Backing up the media files. What are you doing to safeguard your music?

[Alobar]

If you are building a media library you probably are doing something to back up this work in case something catastrophic goes wrong, or at least thinking about it. I avoided it for a while, telling myself I have all the CD's and vinyl saved out in the shed, but realizing the amount of work that continually goes into my ever evolving library, from fine tuning and adding the metadata to ripping vinyl and the shear amount of work that entails.

Eventually it will happen, something will go wrong, and denying Murphy and his laws will only postpone the inevitable.

Last year I decided to spend a little audio funds and get All my music files off my pc and onto a NAS drive. That was a step, but to complete it I also bought a 1 tb USB drive in order to back up my music.

At first I just copied it all over to the USB drive, and then copied new stuff added on a monthly basis but this had its problems too. For one thing I wasn't disciplined enough to always remember to add the new stuff to the backup every month and even then I was not backing up the metadata changes on the music I already added to the backup months ago. Everything from star rating to mood etc gets changed from time to time on my library.

I needed backup software.

What I found was a program called SyncBack SE. This program makes it simple to back up everything I have added, or changed with just a couple mouse clicks. I set it up to back up the music folder on the NAS drive by mirroring it to the USB drive. It sniffs out any change to all the files on my NAS and compares to what is already on the backup drive and then backs it up, changes, additions deletions. I don't need to think about it.

So that said, what does everyone else do to back up the work? RAID? Cloud? off site? Is it even important, or have you considered it yet?

 

[sKiZo]

Like most everyone here ... not enough ...

I've been using Acronis True Image to a couple WD My Passport USB drives, but the software sucks. Not all that intuitive, and not all that sure I'd ever get a good restore if I needed it. Have considered Acronis Backup as that's supposed to be more of a set it and forget it thing, but I'll have to look into the SynchBackSE ...

PS - does that allow you to restore to a different computer? That kinda bit me in the backside a while back when I upgraded my HTPC and the backup wouldn't run properly due to the hardware changes. I've since gone to separate drives for software and data, which should make things a lot easier.

 

[Yamaki]

I've had a Synology D415+ NAS in place for almost 3 years. It has four bays and four 2TB solid state Samsung drives. Drive 1 is backed up by Drive 2. Drives 3 & 4 are sitting in reserve and can be initiated to have D3 start recording and D4 ready to back up D3 if and when I need more space.

A backup drive can be hot swapped into any position (2 to 1, 4 to 3) and rebooted, picking up where it left off.

 

[Alobar]

Like most everyone here ... not enough ...

I've been using Acronis True Image to a couple WD My Passport USB drives, but the software sucks. Not all that intuitive, and not all that sure I'd ever get a good restore if I needed it. Have considered Acronis Backup as that's supposed to be more of a set it and forget it thing, but I'll have to look into the SynchBackSE ...

I haven't tried other backup software solutions, but what I find with SyncBack is that once you create a back up and set it up as a mirror, when you go to run that backup (this can be scheduled, or just manual) it scans both drives for changes and discrepancies and with mirroring, it makes the main drive (the one being backed up) the master and all the changes occur only to backup drive. After it scans it pulls up a list of discrepancies between the drives, showing both versions and exactly what is going to happen when you click on run.

If you are like me, you do some changing to the metadata as you are playing music. SyncBack finds all these changes, and when you hit RUN after the initial scan it does what it showed you it was going to do in the scan, and when it is done your backup "Music" folder will contain, right down to the byte exactly what the drive being backed up has. That is your assurance it is identical.

Should you decide to delete some music from your music drive, SyncBack will warn you that it is going to be deleting files from the previously backed up version to satisfy the mirror requirement.

It really works good, and because it is so damn easy I find I back up a lot more than if it is something I have to be more involved in.. Too easy to put off doing a messy backup scheme!

