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Computer Audio backup madness

Wobblybob

Wobblybob

pfm Member
All, I'm new here and although I've raised an LP12 thread I'm not a troll. I'm sitting here after backing up my data from my Mac Mini SSD to my Mac Mini HDD. Tonight I'll back up to my external HDD via Time Machine. Tomorrow, I'll backup to another external HDD and visit a relative so that I can leave a copy drive in a relative's house. I go through this rigmarole once every month or so. Mrs Wobblybob thinks I'm insane. I live in a village with a lot of charity shops and buy lots of CDs. And have lots of new music every month. What do you think?
 
Sane.
And you,ve just reminded me that my backup drive has thrown a wobbly which I must sort out.
 
There has been back up in the past too. I remember having DSOTM on metal tape(TDK) as a sort of master. Then when a casual listen would do, I used TDK SA-X. If a friend wanted a copy, it was issued according to his deck capabilities. Did kind of the same stuff with CDs too. Crazy, maybe thats what this is like normally.
 
Crickey, I remember recording Prefab Sprout's Steve McQueen and the first Pet Shop Boys album onto TDK metal tape with a metal cassette case with "real screws" in the 1980s.
 
You're going a bit OTT IMHO. Just 2 external USB drives is fine. One local the other in a safer place, which only needs backing up say after 10-15 albums ripped. Otherwise subscribe to an online server.
 
Wobblybob said:
All, I'm new here and although I've raised an LP12 thread I'm not a troll. I'm sitting here after backing up my data from my Mac Mini SSD to my Mac Mini HDD. Tonight I'll back up to my external HDD via Time Machine. Tomorrow, I'll backup to another external HDD and visit a relative so that I can leave a copy drive in a relative's house. I go through this rigmarole once every month or so. Mrs Wobblybob thinks I'm insane. I live in a village with a lot of charity shops and buy lots of CDs. And have lots of new music every month. What do you think?
Click to expand...

I sympathise. Mrs WBob is probably right. You should look at Qobuz streaming/download site. You can get unlimited CD quality access, with some restrictions, for 20€ a month. Look at this thread : pfm Qobuz Thread
 
One local backup and one off-site makes sense to me. Storage is so cheap, and I'm not ready to trust stuff that matters to an online business that could go bang at any time. This is certainly what I do with camcorder footage of my kids because that is truly irreplaceable.
 
I also keep a backup at home and an offsite backup - 3tb drives with 7800 albums. 70 odd quid a pop for the drives is cheap enough.
 
Rodney gold said:
I also keep a backup at home and an offsite backup - 3tb drives with 7800 albums. 70 odd quid a pop for the drives is cheap enough.
Click to expand...

Two backups seems a little paranoid to me. I have One USB drive which gets backed up each night onto another USB drive. The chances of them both failing at the same time must be extremely small.

- Richard.
 
The offsite is in case the home is hit by a HDD-disabling event, such as a power surge,
flooding, theft, ...

I have 2 1T drives to which I backup once monthly or so, and a 2T drive at the office which gets updated each four months.

There are also near-daily backups from the NAS to whichever PC I am working at.
 
3 backups minimum...

1st and most important, a disk image of the server HD including all FLAC music files, which after 5 years I used in a perfect D/R about 2 months ago (QRAID-1 disk mirroring by QNAP. Simply switched the drives, and back up and running in 15 mins (well within my own SLA :)). I sync this about once a month, keeping all new files on the laptop I rip them to until I've synced all my backups.

2nd, a full backup of my FLAC files, at home, in case 1 doesn't work.

3rd, offsite backup, as above, at my workplace.

I've been a DBA/Data Architect for over 30 years, and have defined D/R plans for many large organisations, I'm not about to scrimp when it comes to my treasured collection ;)
 
Bearing in mind the recent publicity surrounding the Cryptolocker ransomware scam, I hope you guys aren't keeping your back-up drives attached to your PC except when you're performing a back-up.
 
I think you're being a bit paranoid, but that's up to you. How about taking the spare drive into the office when necessary? Alternatively, how about keeping it in a nice dry box in the car? The chances of losing the house and the car have got to be close to zero.
 
I've been using CrashPlan for all my data since the Summer. Very inexpensive and, unusually, with limitless storage. Once setup you can ignore it as it runs in the background.
I also backup locally to two different NAS boxes and my main PC (my FLAC files are on an HP server running WHS 2011).


Mick
 
Also with crashplan you would be able to back-up to your relative's machine (FOC I think). Do the initial back up via USB HDD then just let it add the new stuff automatically (upload speed dependant of course).

Edit: FWIW I don't think you are being overly paranoid (although it's only music that you can re-rip rather than work, photos etc) but not sure you are doing it in an efficient manner.....
 
Are all these back-up drives dedicated to music only, or do they have other content as well? Also wondering if the drives are only operating during back-up or if they are given a run now and then to make sure the content isn't corrupted?
 
I'm really happy with the setup I've ended up with. I back up my whole iTunes library to Amazon Glacier. I use the Mac app "Arq" to watch my iTunes library. Anytime I add a new file, Arq sees the changes and sends only the changes up to Amazon.

I think I pay 4 dollars a month for a few hundred GB's. Completely transparent. Never think about it.
 
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