[ueyteuor]

so my collection is getting bigger in bigger.... and my hdd with music in it works a lot, so i'm afraid he'll pull a hamstring or something and give up on me, and i can't risk that, so i was wondering whats the best way to backup all the music?? i've already burned several albums as data on dvd's but that takes forever, since i have several hundred gb's of music, i can't be burning all the time.. that is ridiculous! i was thinking of a 1tb external, but which is the best, most likely not to fail... would it be a seagate or wd?

 

[jet_dee]

All manufacturers of hard drives are equally good and bad, you'll get some that fail and some that don't from whichever manufacturer you use. As long as you've got just one backup, whether it be external hdd, or massive dvd collection, or even blu-ray, when one fails as long as you can restore it that's enough. I assume if your collection is all legally gotten, you either have the original CD's for reripping in case of bad event, or you can redownload the digital music you paid for. If you are a filesharer, then you could probably just make a text file list of all your music so you don't lose track of what you've got.

 

[rustbucket]

I haven't found a storage/backup solution that makes me really happy yet. I have ~700gb of data, of which about 300gb is music.

* an Internal Hard drive can fail (obviously)
* External Hard Drives are slow and can also fail
* Burned DVD's (in my experience, with various burners/media) get corrupted over time. I've been unable to read disks that are only a couple of years old.

My solution is twofold: I have a RAID 5 array in my computer with all my music on it (RAID 5 uses 3 or more disks and can maintain data integrity with the loss of any one), and an external 1TB hard drive that I keep unplugged from the computer and the wall except when I'm copying new music onto it (this protects is from any power evilness that could damage it). For my really important data (documents and such), I have copies on multiple computers.

'Real' backups, from a commercial standpoint need to be archived off-site, which isn't really practical for most home users.

I'd recommend at least two copies of everything as a starting point. That could be as simple as an external HD and the internal HD. It's pretty easy to set up a basic RAID array in a home computer using 2 or 3 hard drives, and having redundancy is a good thing. Only you can determine how far you need to go to be comfortable with the safety of your data.

edit: An interesting bit of tech that's emerging is 'in the cloud' backup solutions, where you upload your data to a company's servers and they guarantee its integrity. I'll probably explore that for important stuff eventually. Important for me includes rips of vinyl, tapes and CD's that are no longer available. Yes, I purchased them, but the media has been damaged or lost through the years, so digital copies are all I have.

 

[JamesL]

WD and Seagate both make great drives. RAID1 doesn't seem like a bad idea.

 

[Aura]

Internal WD - External Seagate for me. I'd rather go RAID1 as the others have recommended, but the external gives me more convenience.

Btw, my FreeAgent Pro hardly qualifies as slow, even with using USB as my transfer (I do want to test eSATA at some point though). The day I got it I copied 74 GB's of backups of my movies in about a half hour.

 

[tolkachi]

As a computer tech with 10 years work experience, I would recommend a Seagate drive over most other non-enterprise drives. The retail Seagate drive comes with a 5 year warranty, runs cooler and quieter than the WD (AnandTech: your source for hardware analysis and news).

Now, the temperature is going to add to the reliability of the drives, so you'll want an enclosure that is properly ventilated, and/or passive cooling on the drives. RAID 1 would be a great step in securing a reliable system when one drive fails. All hard drives are going to sell with a MTBF rating (Mean time between failures - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia). You'll want to look at these. If you can afford it, grab the enterprise class drives as they will have a longer life (and usually longer warranty).

 

[Nebby]

Good post rustbucket. Covered about everything I was going to post!

I stick with a three way backup system
1) File server with raid-5
2) External drive that's dumped to and kept offline
3) Burn essential data to archival dvd's

As of late though, most of my stuff isn't that important so I mostly just dump to the external

 

[HFat]

Quote:

Originally Posted by rustbucket /img/forum/go_quote.gif 'Real' backups, from a commercial standpoint need to be archived off-site, which isn't really practical for most home users.

What I do is to dump the stuff I really care about to a hard drive, pack it well (no enclosure or anything, just the drive), and give it to a family member for safekeeping.
Of course I don't update that backup very often (now that was an understatement!) so, for smaller stuff than a musical collection, the obvious solution is...

Quote:

Originally Posted by rustbucket /img/forum/go_quote.gif edit: An interesting bit of tech that's emerging is 'in the cloud' backup solutions, where you upload your data to a company's servers and they guarantee its integrity.

I'd hardly call it emerging: people have been doing that for some time now.
You don't really need a company for that though: if you haven't got a budget, you can perhaps arrange something like that with a friend or something. For smallish amounts of data, you could also use free services like GMX (you get 1G free with them... or at least you used to). Your ISP may also provide you with a modest amount of free storage for backups.

EDIT: Whether you give your stuff to friends, family, or a company, encrypting it so that only you can use it would be a good idea. That probably also takes care of the legal issues that the copyright laws in your country might create (IANAL!).

 

[TSi]

lol, u can always store everything in 1 drive, and then ziploc bag it, vacuum air suck it dry and then put it in a dry cool place.

when u need it, then u can take it out =D

 

[Duke309]

As it has already been said, redundancy is the key. Make as many copies as possible, internal hard drives are so cheap now there really is no excuse not to have your important data on a raid array. If you are going to go with a hard drive solution, I recommend having the data stored in at least three places. I've lost track of the number of hard drives that have failed at work and I know I would die if I lost my music collection.

 

[soundfreq]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Duke309 /img/forum/go_quote.gif As it has already been said, redundancy is the key. Make as many copies as possible, internal hard drives are so cheap now there really is no excuse not to have your important data on a raid array. If you are going to go with a hard drive solution, I recommend having the data stored in at least three places. I've lost track of the number of hard drives that have failed at work and I know I would die if I lost my music collection.

X2 on what everybody said.


i lost a lot a data many times, and learned from every single one.

1. Since i only use a 4yo laptop, i have an external drive for pretty much everything. started on this after my 3rd internal hdd crashed and burned. so the external gets the music library, so all my current songs in itunes reside there. i also copy the itunes library from mydocuments in that external hdd every week or every major change in the library.

2. i then burn dvd disc of ripped albums separately. i do this before i add them to itunes. i make sure to buy a nice archival dvd media & verify the data before storing. optical media do deteriorate even if you store them in a cool, drive place. i have a backup of my data from 1998 and can't read it anymore. so i go for archival optical media.

3. for personal files, such as documents, pictures and others, i do a separate dvd burn of them. those that i frequently access get stored in a flash drive. and all got burned every so often.

4. as you might have guessed it, i keep the laptop pretty clean in terms of saved data. call me paranoid, but because of what happened to me before, i pretty much decided that i don't want to lose any data inadvertedly.

5. redunduncy is redundunt, repeat again.

yes, it takes a lot of time and effort, but it saved me from crashes so many times i swear by it.

 

[number1sixerfan]

Well, I just lost my entire music collection and I am now thinking of going analog instead of digital. It's unfortunate as I only had my external WD for two months. I was using it to store and backup some music, but now it is all gone.

I just don't know if it's worth the hassle anymore.

 

[soundfreq]

2 months? Maybe the external hdd is still under warranty. you should probably check with the manufacturer/store for rma or something

 

[number1sixerfan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by soundfreq /img/forum/go_quote.gif 2 months? Maybe the external hdd is still under warranty. you should probably check with the manufacturer/store for rma or something

Yea, it is probably still under warranty but I care more about the music. I really like the connivence of digital, but I don't want to have four external hard drives back each other up. I am using a laptop, so internal storage isn't an option.

 

[HFat]

You only need three if you manage them carefully.