Backing up the media files. What are you doing to safeguard your music?

I have 2.5 TB of music - which I have backed up at home on 4 different drives (one NAS, etc). Most ISP's have a max limit you can upload/download per month. Comcast is 1 TB (that is for the whole US) - anything over that is 10 dollars per 50 GB. So, cloud storage is a useless option when you have a lot of music.
Comcast allows two instances of exceeding their 1TB cap at no charge. Alternatively, you can span your upload in chunks over several months to avoid any overage. Once complete, incremental backups are miniscule, relatively.

As affordable as cloud storage is...no way would I have all my data in a single location.
 
My music is on my pc, and that's where I listen to it. However the "pc" is an old HP server with SAS drives in a RAID configuration. I have the properties set to read only on my music. So inadvertently deleting files is not possible, and the RAID configuration means that I can have a disk failure and I should be ok..... I can pull a drive out with the computer running. I'm not sure what would happen if both drives were pulled, but I don't have kids, and the cats don't have opposable thumbs :biggrin:
This isn't going to be absolute protection, but I do have the CDs and DVD's and my library isn't that big. If I lose both the computer and the disks, I've probably got bigger things to worry about.
 
My music is on my pc, and that's where I listen to it. However the "pc" is an old HP server with SAS drives in a RAID configuration. I have the properties set to read only on my music. So inadvertently deleting files is not possible, and the RAID configuration means that I can have a disk failure and I should be ok..... I can pull a drive out with the computer running. I'm not sure what would happen if both drives were pulled, but I don't have kids, and the cats don't have opposable thumbs :biggrin:
This isn't going to be absolute protection, but I do have the CDs and DVD's and my library isn't that big. If I lose both the computer and the disks, I've probably got bigger things to worry about.

Don't fool yourself. You have minimal protection. A raid is designed to accommodate primarily a single failure mode - a failed disk. There are other failure modes that can take out your raid, some catastrophic, some not. And many of those failure modes are much more likely to occur than a disk failing.

Making a proper backup is inexpensive and easy. Everyone should have proper backups considering the minimal cost and effort to backup up data to a USB drive and store that drive at another location. I think that in most cases people do not make backups because they lack the knowledge and do not understand the risk of not having a backup.
 
What is the best cloud service for backing up to say a TB? I would be looking for a service that will be around in 10 or more years and not cost a lot. I don't have nearly as much music as many here do but it is my new life's mission to expand what I have and to get in on a cloud account now before there is a ton of music to upload all at once might be good. After it is all loaded, doing incremental BU's shouldn't be that difficult. One question, with FLAC and APE files, just changing a tag will flag my backup software (set to mirror) to cause the file to be backed up again. How could backup software be set up so that it only uploads newly added music, and not music already there but changed in the tags? Not even sure I want that as tagging is important to the way I listen..
 
Also what is a good backup media for archival backup off site other than cloud services? Would magnetic hard drive USB discs survive the years longer than say thumb drives or other SSD type? Thinking about off site storage that would only be accessed as an almost last resort (other than painstakingly reloading all the physical media itself) when the chips are down and everything else has failed.
 
What is the best cloud service for backing up to say a TB? I would be looking for a service that will be around in 10 or more years and not cost a lot. I don't have nearly as much music as many here do but it is my new life's mission to expand what I have and to get in on a cloud account now before there is a ton of music to upload all at once might be good. After it is all loaded, doing incremental BU's shouldn't be that difficult. One question, with FLAC and APE files, just changing a tag will flag my backup software (set to mirror) to cause the file to be backed up again. How could backup software be set up so that it only uploads newly added music, and not music already there but changed in the tags? Not even sure I want that as tagging is important to the way I listen..

There are no guarantees that any company will be here one year from now, let alone 10 years. I do not rely on cloud storage as my only backup, so If my cloud provider disappeared tomorrow, I would be inconvenienced, but I would still be protected.

With a TB of data, you can buy plans cloud storage plans that will work. One factor to consider is your upload speed. I do not not have broadband, so my upload speeds are limited to about 100 KB/s. It takes a while to upload just 1 GB of data, let alone 1 TB. The incremental backups go much quicker. Even if you change a lot of tags, backing up should still not be too bad. If you use a service that recognizes rsync, and that is compatible with your system, the incremental backup will copy only the portions of the files that have changed. That is how I backup my office data. My office has a NAS and I use a commercial backup service (EV Backup). That is more expensive than Dropbox or Google Drive, but it is fast and convenient.
 
Also what is a good backup media for archival backup off site other than cloud services? Would magnetic hard drive USB discs survive the years longer than say thumb drives or other SSD type? Thinking about off site storage that would only be accessed as an almost last resort (other than painstakingly reloading all the physical media itself) when the chips are down and everything else has failed.

Keep in mind, you said you want to expand your collection, so you will be continually updating your backups. You will not make a backup and store it for 10 years. You should be doing frequent backups and overwriting your media often. There is no reason to archive backups for long periods of time.