 

[KevinJS]

The cold fact is that all digital media will fail over time. I was one of the clever ones who thought that music had become free for the taking thanks to Usenet, Napster and BitTorrent. Since those days, I've discovered that there is a huge amount of work involved in preserving digital media, to the extent that I've decided to limit my music collecting to physical media. IMO, the ONLY format that will survive without a horrific amount of intervention is the vinyl disk. CD may have an extended life, but I've heard enough horror stories about failing disks which lead me to believe that the jury is still out on that one. Whether using HDD or SSD, your digital files are destined to bite the dust as soon as you are no longer around to manage them.

 

[elcoholic]

My master FLAC & ALAC audio library is on my MacBook Pro. I back my MBP to a USB drive using Time Machine. I also have my FLAC library cloned on a Mac Mini dedicated music server using Carbon Copy Cloner. I update the Mac Mini with CCC when I make changes to the master. My 3rd backup would be a pair of iPods giving me 240gB for most of the ALAC files.

 

[Alobar]

The cold fact is that all digital media will fail over time. I was one of the clever ones who thought that music had become free for the taking thanks to Usenet, Napster and BitTorrent. Since those days, I've discovered that there is a huge amount of work involved in preserving digital media, to the extent that I've decided to limit my music collecting to physical media. IMO, the ONLY format that will survive without a horrific amount of intervention is the vinyl disk. CD may have an extended life, but I've heard enough horror stories about failing disks which lead me to believe that the jury is still out on that one. Whether using HDD or SSD, your digital files are destined to bite the dust as soon as you are no longer around to manage them.

While this is straying from the topic I will just answer that I don't believe what you are saying has to be the case, and is really the very reason for this thread. Sure, if you don't do a backup from time to time, eventually it will occur, but with just 3 mouse clicks I can back up my music onto another drive, thus virtually eliminating the possibility of any sort of corrupted files or HD failure.

I can assume that you are just spinning physical media, and that is all well and good, but this thread is located in the PC and music servers sub forum and thus isn't covering whether it is a smart idea or not to store music on hard drives.. We are already here and find the advantages of HD servers outstrip any sort of reliability advantage physical media has to offer.

 

[elcoholic]

The cold fact is that all digital media will fail over time. I was one of the clever ones who thought that music had become free for the taking thanks to Usenet, Napster and BitTorrent. Since those days, I've discovered that there is a huge amount of work involved in preserving digital media, to the extent that I've decided to limit my music collecting to physical media. IMO, the ONLY format that will survive without a horrific amount of intervention is the vinyl disk. CD may have an extended life, but I've heard enough horror stories about failing disks which lead me to believe that the jury is still out on that one. Whether using HDD or SSD, your digital files are destined to bite the dust as soon as you are no longer around to manage them.

Mostly I add vinyl and occasionally a CD to my library. 95% of my digital music is CD rips and I have the CD’s. I hardly ever play CD’s. I haven’t seen any CD rot but my CD’s never baked on a 300* dashboard. As you say the jury is still out on CD longevity. I agree a digital music collection doesn’t maintain itself and it takes effort to care for.

 

[Alobar]

I've had a Synology D415+ NAS in place for almost 3 years. It has four bays and four 2TB solid state Samsung drives. Drive 1 is backed up by Drive 2. Drives 3 & 4 are sitting in reserve and can be initiated to have D3 start recording and D4 ready to back up D3 if and when I need more space.

A backup drive can be hot swapped into any position (2 to 1, 4 to 3) and rebooted, picking up where it left off.

I nearly went with something similar, and it certainly has the advantage of being constantly being backed up but I was too cheap to get a more expensive multi drive NAS. What I have, while lacking some advantages also has a few of its own. I can unplug the USB drive, grab my DAC, and RPi and little JBL active speakers and head up to the cabin, or the camper or even just a hotel and have all my music there. Also I can keep the USB offsite from the NAS if I want although admittedly it would be just as easy to take the NAS offsite too for security, but then again having all the tunes in one place has its risks too..

