Music Library Back-Up

[tim_j_thomas]

What do you use and why? (I'm specifically interested in off-site / cloud back-up solutions.)

 

[DonH56]

NAS RAID in my office plus a networked (Ethernet) external HDD in a fire safe. Have not moved to off-site, waiting for a friend who is researching the cloud-based services for one that is more secure than the usual suspects.

 

[Kal Rubinson]

I keep two back-ups at the moment but, in the near future, I will be adding a cloud b/u in case of a disaster. Main operational library is on a NAS in my home office. First b/u is another NAS in my other home (which doubles as the operational library there). Second b/u is a HD array (basically, a couple of NAS boxes without RAID) that is normally off-line and unpowered and is kept in a closet most of the time.

 

[Soniclife]

I have the CDs.
The rips on my main PC for playback.
A daily backup from main PC to a NAS.
An occasional backup from my PC to two USB drives that are only connected and powered up to back things up. I don't buy CDs very often these days, so even if these are 6 months out of date there would only be a handful of CDs to re-rip if I had to use them, nothing that makes you think oh crap, I don't want to do that. I should think about some fire proof storage for these.
If the house burns down I'll use tidal.

 

[Fitzcaraldo215]

I keep two back-ups at the moment but, in the near future, I will be adding a cloud b/u in case of a disaster. Main operational library is on a NAS in my home office. First b/u is another NAS in my other home (which doubles as the operational library there). Second b/u is a HD array (basically, a couple of NAS boxes without RAID) that is normally off-line and unpowered and is kept in a closet most of the time.

Kal - an excellent backup system, given the problem of your undoubtedly huge library which includes many hirez Mch releases.

I have a similar size problem, with many 10's of TBs of hirez Mch on my 54TB NAS. It dwarfs storage requirements for ripped stereo CDs as FLAC or FLAC downloads, since my files are mostly uncompressable DSF from SACD rips, typically requiring about 4-6GBs each for Mch. That adds up quickly when you have thousands, including also their compressed and somewhat smaller ISO files, generated in the two-step SACD rip and extract process, which I try to also retain.

I would be most interested in any feasible cloud backup solutions you might come up with. I have looked at some of those and been dissuaded so far by high cost, price increases and storage maximums and the question of network throughput for backup of such a large library via the Internet. Recovery time is, hopefully, not going to be an issue. But, backup time definitely is until the full library is uploaded to the cloud.

 

[Ron Party]

I have my entire library of 15K+ albums on a NAS at home. I have my entire library on a collection of 4GB and 5GB hard drives in my office. I have a third copy of my entire library on another set of 4GB hard drives; this set I take with me when I go visit someone or when I go on a road trip/vacation. It's great having access to my entire collection when I'm sitting in an ocean front condo in Kahana although more often then not the sound of the waves crashing into the shore is the preferred music to my ears.

Kal, how do you transfer music from one location to another? I use a portable 256 SSD to transfer new music from home to the office or vice versa.

 

[Sal1950]

I have a external backup drive on site, only connected and powered up to sync, and another kept stashed off site in my storage unit.
I keep procrastinating a cloud backup but been too lazy/cheap to pull the trigger on it.

 

[tim_j_thomas]

One option I'm thinking of is picking up an inexpensive m-disc burner (e.g., https://www.bestbuy.com/site/lg-8x-...ffcode=pg201024&ksdevice=c&lsft=ref:212,loc:2).

Back up the music every couple of years and store it offsite.

 

[stunta]

I use CrashPlan which is shutting down its consumer business and my data will get automatically migrated to Carbonite sometime this year. I prefer cloud backup as it frees me up from -

• Buying a bunch of hard drives that will eventually fail
• Keeping a NAS (or more of them) running, updating its OS/firmware etc.
• Syncing across backups
• Setting up remote access
• Disaster revcovery

I have one external HDD that holds all my music and photos. I have another external HDD that is a copy of the primary and I manually keep them in sync (easy to do since new music and photos are incremental). Crashplan is setup to upload from the primary external HDD. This keeps things simple, less error-prone and gives me peace of mind.

