[jefemeister]

My hard drive just died on me. I'm a neurotic backup-er when it comes to work, etc but never really thought about my music files. I lost 20 or so albums encoded in Monkey's. Do you guys backup your audio files on CD, etc? I wish I had. Do you think that hard drives are currently reliable enough to trust your music collection to? Thankfully, I didn't lose much but I'm now a little nervous about my plan to move everything over to hard drives.

 

[MikoLayer]

as much as i would love to build up a collection of FLAC and monkey audio files, the majority of my current music is in mp3. i burn them on a dvd+/r once they reach the 4.3gig mark. with pricing on dvdrw drives and media falling thru the floor, its a no brainer... takes like 20minutes total to burn in 4x, a painless procedure

 

[lan]

I have backups on CD, DVD-R, harddrive in RAID, and harddrives offline (meaning they are never used but on the shelf with files).

 

[Iron_Dreamer]

I back up all my rips to hard drives which are left outside of my computer 99% of the time.

 

[crunchyfrog]

All my FLACs live on the RAID in our HTPC (whee! acronyms!). At some point I'll probably backup to DVD as well.

 

[sporky]

I keep most of my MP3s on two different hard drives, so if one ever fails I'll still have the other. You can also consider your portable music player to be a back up device. I store a copy of my videogame roms on mine!

 

[fewtch]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jefemeister My hard drive just died on me. I'm a neurotic backup-er when it comes to work, etc but never really thought about my music files. I lost 20 or so albums encoded in Monkey's. Do you guys backup your audio files on CD, etc? I wish I had. Do you think that hard drives are currently reliable enough to trust your music collection to? Thankfully, I didn't lose much but I'm now a little nervous about my plan to move everything over to hard drives.

Yep, been backing up to CD-R for ages. It's getting unwieldy now though... both the number of discs and storage requirements for lossless files. Probably gonna go with either a large external hard drive or DVD-R(W) drive soon... maybe both.

 

[aug1516]

I store my music on a 160gb HD that is in a Raid1 array with another 160gb HD. I also perform periodical backups of music to DVD discs.

 

[NeilPeart]

I use an internal RAID1 for all my data (which includes FLACs and MP3s), along with an external firewire HD and occasional CDRs. One day I'll migrate to dual-layer DVDR or Blue-Ray when the technologies become more feasible and affordable.

 

[cosmopragma]

I use 3 x 160 GB HDs in my main rig and 1 x 120 plus 1 x 80 GB in my second rig.For backup purposes I'm using another 3 x 160 GB set.The main rig stands at home, the second rig in my girlfriend's appartement, and the backup discs are most of the time stored in my father's house.For intermediate backups I'm using DVD-RW discs.Recent tests by lini's employer C't magazine caused concerns about the reliability of the current DVD-R technology.
During the last 12 months I lost 2 HDs

but only a few fresh files.

 

[fewtch]

Quote:

Originally Posted by cosmopragma I use 3 x 160 GB HDs in my main rig and 1 x 120 plus 1 x 80 GB in my second rig.For backup purposes I'm using another 3 x 160 GB set.The main rig stands at home, the second rig in my girlfriend's appartement, and the backup discs are most of the time stored in my father's house.For intermediate backups I'm using DVD-RW discs.Recent tests by lini's employer C't magazine caused concerns about the reliability of the current DVD-R technology.

Not that CD-R's are very reliable either... I guess it would be worse to lose 4+ gigs of data than 700 megs tho. I'm not convinced there's any truly reliable, affordable solution out there for long term backup. The best is probably a large, occasionally used (only for backups) external hard drive stored in a cool, dry place.

 

[Anakin]

I keep my music on my PC HDD and on my iPod, my HDD crashed about a month ago, luckly all my music was on my iPod so it wasn't too bad of a loss.

 

[Mr.Radar]

Quote:

Originally Posted by fewtch Not that CD-R's are very reliable either... I guess it would be worse to lose 4+ gigs of data than 700 megs tho. I'm not convinced there's any truly reliable, affordable solution out there for long term backup. The best is probably a large, occasionally used (only for backups) external hard drive stored in a cool, dry place.

HDDs last the longest if they're used constantly and last the shortest if they're either frequently turned on and off or are left off for long periods of time.

 

[psychogentoo]

I back up my music on to several DVDs. Not that losing them would be a great loss since then I'll be motivated to re-import all my music using a lossless format. In any case, I don't see anything wrong with backing up on to a HD. However, the whole reason for backing up is because of HD failures.

If price is not a consideration, then I suggest getting a tape autoloader. For about 5K you can get one that stores 1TB compressed. Data recovery time will be a whole lot less than sitting there re-importing your music from CDs.

 

[lcachola]

Mine is completely MP3 - about 45 GB worth. I have two hard drive backups - one on a second machine and another in an external hard drive, which I keep at work. Plus, I have a DAT backup and the tapes are locked offsite with the rest of my backup. No problems with DAT reliability after seven months - I've both heard of people having no problems and people having horror stories with DAT, but I've had only a handful of minor problems so far. I'm looking for another medium to back up to, but I'm a few years off from buying another solution just yet.