 

[KevinJS]

While this is straying from the topic I will just answer that I don't believe what you are saying has to be the case, and is really the very reason for this thread. Sure, if you don't do a backup from time to time, eventually it will occur, but with just 3 mouse clicks I can back up my music onto another drive, thus virtually eliminating the possibility of any sort of corrupted files or HD failure.

I can assume that you are just spinning physical media, and that is all well and good, but this thread is located in the PC and music servers sub forum and thus isn't covering whether it is a smart idea or not to store music on hard drives.. We are already here and find the advantages of HD servers outstrip any sort of reliability advantage physical media has to offer.

Nope. I have a vast amount of music on HDD/SSD and have done everything I can to preserve it. Part of the reason for spending hours doing rips is in the hope that one day I can transfer the lot onto a reliable digital media that I can trust more than the CD from which the rips came. My favoured method of playing music is actually Foobar2000. I find it the most convenient and user-friendly method (after initial setup). I'm also one of those rare characters that doesn't detest iTunes. I quite like it actually.

 

[Alobar]

Nope. I have a vast amount of music on HDD/SSD and have done everything I can to preserve it. Part of the reason for spending hours doing rips is in the hope that one day I can transfer the lot onto a reliable digital media that I can trust more than the CD from which the rips came. My favoured method of playing music is actually Foobar2000. I find it the most convenient and user-friendly method (after initial setup). I'm also one of those rare characters that doesn't detest iTunes. I quite like it actually.

Ok, I apologize, you are one of us!

IMO, the ONLY format that will survive without a horrific amount of intervention is the vinyl disk.

I fully understand the work that goes into this. Ripping CD's isn't bad, but vinyl is a whole nother box of worms! Anyone who has spent time with Audacity will likely say the same thing. Still I do it from time to time. What I don't understand is why you seem to be saying that maintaining the media on drives is so difficult? A $65 1 or even 2TB USB drive will back up thousands of FLAC files and with backup software it is as easy as tying your shoe laces to keep it up to date and protected.

 

[KevinJS]

Ok, I apologize, you are one of us!

I fully understand the work that goes into this. Ripping CD's isn't bad, but vinyl is a whole nother box of worms! Anyone who has spent time with Audacity will likely say the same thing. Still I do it from time to time. What I don't understand is why you seem to be saying that maintaining the media on drives is so difficult? A $65 1 or even 2TB USB drive will back up thousands of FLAC files and with backup software it is as easy as tying your shoe laces to keep it up to date and protected.

What I'm saying is that without the intervention of the person who understands the value of the digital files, they will soon disappear. Not that it's really any different for vinyl disks. If my son doesn't appreciate vinyl in the same way I do, my 50 year old LPs are destined for garage sales or the landfill. We have discussed this to some length on the music threads and realized that we may be a dying breed. Streaming, which amounts to giving a third party control over your music collection, may be the future, where companies pay employees to look after the files, a process which is transparent to the end user. And even then, there are difficulties. Look at the way today's next big thing disappears without trace. Who would have thought just a few years ago that MySpace could disappear without trace? but there is a whole new generation of Facebook and Twitter users who never heard of it.

Perhaps I'm looking a bit further than the original post asked, ie, beyond my own lifespan, but I'm sure you see my point.

 

[Alobar]

What I'm saying is that without the intervention of the person who understands the value of the digital files, they will soon disappear. Not that it's really any different for vinyl disks. If my son doesn't appreciate vinyl in the same way I do, my 50 year old LPs are destined for garage sales or the landfill. We have discussed this to some length on the music threads and realized that we may be a dying breed. Streaming, which amounts to giving a third party control over your music collection, may be the future, where companies pay employees to look after the files, a process which is transparent to the end user. And even then, there are difficulties. Look at the way today's next big thing disappears without trace. Who would have thought just a few years ago that MySpace could disappear without trace? but there is a whole new generation of Facebook and Twitter users who never heard of it.