All other important documents I have are on OneDrive.

 

[Kal Rubinson]

Kal, how do you transfer music from one location to another? I use a portable 256 SSD to transfer new music from home to the office or vice versa.

I can and, ocassionally, do transfer between the NAS drives via Internet but it takes too long for me to monitor actively. Most of the time, I use a handful of 1-2Tb portable drives which I carry between the houses. (Radial-tire.net) For the local back up, I just pull one out of the closet and transfer the new stuff as my NAS directories are organized by date.

The planned cloud b/u will be via a private server.

 

[March Audio]

Nas which auto backs up to onedrive cloud. Cloud has only really become viable to me since we had fibre and a fast 100/40 internet connection installed.

 

[Ron Party]

Yeah, the concept of backing up 15K+ albums to the cloud sounds a bit daunting, even with a fast internet connection.

 

[Dialectic]

My internet connection isn't fast enough, so I sent a 6TB drive to a relative 600 miles away. Fortunately, he's a tech-savvy music lover, so I keep new music acquisitions on a dedicated partition and upload them to him via his FTP server periodically.

I keep a local backup to protect against more mundane occurrences.

 

[Sal1950]

Yeah, the concept of backing up 15K+ albums to the cloud sounds a bit daunting, even with a fast internet connection.

+3, That's the other big reason I keep procrastinating the cloud backup. Each time I looked into it the time/work realities backed me off.

 

[stunta]

Yeah, the concept of backing up 15K+ albums to the cloud sounds a bit daunting, even with a fast internet connection.

Why? Its not like you are doing anything manual. Good cloud backup systems typically have smart uploaders that can be configured to run only when the computer is idle. Best time to set it up is when you are out for a week or more on vacation (turn off auto-sleep on your PC though). You could also stagger it yourself by moving files to the upload folder in smaller chunks (point your library to this folder as well).

The first backup is always going to take a long time even if you are backing up to another drive, but then its incremental and you won't even notice it.

 

[Fitzcaraldo215]

Why? Its not like you are doing anything manual. Good cloud backup systems typically have smart uploaders that can be configured to run only when the computer is idle. Best time to set it up is when you are out for a week or more on vacation (turn off auto-sleep on your PC though). You could also stagger it yourself by moving files to the upload folder in smaller chunks (point your library to this folder as well).

The first backup is always going to take a long time even if you are backing up to another drive, but then its incremental and you won't even notice it.

Agreed, incremental backups of new library additions are not a problem. It is just getting the damned initial load up to the cloud.

 

[Sal1950]

Recommended cloud storage that doesn't cost a fortune?

 

[sergeauckland]

My laptop holds the working Music Library. That's copied to an external hard drive, and every time I rip a new CD, that rip, with all its tagging gets copied to an external HD. Copying is done manually, and as I rip something like 5-10 CDs a month, isn't a lot of work. I check that the working library and copy are kept identical, so if the main HD should every fail, I have an identical copy locally.
Then, once a month, in the first couple of days of each new month, (The February one's actually running right now) I take a second copy which I keep off-site, so if the case of a disaster/fire/flood at home, I might lose everything I own, but I won't have to rip my whole music library again. Worst case, I lose one month's rips.

I don't copy to the Cloud, as I don't trust it, not do I do automated copying, as again I've never found one yet that was completely reliable. None that I've found will keep track of changes, and considering their purpose, they musn't delete anything automatically, as the Computer can't know what's been deleted or changed deliberately or by accident. As I would have to delete stuff manually on the automated backup, I might as well do all the backups manually. Anything I delete or change, it's up to me to make sure the copy reflects those changes.

I've been doing this now for some 12 years, and never had a problem.

S.

 

[Kal Rubinson]

Agreed, incremental backups of new library additions are not a problem. It is just getting the damned initial load up to the cloud.

Or back.

 

[tim_j_thomas]

I'm currently giving Backblaze a try. They have a 15 day trial. Cost is $50 per year per computer.