I've recently changed/enhanced my backup strategy and spent some time evaluating and comparing options. Thought I'd share my methods here in case it may help someone else. Hopefully others will share their personal methods.
First, I must define my scenario:
MC is installed on various laptops and workstations around the house and at my office.
These all connect in to the Library Server feature of MC which runs on a Windows Server 2008 currently.
All media files reside on a 4 terabyte NAS box which contains mostly flac audio, a few mp3, a ton of images, and some video files.
So there are 2 general locations of files that need to be backed up:
All files contained on the NAS storage server.
MC's library files contained on the server's hard drive at C:\Users\
username\AppData\Roaming\J River\Media Center 15\Library
OLD METHOD:For the past few years, I've only had an onsite backup, using external hard drives. I used a standard full/incremental backup strategy.
On the first day of the month, a complete backup was made of all files.
On Sunday nights I did a weekly incremental backup, which covered all files changed since the prior monthly full backup.
PROBLEMS WITH OLD METHODI decided that my old backup strategy protected me well from inadvertent data modifications and deletions. It also protected against hard drive failure.
But it didn't protect me against theft, or loss from fire. I also couldn't keep more than about 2 months worth of revisions due to available disk space on the external drives.
RESEARCHING ALTERNATIVESSo, I set out to streamline my backup process, preferably with an offsite storage option. I began to research internet services that offer backup storage "in the cloud".
There are many of these, and most have some sort of maximum space limitation that my collection exceeds, or a charge on a per-MB basis, making the option too expensive.
I found 3 fairly well-known services that advertise UNLIMITED space. Hmmm...yes, that'll do!
MOZY Mozy gets pretty good reviews from users, and truly has unlimited disk space for a flat fee of around $50/yr.
I declined to use Mozy for 3 reasons:
1) It wouldn't let me install it's software on my server due to it running the server operating system. It only supports desktop operating systems.
In order to use it on a server, you have to upgrade to a business class subscription, which has a per GB charge in addition to the monthly fee.
2) Reviews I read from customers indicated that while the disk space is unlimited, the bandwidth wasn't. Backup speeds were throttled, causing the initial backup to take several weeks to complete!
At the frequency that files change, I could see the initial backup never completing to 100%. I'd have to start the backup, then never touch the rating or any other tag stored in the file until it completed. Not to mention any new albums added in the meantime.
3) Since I couldn't install it, I looked at screenshots, and read what was available on their website. It seems like a decent product, but no feature really stood out from the crowd.
CARBONITEI used Carbonite during the trial period. I checked at 6:00pm every evening how many flac files it backed up each 24-hour period (about 150 songs per day).
The software has almost no options other than what files to backup. Honestly the only thing you have control over is a bandwidth throttle between high and low.
Items of note about Carbonite:
1) selecting files to backup is done in explorer instead of in the application. Simply right click a folder and choose carbonite > back up these files.
2) in explorer, each file had a green or orange dot overlay on it's icon. Green indicates the backup contains the latest copy of the file. Orange indicates the file hasn't been backed up yet, or the backup doesn't contain the latest revision.
3) The backups contain only one revision of the file. It does not retain any older copies. Mess up a file's tags, don't notice it for 24 hours? Bang, backup now has the bad copy also
4) Many reviews of bandwidth throttling online and I experienced this myself. I have 10Mb upstream available and the fastest Carbonite ran was 1.2Mb.
5) Carbonite's own website acknowledges the bandwidth cap, but it gets worse! After you backup around 35GB, they throttle you even slower!
6) Based on the 150 song per day completion, and the bandwidth cap, I estimated it would take about 280 days to make my first complete backup! Obviously once that's done, the files don't change much, so it would only need to do a handful of changed files and a handful of newly imported files each week. But come one, almost a year to complete one full backup!?!
Overall, I liked Carbonite, especially how it indicated which files were backed up and which weren't. However, I opted to not subscribe to Carbonite due to the bandwidth limitations.
CRASHPLANCrashplan doesn't have the name recognition that Carbonite does, but I ultimately subscribed to their service.
Items of note about Crashplan:
1) NO BANDWIDTH CAPS! Crashplan is quite adamant that they do not throttle your upload speed. Obviously I don't expect to run wide open at 10Mb the whole time, but I did experience much faster speeds than with Carbonite.
I was able to average around 5Mb with some peaks at 9Mb. Looks like general internet bandwidth fluctuations and not a cap to me.
2) Files are selected using the Crashplan application using a tree folder structure with checkboxes. Management isn't done using explorer like with carbonite.
3) I did the same timing test, how many flac files are backed up in a 24-hour period? Answer=950! A stark contrast to Carbonite's 150 files per day!
4) Mozy and Carbonite are for online backups to the cloud only. Crashplan has a different approach. Crashplan can backup to a different computer on your network. This is free! Crashplan can backup to an external hard drive. This is free! Crashplan can backup to your friend's harddrive at his house and he can backup to yours. This is free!
Crashplan can also backup to the cloud, just like Mozy and Carbonite, and also for a roughly $50/yr fee.
5) Crashplan has file revisions! Unlike it's competitors, Crashplan can keep multiple revisions of a file for over a year! For the same $50!
6) Now for the negatives, and they are minor:
a) No indicator of which files specifically are backed up and which are not, only a count of pending files and estimate of how long until the backup is 100% complete.
b) No cool colored icons like Carbonite has so you can tell on a per-file basis that the latest revision is backed up or not. Honestly that's the only feature Carbonite has going for it over the competitors.
THE NEW WAYSo, now having chosen Crashplan for my offsite backups, I'm covered against theft and fire at last.
Since Crashplan can backup to both the cloud, and to local hard drives, I won't need to run my old backup software anymore, freeing up some system resources.
I still get a local backup copy to my external drives that can be quickly and easily restored, I get an offsite copy for extra protection, and I get to keep revisions for much longer than I'd been keeping them before.
