There are machines like the Brennan that are supposed to be easy to use:
https://www.brennan.co.uk/
I've no experience of this but perhaps others have.
Finally Thinking of Going Digital!
- Thread starter MVJ
- Start date
There are machines like the Brennan that are supposed to be easy to use:
https://www.brennan.co.uk/
I've no experience of this but perhaps others have.
onlyconnect
pfm Member
The options in essence are either to go for a pre-packaged solution from one of the big names, or to put one together yourself with Raspberry Pi/Synology/DAC or similar. The more DIY solutions tend to be more flexible as well as much better value, and sound just as good. But setup is that bit trickier.
Tim
Tim
I like to have control over my folder hierarchy and backup strategy, so I'm doing RPi(s) with NAS setup.
I'd suggest getting a 2 drive NAS with each drive being large enough to hold your whole library. Then run the NAS with RAID1 (mirroring). When a drive goes bad you can turn off the NAS, replace the drive, and it will rebuild the mirror when you turn it on. For an easy off-site backup I have the NAS do once per day one way syncs to a cloud account. But backing up to an external drive periodically would work well too.
Finally, on the NAS I make sure to make all users (e.g. Volumio) read only except one that has write permission (me) for managing content.
John_73
pfm Member
What’s a good NAS make? I already have two 1TB drives. One SSD which I use with a Pi3 and Moode, the other a 1TB HDD I use to keep as a backup. Would be handy to setup a NAS and saving the hassle of having to keep unplugging drives to make backups etc. Is setting up a RAID1 system easy? Cheers.
mattgbell
Help the elderly and unwell!
The two most popular brands seem to be Synology and Qnap. You can either buy them with drives pre-installed or try to find the drives a bit cheaper separately.
RAID1 should be extremely easy to set up with either brand.
If you don't fancy a RAID1 config, you could leave your 1TB USB drive permanently plugged in to the NAS and do back up that way, using a freeware sync program like SyncBack. That would mean you'd only need one drive in the NAS, which would also save you a bob or two.
I've got nothing against RAID configs in particular, but in general I'm not a fan of automated back-up for purposes such as this. Partly this is because I'm so terrified of losing any of my work-related files that I've always backed them up manually every day or two. And partly because I prefer to have manual control over the back-up, so as to prevent e.g. file duplication before it happens. I look at it like this: every time I rip a CD and copy it to the NAS drive, I also copy the ripped files to my back-up disk, which takes an extra few seconds. The every couple of weeks I back the whole lot up to a third drive, which I keep at another location.
In the end, back-up is all about redundancy and routine. So long as you have plenty of redundancy and a well-grooved routine, it doesn't matter much how you do it.
I used to go through something like this but then I ended up with drawers of burnt DVDs, old HDDs, etc. and trying to reconcile them was a PITA. For me, RAID1 plus a cloud backup is all I need.
Setting up RAID1 means the two disks are identical, so you would be able to, for example, shut down the NAS, take the disks to two different computers, mount them, and see an identical filesystem. There is no syncing involved in RAID1, the same writes, reads, deletes are committed to both drives simultaneously.
Next, using a good sync implementation (like the one Synology offers) will do an initial sync, and from then on will only sync changes. If you treat the sync target as read only (which you should), then they will not become inconsistent. I'm actually using the Synology sync tool to do a unidirectional sync to a Google Drive folder, so that's my protection in case the house burns down or whatever.
I went through this exercise earlier this year and ended buying an empty Synology DS218j, and then two 2TB Western Digital RED disks. The RED series are intended for NAS use. It was a bit cheaper at the time to buy it all separately, but you'd save yourself an hour or so buying one already built and configured.
mattgbell
Help the elderly and unwell!
Sure, that will be excellent, and a solution using SyncBack will do exactly the same (and save the OP money).
I have an allergy to cloud storage which I picked up from Jon Honeyball of PCPro. It's not clear that cloud storage solutions give any legal recourse if they delete all your files or arbitrarily or accidentally delete your account. Nor is it clear under which legal jurisdiction they sit. Or whether you even own the files. There's no way I'd entrust the back-up of a whole music library to Google or iCloud or whoever. There are many cases of people losing all their cloud-stored files. OK, it's very unlikely to happen to Joe Bloggs, but the whole point of a solid back-up routine is to turn 'very unlikely' into 'vanishingly unlikely'.
I think it's vanishingly unlikely you'd lose your two mirrored drives plus your cloud backup at the same time. I'd say it's quite a bit more likely you'd lose all your local backups at once. Fire, flood, theft. But still, if that happens you probably have more to worry about than your music archive.
Whatsisnaim
pfm Member
If I was buying a NAS now, I would probably go for a QNAP or Synology running Asset. WD Red drives are the tried and tested choice.
It certainly makes sense to have two drives, but to my mind, it makes no sense at all to have them in the same enclosure. If the NAS fails, you can lose all the data on both drives, and you have no protection against fire, flood, theft etc. My solution is to run two single drive NAS, with one automatically backing up to the other. Both drives run a UPNP server, so if one fails, the other can immediately take over.
mattgbell
Help the elderly and unwell!
That’s why I keep two remote back-ups at two different locations.
Paranoid? Yes. Safe? 100%.
MVJ
madvinyljunkie,Professional Plonker & PFM Member
A big "THANK YOU" To everyone who has taken the trouble to write their thoughts on this thread I have found it all very useful in deciding what to do
After long discussions with my son Anthony I/we have decided that I should dip my toe into streaming to see how it goes. I have bought a Sonos Connect which will be here today ready for me to try not decided what platform to use but Anthony informed me most of them do a free trial period so I'll try some before settling on what I like the best. As I'm a bit of a luddite when it comes to tech consideration of how easy they are accessed & user friendly they are
as well as sound quality provided by them will be of paramount importance for me.
The ripping of my CD's is on hold for now & my player & cds will remain in situ. As I progress & discover what music I have/like is out there via the streamer I can then decide what to do.
It is all very exciting and I look forward to my new adventure discovering new artists and music in particular other music from artists I already have in my collection.
Thanks Steve.
After long discussions with my son Anthony I/we have decided that I should dip my toe into streaming to see how it goes. I have bought a Sonos Connect which will be here today ready for me to try not decided what platform to use but Anthony informed me most of them do a free trial period so I'll try some before settling on what I like the best. As I'm a bit of a luddite when it comes to tech consideration of how easy they are accessed & user friendly they are
as well as sound quality provided by them will be of paramount importance for me.
The ripping of my CD's is on hold for now & my player & cds will remain in situ. As I progress & discover what music I have/like is out there via the streamer I can then decide what to do.
It is all very exciting and I look forward to my new adventure discovering new artists and music in particular other music from artists I already have in my collection.
Thanks Steve.
MVJ
madvinyljunkie,Professional Plonker & PFM Member
Well the Sonos Connect arrived & I opened it with great trepidation once I read the quick start guide I got stuck in and guess what?? It was up and running with a 30 day free trial of Tidal the hifi version in about 15 minutes well chuffed!
Apart from being impressed with the ease of set up so far I'm finding it very interesting and enjoying looking around Tidal listening to music I know well to get used to the whole process The quality is good to my ears & not found anything negative at all so all good so far.
once I read the quick start guide I got stuck in and guess what?? It was up and running with a 30 day free trial of Tidal the hifi version in about 15 minutes well chuffed!Apart from being impressed with the ease of set up so far I'm finding it very interesting and enjoying looking around Tidal listening to music I know well to get used to the whole process The quality is good to my ears & not found anything negative at all so all good so far.