Perhaps I'm looking a bit further than the original post asked, ie, beyond my own lifespan, but I'm sure you see my point.

Yeah I get that completely.. I figure when it is my time to exit my stereo gear and CD/vinyl will be trucked off to the dump, and the drives will maybe survive as something to put games on after the music is reformatted off from there.. No amount of backups will survive the huge generational shifts of the 21st century!

 

[KevinJS]

Yeah I get that completely.. I figure when it is my time to exit my stereo gear and CD/vinyl will be trucked off to the dump, and the drives will maybe survive as something to put games on after the music is reformatted off from there.. No amount of backups will survive the huge generational shifts of the 21st century!

Jeez. I was hoping to make a worthwhile contribution to a thread, but ended up thread-crapping in the worst way possible. Hey. We are still alive, and as long as that is the case, the sounds will continue.



We can spend the rest of our time teaching the next generation the value of REAL music, to their eternal benefit.

 

[Alobar]

Jeez. I was hoping to make a worthwhile contribution to a thread, but ended up thread-crapping in the worst way possible. Hey. We are still alive, and as long as that is the case, the sounds will continue.



We can spend the rest of our time teaching the next generation the value of REAL music, to their eternal benefit.

It's all good..
Change is the only constant in the universe. .

 

[restorer-john]

There will always be a market and demand for physical media, be it vinyl, CD or even tape. Whether that demand outstrips supply or not will be the determining factor on how much goes to the landfills. HDDs/Flash and SSDs will all end up in landfills quite quickly IMO. How many 35 year old HDDs do you have? I see a big digital stored music collection as more trouble than it's worth as time goes on- moving it from one device to another, one NAS to another, a cloud to another cloud etc.

I bought a Synology 5 bay NAS with 10+TB of RAID storage on it about 6 years ago and decided it simply wasn't worth my time putting my music on it. It sits behind the flat panel TV, gathering dust and hasn't been connected to my network for years. I use a smaller 1.5TB NAS for movies, pictures and storage of files. It has no music on it.

I have no intention of backing up my collection as it is already as secure as it possibly can be. It is distributed- no chance of a catastrophic failure, there are multiples of titles I really like, it is not susceptible to deterioration, offers superb fidelity and is playable on a vast array of existing hardware.

It is Compact Disc.

 

[Alobar]

I keep all my CDs in an outbuilding on my property which would survive should a fire take out the house. It is a form of backup i hope never to have to use however.

I realize there are many here on AK that will have nothing to do with music storage on a hard drive, and that is fine, but I will remind those who don't care about music servers that this thread is in the PC and music server forum and not the other forums out there like general audio discussion. It not meant to debate the merits of having or not having a server but rather a thread about backing one up.

 

[mcyuke]

I have my music library of close to 2TB of lossless files in three different locations in the house.

I have a folder on my main computer on a 6TB drive that I use as my daily play drive along with a copy of that folder on my server that has some redundancy features of its own.

I also just bought at a thrift shop a brand new factory sealed 2017 model 2TB 2.5" USB3.0 Seagate hard drive for $3.99CAD with over a year of warranty left!
I've moved a copy of the folder over to that drive in case I want to bring my library elsewhere or if I need to leave the house for other reasons.

 

[Paddy Garcia]

I bought an Asustor 3202 NAS/media server last year to to solve just this problem. This box connects to the TV and stereo, and serves content to other devices around the house. Laptops are set to backup to the NAS.

It uses a 2 drive array, and it's about time to swap in a new one drive so I can put one away in cold storage.

 

[beanoil]

Old school here.
1TB drive has master, 2 TB USB drive has a copy, and another 2TB USB has a copy off site.
Only music and important files though, I have loaded Windblows or Linux so many times that I just don't mind anymore. While Linux is lightning quick to load, Windows has played major catch up with W10. From USB, I can have a Win 10 box up and ready to roll in about 20 minutes.
A NAS and more automated procedure is on my tadoo list though.