Where is a good place to put your offsite storage data?

[Snowmonkey]

Geez you guys must have good internet connections. How long does it take you to upload a couple of Terabytes?

[master]

Geez you guys must have good internet connections. How long does it take you to upload a couple of Terabytes?

 

The hosting services are gigabit speeds... so you are limited to your ISP speeds.

 

I've a 100 mbps line... so it takes a day via FTP. Pick a tool that lets you resume downloads, so even if its interrupted nothing is lost and you don't have to start over.

[Jud]

Geez you guys must have good internet connections. How long does it take you to upload a couple of Terabytes?

 

I've got an upload speed of about 1Mbps (small "b" - bit, not byte) in real life (my ISP says they've upgraded to twice that - if they have, they didn't tell my modem and router). At that speed, my initial upload of ~700GB of music took several weeks. Unlike other cloud storage I've tried, uploading to Amazon's service did not significantly affect the performance of other devices on my home network. We could still access the Web just fine on phones, iPad, and desktop, and the satellite TV home network for sharing recorded shows worked without a hitch as well.

 

This was without ExpanDrive, which I didn't know about at the time. Perhaps that might have helped speed things up a bit, perhaps not.

 

Further updates of one, two, or a few albums at a time have taken place rapidly enough to be pretty well unnoticeable.

[xsajohn]

Amazon Glacier via my Synology NAS. It trickle uploads over days, best pricing per GB. (Not the most intuitive interface though).

[blownsi]

Amazon Glacier via my Synology NAS. It trickle uploads over days, best pricing per GB. (Not the most intuitive interface though).

 

Perhaps if you have a smaller collection this is true but I'm seeing .007/gb so for a 1TB collection it would run about $7/mo making it more expensive than Amazon's unlimited service for $60/yr. Even worse for those of us who have multiple terabytes to backup.

[gldgate]

Just finished uploading 3000 files to AWS in 16 hours from my Synology NAS. My service is Xfinity and speedtest says I can upload at just over 12mbps. At $60/year "all you can eat" (after 90 days free trial) it really is a good value.

[designmule]

I've backed up via carbonite for a few years now. I like it. They throttle your bandwidth after you have so much data backed up. That's a bummer during the initial back up but now when I buy some new music, I pause the backup for a few hours while listening and the data has backed up fine by the morning.

 

I have to say the Amazon sounds appealing as its a little less expensive.

[gstanley75]

For offsite consider a 3rd drive then trade with a neighbor.

[joshua.ryan.larson]

I signed up for the Amazon Cloud Drive yesterday and dumped my FLAC folder into the App's to-be-uploaded window. I falsely assumed that my files would begin uploading as quickly as I am able to download files using my fairly-reliable Comcast internet service. Wrong-o...

 

By the looks of it, it'll be weeks for me to complete the initial upload as well. It reminds me of that Breaking Bad episode in which they have to trickle-charge the RV battery.

 

___

 

I am uploading using the Amazon Drive App. I bookmarked ExpanDrive for use when the initial upload is over. I was a gig into my upload before I accepted how slowly it was going, and I just didn't have the heart to stop it and try the upload with ExpanDrive, especially if the belief is that my ISP is the likely culprit for slow upload speeds. So, I can't report whether that'd be faster or not.

___

 

Nonetheless, I hope that this Amazon service is as solid as it sounds.

[skolis]

Nonetheless, I hope that this Amazon service is as solid as it sounds.

 

Hasn't been for me - esp. for large storage.

CrashPlan far far far better, faster, and same price.

Critically - for updates - it's definitely faster and better at "knowing" what to update vs checking every file.

YMMV

[tboooe]

Hasn't been for me - esp. for large storage.

CrashPlan far far far better, faster, and same price.

Critically - for updates - it's definitely faster and better at "knowing" what to update vs checking every file.

YMMV

I am going to look into Crashplan.

 

Question, how good is Crashplan at syncing? For example, if I simply change the name of a file or folder will it know or will it create another backup of the renamed file?

