer your questions:

Icybox make a cloning box, with this you would remove one of your MD600 disks and put it and a backup disk of identical size into the cloning box and without connecting to a pc you simply press the clone button on the front, it will then make an exact copy of your MD600 disk, some Sooloos users prefer this method of backup to running Sooloos backups as it copies your library as it is at that time so gets around the deleted albums still being in your backup issue I discussed before. IP is Intellectual Property namely Sooloos software which resides on the disk as is the case with am MC200 this is not the case with an MD600.

Selecting files via folders is not an option available in Sooloos or indeed Roon, you can store files in separate folders in Roon as I indeed do but Roon does not allow browsing by folders, I think if you embrace the Sooloos and Roon way of using tags and focus you will not miss being able to browse by folders.

Sooloos development: Meridian promised exciting times ahead for Sooloos when the Roon team split from Meridian, I am not sure if you are aware of the circumstances but essentially the original Sooloos team split from Meridian and formed Roon, Sooloos developments and communication from Meridian since the split have been thin on the ground compared to the rapid development and detailed communication from the Roon team via their forum, but as I said earlier if Sooloos does what you want then why change?

Russ

Great! All is clear. Thanks so much Russ. Jeremy

Jeremy

You are welcome.

Russ

Russ - thanks very much for the link to the Icybox. After cloning one of the HDDs from my MD600 to an empty HDD on the Icybox what is the situation when I next want to do a clone (backup) having added more albums to my Sooloos system? I guess it wouldn't do an incremental backup, so I assume I would need to wipe (format) the target HDD before cloning again. What would be the best way to do that format? Jeremy

Jeremy

If I was doing this I would proceed as follows:

Let's assume we call the MD600 disks 'a' (left bay) and 'b' ( right bay) and the backup disks 'a1' and 'b1'.

I would remove disk a from the MD600 and place it in the Icybox along with disk a1 and clone it, I would then repeat the process with b and b1 so both the MD600 disks have been cloned I would then boot the MD600 with disks a1 and b1 to confirm the process was successful, any future clone would be done using either a or b disk in alternate order, this would mean even in the event of an unforeseen disaster let's say the Icybox blows up both your disks!! You would still have the MD600 disk and the backup clone copy so your data would be safe.
Please note the following.
This is just one option for a backup.
The MD600 must be powered down fully to remove and reinstall disks.
The MD600 will operate with only one disk.
The clone option takes approximately 6 hours so best done overnight.
It is important to be sure that the clones are good so I would always suggest verifying as described above.
The cloning operation wipes the disk as it does a bit for bit copy so no need to format a disk before using it irrespective of if its new or used.

As the MD600 can recover from having just one good disk this method gives you 4 disks you could potentially use to recover from.

Russ

Thanks yet again Russ. Looks like my shopping list will now include an Icybox and a couple of Seagate 3.5 inch 2TB 7200 RPM 64MB 6GB/S Internal SATA Drives, as these are what I have in the MD600 at the moment. As the Sooloos software will not be on the cloned HDDs I guess my albums could be transferred / used through other systems than the MS600 / MD600 if I wished to do so. Jeremy

If you are thinking of using other systems to Sooloos I would strongly advise exporting the albums in native format and not cloning a Sooloos drive.

Sooloos backs up with the metadata housed in a sidecar file, tracks are called "track01.FLAC" "track02.FLAC" etc. and the folders names are based upon the Sooloos file architecture rather than an easy to follow hierarchical structure that an export will give you.

I would run the Sooloos Interrogator on your Sooloos store prior to export and save the result so you have a record of what's on your Sooloos system to compare against the exported files. This will ensure that you don't end up with missing albums that you can't track down due to lack of data.