I plan to use my pi3B+ to run volumio with music stored on a usb attached HDD. I need to use a second separate partition on the same HDD as a backup repository for non-music data from a couple of laptops. This backup will entail loading some non-standard software into the volumio system. Is this workable or advisable? Would volumio’s auto-update tolerate other software install via apt-get?
Would appreciate any advice or experience.
Thanks.
Depends what additional software you are adding 
If it is something shared with Volumio and you change a version or something, then bad things are going to happen. I guess it’s one of those suck it and see scenarios. N.B. Don’t do a system wide upgrade with ‘apt-get upgrade’, or you are very likely to run into problems.
Most likely software is an rsync daemon. Is that included in volumio?
I would also need access to the server via ssh and/or vnc. Are they included in the volumio distro?
@ chsims1 Thanks for the reply.