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[stefansmith]

Hi,

Here's my problem:
I've spent weeks (er...months) slowly putting all my CDs into APE format, tagging them, analysing them, scanning album covers etc. I now have about 450 CDs done, or about 130GB.

APES through Media Center is now the heart of my home music listening. All the files are on two hard drives striped as RAID. Lossless, fast, runs across a home network..... love it. It's given me a new enjoyment of my music.

But I'm feeling nervous. I need to back up. I don't need to do all that ripping again . I need suggestions.

My 1st thought was to buy even more hard drives -- but I already have 3 of them running in my tower case (2 for APE files, one for everything else). I don't need the extra heat and noise.

I also have a DVD burner. Each disk 4.7 GB -- meaning 30-or-so DVDs to back up the whole lot.

Any other suggestions or tips? I'm especially interested to hear what other users are doing. And if you are using DVDs, what media -- when I used to use CDRs, I used the Kodak Gold which were good for archiving.
I wonder if there is a similar durable option in blank DVDs.

Thanks in advance for any tips, Stefan

[jleerigby]

I never bothered with Raid as I consider it overly complex for a home PC set up.

I simply use a 250 GB drive to store my music and create a back up to a second 250 GB drive.  The second drive is a standard IDE drive placed into a removable hard drive caddy to enable me to slot it in and remove after the back up is taken.  This allows me to store my backup offsite.

This question has been asked a lot lately so try a search of the forum.

[kiwi]

1st and foremost, just so you know, storing your files on a striped array will cause you to be twice as likely to have a failure that takes down the volume.  You definitely want to {read NEED TO} back it up.  

I've gone with the buy a second drive approach since drives are quite cheap these days.  Data doesn't change frequently enough to justify incremental backups.  Losing a CD or two isn't that big a deal.  And tapes that have the capacity to backup 100's of BG of data easily seem to be expensive.  As for CDs or DVDs, you're still talking about a lot of media and swapping them in and out.

Get a drive and get a removable tray, as JLee suggests.  Put it in, copy the data and then remove it so that you have an isolated backup.

What I'm probably going to end up doing is getting 2 of these devices:
http://www.areca.us/IDERAID.htm
(HW RAID 5 device, uses 3 external 5.25" bays and holds 5 3.5" drives.  With a big plus being that the arrays are convertable and expandable.)

I'll have one at home and one at work.  Then I'll either manually bring one back and forth, or do rsync's between them.

One of the things that I've been thinking about with reguard to using a HD for backup purposes is that a HD could potentially fail while just sitting around, and you wouldn't know.  I was thinking that by using the second HD, if it failed, I'd know and be able to get a replacement.  Sure it would be more likely to fail, but I'd know right away.

kiwi

[Roar]

Why not use an external harddrive, like the Maxtor OneTouch USB/FireWire drive. The drive only needs to be attached and powered on while you're making the backup, so the noise and heat problem should be non-existent.

I use a Maxtor OneTouch 300GB external harddrive myself for backup, and i am quite happy with it so far - it is even almost silent!

You can also build your own external harddrive by putting a regular 3.5" IDE drive in a USB or FireWire harddrive enclosure, but it wont necessarily be any cheaper than buying a preconfigured solution.

Maxtor OneTouch drives come with Dantz Retrospect backup software which would be quite sufficient (and easy) for backing up your CD collection, but there are of course many other software solutions available.

- Roar

[bspachman]

I have my main APE collection on a RAID5 volume for basic data integrity. The volume is comprised of 5 250GB drives, so I'm up to nearly 1TB of storage. I currently use about 300GB for music.

As for backups, I rely on the fact that I have original media. I only backup files that I've downloaded from various distribution networks (iTunes music store, Greatful Dead shows, etc.).

Retrospect is your friend...

Best,
Brad

[modelmaker]

I went the JLee route. 2 200gigs with removable tray. I store mp3 VBR high so I don't need quite as much space currently.

[kiwi]

The disadvantages to external drives are cost and speed.  External FW drives are great, however, they do come at a bit of a premium last I checked.  Right now, it seems that you can find internal drives for about $0.50usd per GB for 200 and 250 GB drives.  

Also, you're potentially going to be moving some large files.  FW's good, but not as good as ATA 133.

kiwi

[xen-uno]

You sure about that Kiwi? Copying 100 MB of file from an internal drive to a FW external will exhaust the cache on the internal drive (which is at best...8 MB in size)...and that's assuming that the file/files are in the cache...which they may not be. After that happens, it become a raw uncached transfer. Assume that with FW overhead, you can get 40MB/s of xfer speed. I have a 10,000 RPM UW160 SCSI as boot. Using Sandra to test, the best uncached read speed I could get out of her was around 30 MB/s. The fastest IDE drive should produce similar numbers. FW would not be a bottleneck in this case. The near 100 MB/s figures you see for drives are cached rates.