USB drives are fine. Ideally, you should have several drives and rotate them. That is, use Drive A today, Drive B tomorrow, and Drive A again the day after. I prefer using three drives, and I keep the latest drive off-site. I also keep a weekly backup and a monthly backup. For music libraries, that is probably overkill. But I do that for my business records, so I already have the procedures in place.

There is not much difference in reliability between the various types of storage. You can be assured, though, that whatever you use today will be obsolete in a few years because faster and greater capacity will always be available as time goes on. I have a drawer full of retired jump drives because their capacity is too little, although they were great when I bought them.
 
What is the best cloud service for backing up to say a TB? I would be looking for a service that will be around in 10 or more years and not cost a lot. I don't have nearly as much music as many here do but it is my new life's mission to expand what I have and to get in on a cloud account now before there is a ton of music to upload all at once might be good. After it is all loaded, doing incremental BU's shouldn't be that difficult. One question, with FLAC and APE files, just changing a tag will flag my backup software (set to mirror) to cause the file to be backed up again. How could backup software be set up so that it only uploads newly added music, and not music already there but changed in the tags? Not even sure I want that as tagging is important to the way I listen..

Amazon, Apple or Google are good bets to be around in 10 years.
 
Other failure modes such as what?

Your raid card fails. Oftentimes, the drives have to be reformatted when the RAID card is replaced, particularly on older systems where an exact replacement card is not available. Even Synology says that if you buy a new NAS, you cannot transfer drives from an old NAS to the new one, that you need to reformat to ensure data integrity. Another failure mode is when both drives fail at the same time or the second drive fails before the first drive is installed and the data rebuilt. Often, drives are purchased at the same time and operate in the same environment. I've seen a fair number of drives fail one after another. User error: Older systems often require configuration when replacing a failed drive. I've wiped a good drive once by selecting the wrong option when replacing a failed drive. No big deal because I had a backup. A lightning strike that destroys the power strip and the computer, including everything in it. Ransomware that encrypts the hard drive, including all files (read only will not save you). Malware that destroys data because it can (again, read only will not save you). I could think of some more failure modes, but I am going to bed.

PS: In the time it took me to write the above, I backed up my music library to a USB drive.
 
Apple would still be kinda pricey for a large collection too, wouldn't it?
I use icloud to backup my phone, but not the data stuff like pics. The last time I checked the price on it made no sense for me.

I use dropbox and fichier, but neither would work all that well as a music back-up for my needs.
I don't want to spend the money for a large DB account, and as cheap and great as fichier has been for me no way would I trust it long term.
 
I'm thinking I'll make a second USB backup drive and keep it in the car. That's off site enough that only a tsunami or earthquake would take out the house and the car in the driveway. If that's the case I'm not likely to survive either.
 
Some good info being presented in this thread. question is now in my mind, how much backup is reasonably good enough for music, beings that this is not in my case a business or a livelihood that would cost potentially a lot of money down the road if a backup were to fail.

For a typical music library how much backup is needed and how much more is just paranoia? How reliable are hard drives in the first place? Beings that I've never actually had one fail I have to ask do I need more than one other backup, cloud backup offsite backup Etc?

Also I was wondering about fireproof safe's and how effective they would be to put a Nas drive inside of one and have it stored away under the house in a basement Etc and feed it with ethernet cable. This would prevent fire, theft, and then have another USB backup for hard drive failure on the NAS drive.
 
Some good info being presented in this thread. question is now in my mind, how much backup is reasonably good enough for music, beings that this is not in my case a business or a livelihood that would cost potentially a lot of money down the road if a backup were to fail.

For a typical music library how much backup is needed and how much more is just paranoia? How reliable are hard drives in the first place? Beings that I've never actually had one fail I have to ask do I need more than one other backup, cloud backup offsite backup Etc?

Also I was wondering about fireproof safe's and how effective they would be to put a Nas drive inside of one and have it stored away under the house in a basement Etc and feed it with ethernet cable. This would prevent fire, theft, and then have another USB backup for hard drive failure on the NAS drive.
I look at it as backing up the work I've put into my digital files collection. No, it's not a livelihood, but I'd hate to have to go at it again.
Yeah, I've had hard drives fail. Same can be said for solid state. I don't trust any of them on their own as a backup.

I'd love to be able to run a NAS out of a fire proof safe, but how would it be fire safe with an opening for a cable?
 
I look at it as backing up the work I've put into my digital files collection. No, it's not a livelihood, but I'd hate to have to go at it again.
Yeah, I've had hard drives fail. Same can be said for solid state. I don't trust any of them on their own as a backup.

I'd love to be able to run a NAS out of a fire proof safe, but how would it be fire safe with an opening for a cable?
Put it in a box inside the safe with a fire pillow or two. Would the NAS not overheat sealed up in a box?
 
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