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Author Topic: Safe guarding my Music Collection  (Read 2267 times)

Bioman

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Safe guarding my Music Collection
« on: June 02, 2020, 08:33:47 am »

OK, so I am not an IT guy.  But I am hoping someone here is.  I am currently running my two-channel music system on a Laptop with an external 7TB (about ½ full) Hard drive.  This all feeds a USB DAC.  The other day my HD fell to the floor giving me a small heart attack; as well as making it clear just how vulnerable my music collection is to a drive failure. The good news is that the HD seems to be fine.   So it is my Birthday this week and I have a few $$ to do something about this.  I don’t want to use The Cloud (likely a sound solution); I am simply an old fart that likes to physically have what he owns.  So having said that, I am looking for suggestions that don’t require an IT degree or a love of all things computer to implement.  Which way would you go, NAS, additional hard drive, or other?  Open to suggestions. 
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zybex

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Re: Safe guarding my Music Collection
« Reply #1 on: June 02, 2020, 08:43:31 am »

This heavily depends on your budget.

If you just get an additional HD, you'll have to remember to keep both of them in sync. Either you always have them both connected and keep some task running to keep them in sync, or you'll have to plugin the 2nd one and manually sync them once in a while.

The best is a NAS with 2 or 4 disk slots, depending on budget and how much storage you need. You should setup the NAS as RAID1 (2-disk mirror) or RAID5 (3 or 4 disks), where one of the disks is "lost" in terms of capacity). This allows for one of the disks to crap out without you losing any data.

I have a QNAP-431P with 3x10TB (recent upgrade) in RAID5, for a total of 20TB available space, and 1 slot free to add another 10 TB soon.

Approx total cost for 16 TB RAID5 (3x8TB): 300€ for the QNAP-431P without disks, 450€ for 3 x 8 TB disks = 750€.
Approx total cost for   8 TB RAID1 (2x8TB): 200€ for the QNAP-231P without disks, 300€ for 2 x 8 TB disks = 500€.

Still, with any solution, keep in mind that if your house burns up it doesn't matter how many copies you have in there, they're all gone - an offsite disk copy or online backup service is the only way in to protect for that, if you value the data that much.
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BryanC

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Re: Safe guarding my Music Collection
« Reply #2 on: June 02, 2020, 09:43:30 am »

You can implement some easy redundancy with one of these. I'd recommend using two hard drives in non-RAID with nightly backups from the source to master. I'd also recommend buying a third drive, periodically cloning to it (the dock makes this super simple or you can use backup software, for Windows I prefer Syncback Free) and storing it off-site.
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zybex

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Re: Safe guarding my Music Collection
« Reply #3 on: June 02, 2020, 09:54:17 am »

Docks are nice, but when it falls, both disks fall ;)
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Bioman

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Re: Safe guarding my Music Collection
« Reply #4 on: June 02, 2020, 11:05:41 am »

I forgot to mention if this effects either of the above solutions; I have all of the USB ports on my laptop in use; one, of course, being for the external 7TB drive.  If I were to go the route that sounds most economical of adding a single drive and syncing, can I still do this with the above limitations or do I need an enclosure that handles multiple drives to replace the single external HD?

Also, not sure what USB version I have, laptop is around 9 years old.

Also, what program can automate the syncing or mirroring of two drives as I won't remember to do a nightly, or even likely a weekly syncing.

Sorry for leaving out all of the above details.
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tij

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Re: Safe guarding my Music Collection
« Reply #5 on: June 03, 2020, 12:09:51 pm »

If your internet is fast ... cloud storages can be an option ... backblaze is 110usd for 2 years unlimited storage per computer

... keep one local backup ... in case of primary failure ... can restore faster than from cloud
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wer

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Re: Safe guarding my Music Collection
« Reply #6 on: June 03, 2020, 01:09:34 pm »

Backing up to a second USB hard drive would be the cheapest and easiest way to go.  I would not recommend cloud. The yearly fee for one year would pay for your new hard drive.