10^-27

[LonWar]

I am using the DVD method...

It's a lot cheaper and if you get good dvd's you need not worry about anything...

I recently had a crash were my computer wouldn't boot and when reformated the cou couldn't read the image off a second hard drive. I ended up getting everything back, but it has taught me that NOTHING replaces some discs... or DVD's.

[Alex B]

On yesterday I copied 190 GB of media files to an external Maxtor OneTouch 250GB 7200 rpm drive (through Firewire). Overall speed was about 24 MB/s. Internal drive was a Maxtor 200 GB 7200 rpm S-ATA. I used Retrospect in copy mode, so possibly it did some checking for each file, though the OneTouch drive was empty before copying.

[paulr]

I must concur with kiwi.  Running a striped RAID array is much more risky than just running 2 hard disks.  RAID 0 is generally only used where performance matters.  Your network bandwidth is such that you wouldn't be able to see a difference in performance between a RAID 0 array and a standalone hard disk.  Certainly, if you are only using those drives for music, a striped array is overkill.

RAID 5 would be a much better choice, but it would require more disks.  There are some network storage appliances that you could place anywhere on your network that would work.

DVDs are a good backup option, but time consuming.  Another (large) external hard disk, as many people mentioned, is also an excellent idea.

But first, I would suggest getting those drives out of stiped mode.

[andy.e]

I would go for a big external USB drive such as the Maxtor over an internal drive any day of the week and twice on Sunday.  Here's why:

1. Simplicity - Plug it in and you're ready to go.  No installation, Raid configuration, etc.  Copy, paste, and you're done.  If you want to get fancy and do incrementals you can install backup software but that's up to you.  Either way it beats the crap out of swapping DVD-RWs all day (don't forget the fun part - labeling them).

2. Flexibility - Take your backup to work, your friend's house, etc. to listen and swap tunes.

3. Offsite storage - An internal drive gives you NO protection in the event of a disaster.  Have a fire and your internal backup goes bye-bye along with your primary.  You can keep your external locked up at work or some other location for true off-site backup.

4. Cost - Yeah, internal drives are a little cheaper but we're not talking big numbers here (I just paid $265 for a 300 GB Maxtor).  So you might save $100 bucks on an internal drive.  Big deal!  How does that compare to the time investment you made in ripping your collection?  Given the simplicity, convenience, and offsite backup advantages of an external, are you willing to risk that investment for $100?

Just MHO.

[jleerigby]

Andy.e - Our suggestion was internal drive but in a removable drive bay.  These drive bay's cost about £6 here in the UK (http://www.cclcomputers.biz/plist/r1-acc.htm).  This gives the benefits you describe regarding off-site storage without the cost of an External USB drive.

[kiwi]

xen-uno ~ I was just relating my experience with FW drives, is that they seem slower for larger file transfers.  This is with 4 different drives and a number of different computers (all running XP.)  I only really do something about it when I'm running really large transfers, i.e. making a complete duplicate of my Music directory.  I don't know exactly what the issue is, but it does seem noticably quicker to copy to an internal drive.  Maybe something is setup incorrectly on my computer.

kiwi

[andy.e]

Andy.e - Our suggestion was internal drive but in a removable drive bay.  These drive bay's cost about £6 here in the UK (http://www.cclcomputers.biz/plist/r1-acc.htm).  This gives the benefits you describe regarding off-site storage without the cost of an External USB drive.

True, you do get the offsite storage capability, but I don't see a ton of advantages.  It may be faster, but that only really matters for the first backup, which you can run at night anyway.  Then you're stuck with a drive that you can't use anywhere else unless the other PC has a removable drive bay.  That excludes 100% of laptops.  An external USB drive can go wherever you go, and you can plug it into any PC with a USB port, which is pretty much every PC made in the last five or six years.  For me that outweighs the speed advantage by a ton, but hey, whatever works for you is what you should use.

[jleerigby]

Take your point Andy but the fact is that it's slower, more expensive and does more than the user was asking for.  Maybe he doesn't care about the cost or the fact that it will take longer to back up.

[GHammer]

Take your point Andy but the fact is that it's slower, more expensive and does more than the user was asking for.  Maybe he doesn't care about the cost or the fact that it will take longer to back up.

Hehe! That's my kind of customer! "I'll have the more expensive, less capable one please."