How do you back up your music files?

[Patrickhat2001]

Well the time has come for me to be responsible and back up all of the music on my hard drive because you never know what could happen but I'm wondering what is the best way to go about this? What method do you think is best? External hard drive? Internal hard drive (that's usually kept disconnected)? DVD-R or CD-R discs? What's the most time effecient way? Cost efficient way? Most reliable way?

 

[CSMR]

I suppose cost efficient - DVDR
Time efficient and reliable - hard drive

 

[kyrie]

cost efficient - dvd-r (for one time) / dvd-rw (for multiple times)
reliable - cd/dvd-r/rw
time efficient - internal hard drive

Personally I disagree with CSMR about the reliablilty issue. There are many ways to screw up a hard drive, but there isn't any way of screwing up a dvd/cd short of physically damaging it.
All in all, I would take the time and use dvd's as backup. The capacity of cd's are too small to be practical for media backup nowadays.

 

[kunwar]

First of alll I disagree that DVDR can nly be screwed up by physically damaging it.
I have had a couple of DVDR's undergo improper write cycles, consequently, the data on the outer tracks was unreadable.
Cheapest way is DVDR and perfectly reliable if you use good quality sleeves.
As for efficient Hard drive is more efficient but I just rip the whole CD to FLAC with everything on it.
Essentially a perfect copy of my CD and exactly the same as the original.

 

[shimage]

Quote:

Originally Posted by CSMR I suppose cost efficient - DVDR Time efficient and reliable - hard drive

not true. Reliability of harddrives assumes that you use it. If left to just sit on a shelf gathering dust, they fail much more rapidly (sort of like a lot of things...). Using the drive regularly (but not excessively) will improve its reliability.

You could go with a tape drive, but I think the drives are somewhere around $1,000, and I have no clue how reliable they are. The thing about DVDR's is that to back up an entire flac collection still consumes an entire spindle... And if you don't have an uber speedy drive, it's a pretty long time commitment.

 

[commando]

I don't. But I have copies of all my CDs on my hdd as flac. Might get around to putting them onto DVD-R some time, if I can be arsed. At an average of 275MB/CD with FLAC, you'd fit 17-20 on each DVD.

Good idea actually, I should do this.

 

[Scrith]

I have two home computers with big secondary hard drives (for music, games, etc) on a home network, so I keep a copy of my FLAC files on both. I use a program called Filesync to sync the FLAC directory on each computer with the other computer every week or so.

This has paid off, by the way...my main computer had its secondary drive corrupted a couple of months ago. If I hadn't backed up the files on my second computer, many of my FLAC files would have been lost (I lost about 1/3 of the drive...the files either disappeared or became corrupt).

 

[CSMR]

Quote:

Originally Posted by shimage not true. Reliability of harddrives assumes that you use it. If left to just sit on a shelf gathering dust, they fail much more rapidly (sort of like a lot of things...). Using the drive regularly (but not excessively) will improve its reliability.

Didn't realize drives are likely to fail without use. My family's never had a problem with a hard drive, but a few of my CDRs have gone bad over time. (Other people have also found that CDRs can go bad.) But then I wasn't using the best discs or drive. And perhaps DVD-Rs last longer?

 

[commando]

All media, hard drive, CD-ROM, or DVD, can and will fail eventually. Your best bet for really important data is to keep one copy on another hard drive, and another copy on CD/DVD. For music it's not so important, but perhaps keeping a copy archived on DVD is a good idea.

 

[psxguy85]

Perhaps certain CD-R's and DVD-R's are higher quality than others. What's the best brand to use?

 

[KenW]

External HD. Vast amounts of space and portability makes sharing a snap. Best bang for the buck IMO.

 

[commando]

I buy by brand - i've never had a single problem with Imation or Verbatim. Even big brands like Sony get bad reports from time to time, that's why I stick with the specialist brands above.

 

[commando]

Quote:

Originally Posted by KenW External HD. Vast amounts of space and portability makes sharing a snap. Best bang for the buck IMO.

I like them too, but they're no good if your house burns down and you leave the drive at home...

 

[kalzone]

depending on how big your audio collection it might be just easier going with an external HD.
my second choice would be going to DVD-R. If you don't currently own a dvd burner hold off til the dual layer drives and media become readily available and snatch one of those since they'll hold about 9 gigs each versus about 4 (4.4GB really, but with some overhead it is closer to 4) that are sold now. I know Pioneer makes a dual layer dvd burner, but i haven't seen the blank media anywhere so i wouldn't bother with them now.
I wouldn't even bother with CD-R's nowadays. one DVD can hold about 6 CDs.

also, DVDs write data faster. DVD 1x = 1350kb/sec CD 1x=150kb/sec
an 8x DVD burner (readily available today) burns at about 72x CDR which don't exist.
the fastest CD burner to my knowledge is 48x.

 

[thomaspf]

With the prices for high capacity disk drives coming down recently 200GB for $119 at NewEgg I would rate the convenience of a backup hard drive very high.

It takes significant time to back up all audio files and then create some kind of master index in case you really need to restore a lost file. Doing the management of incremental backups on an ongoing basis is also a no brainer with a additional hard drive.

If it really comes to a desaster then the time to restore and the manual task of changing the DVDs will also be pretty tedious.

I take the convenience over the cost saving.

Cheers

Thomas