I have all of the USB ports on my laptop in use;

This is what USB hubs are for. You can buy one for a few dollars. You will get the best speed results copying files if the two hard drives are ultimately connected to different ports on the laptop, instead of both being connected to the same USB hub.

Also, not sure what USB version I have, laptop is around 9 years old.

You will need to find out. Google "how do I tell what usb version I have". The inside of USB 3 ports is usually blue, but not always. USB-C is a different shape connector, but your laptop is too old to have USB-C.

Also, what program can automate the syncing or mirroring of two drives as I won't remember to do a nightly, or even likely a weekly syncing.

This is not a technical problem, it is a you problem. :)  You might consider investing in a calendar and make a notation on a specific date. Windows has a built in task scheduler you could use along with a batch file, and if you google for any backup software, they usually have built in scheduling capability.  But there's a problem with assuming your memory can be replaced with software, considering the position you're in.  You're backing up a laptop (a portable device) to portable external hard drives. Using scheduling software is problematic when in that situation, because the computer must be ON and both hard drives connected and on when the scheduled time arrives.  If you can't remember to plug the external drive in, then using the scheduling software to supplant your memory to actually run the backup will not achieve success.

Remember, once you have made your first backup, it's not life and death. With no backup at all, you can lose your entire collection.  Once you have made a single backup, you're no longer at risk of losing the entire collection, it's just a question of losing the changes you made since your last backup.

Purchasing new music is a manual act. Perhaps you should just backup your collection after you have added new music to it.  Then you would only lose tag changes if you have to revert to a backup. You can adjust your backup frequency based on how many days/weeks/months of tag changes you are willing to lose. If you only purchase music infrequently, you would not need to backup very often at all.

If you're the sort that is changing your music collection all the time, and demand that you never lose more than a day's worth of changes, then you're simply going to have to be more diligent about backing up, or spend a lot more money to invest in an automated NAS-based backup system, and even then you would still have to remember to take your laptop out of your bag and connect it to the network every night, assuming your laptop travels around.

Good luck...
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Bioman

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Re: Safe guarding my Music Collection
« Reply #7 on: June 03, 2020, 05:48:23 pm »

Great advice, you guys are the best.  At this point, given that I just bought new speakers and a new amplifier, cheaper is better.  A new HD and a USB hub is the way I will go.  Thanks so much to all for the assistance.
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Peter M

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Re: Safe guarding my Music Collection
« Reply #8 on: June 03, 2020, 09:24:14 pm »

NAS is not backup.

I had a drive fail in 4 bay Raid 5 NAS and during the rebuild another drive failed rendering the whole NAS lost.

Thankfully I have another 4 bay NAS and the two of them backup onto each other, so my backup saved the day.

Cheers,
Peter
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DJLegba

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Re: Safe guarding my Music Collection
« Reply #9 on: June 03, 2020, 10:14:32 pm »

Great advice, you guys are the best.  At this point, given that I just bought new speakers and a new amplifier, cheaper is better.  A new HD and a USB hub is the way I will go.  Thanks so much to all for the assistance.

USB hubs are not expensive, and as Wer pointed out you get better performance when the drives are on different channels, but for backing up performance is not a huge issue and many newer external USB drives have a built-in hub. So if you like cheaper, you probably don't need the hub.
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Bioman

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Re: Safe guarding my Music Collection
« Reply #10 on: June 05, 2020, 06:10:10 am »

Went out and bought a USB Hub 3.0; will get it hooked up today which should help with the USB congestion.  My computer in addition to several "composite USB ports" has one USB Root Hub 3.0 which I assume is actually a 3.0 USB.  If that is actually a 3.0 I am ready to buy an additional external HD. To date I have purchased Western Digital Easey Store devices and have not had any failures; so I imagine I will go that direction. 
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