[Jud]

Hasn't been for me - esp. for large storage.

CrashPlan far far far better, faster, and same price.

Critically - for updates - it's definitely faster and better at "knowing" what to update vs checking every file.

YMMV

 

I switched from CrashPlan to Amazon and am very happy I did so.

 

The reasons:

 

- Initial upload was the same speed as Amazon. A critical difference is that when uploading to CrashPlan it brought all other Internet usage in the house to a halt (prioritization by the program?), while Amazon allowed normal Internet usage to go on during the upload.

 

- Flexibility of backup: If I need one album or even one track back from Amazon to replace something that's been corrupted I can just download it. CrashPlan stores the entire backup in a compressed format from which I couldn't figure out how or whether it was possible to download individual albums or tracks. If you need to download the entire backup there's a substantial charge from CrashPlan, whereas I believe it's free on Amazon.

 

All this being said, CrashPlan is a good service - I just preferred Amazon for the reasons above.

[kennyb123]

- Flexibility of backup: If I need one album or even one track back from Amazon to replace something that's been corrupted I can just download it. CrashPlan stores the entire backup in a compressed format from which I couldn't figure out how or whether it was possible to download individual albums or tracks. If you need to download the entire backup there's a substantial charge from CrashPlan, whereas I believe it's free on Amazon.

 

I've been easily able to restore single files from my CrashPlan backup.

 

Here's a view from their iOS app of a folder of music stored on CrashPlan:

 

[skolis]

I switched from CrashPlan to Amazon and am very happy I did so.

 

The reasons:

 

- Initial upload was the same speed as Amazon. A critical difference is that when uploading to CrashPlan it brought all other Internet usage in the house to a halt (prioritization by the program?), while Amazon allowed normal Internet usage to go on during the upload.

 

- Flexibility of backup: If I need one album or even one track back from Amazon to replace something that's been corrupted I can just download it. CrashPlan stores the entire backup in a compressed format from which I couldn't figure out how or whether it was possible to download individual albums or tracks. If you need to download the entire backup there's a substantial charge from CrashPlan, whereas I believe it's free on Amazon.

 

All this being said, CrashPlan is a good service - I just preferred Amazon for the reasons above.

 

Interesting..... crashplan runs in the background for me - and while it runs, I'm on my laptop ( writing this) streaming music, etc.

 

Re: the download - I'm able to download single tracks: see example below:

 

 

 

 

However.... you definitely have my attention with the cost - that I will investigate.

 

I have been running Timemachine; CrashPlan and Amazon Cloud side by side (testing comparing ) and for me , CP is the hands down winner - but the download cost - that I have to investigate.

[skolis]

If you need to download the entire backup there's a substantial charge from CrashPlan, whereas I believe it's free on Amazon.

 

Just found this from CrashPlan site:

"Truly Unlimited

CrashPlan does not limit the size of your backup and we won't throttle your upload speeds. Furthermore, if you have a subscription to CrashPlan Central, we don't care if you're backing up 5 GB or 5 TB, and we don't place limits on individual file sizes. Plus, we’ll never charge you extra to restore your files. "

 

Some links that may be of interest re: CP:

 

CrashPlan Review (Updated March 2016)

 

Online Backup Comparison Chart (Valid March 2016)

 

Unlimited Online Backup: A Price Comparison (March 2016)

[TommyBoy]

interesting thread, some of us live in areas with limited online speed,

so any kind of online storage or backup service of many large files are tottally out of the question.

here is what I do :

once a month I take a harddrive to my work, and hide it in my office, under the roof plates !

in many offices they are just loose plates, try and lift them up, hide stuff, and done.

only I know it is there, (and now also you)

so in case of a theif sneek in there, he will newer ever find it :-)

this is many times safer over a safe :-) since bad people will assume, stuff of value is hidden inside a safe.

 

when I die, no one will know about the hidden harddrives, maybe when they take down the house,

someone will find all my files as a gift in 100 years,

and at that time no one will know how to read data from that old unit, so I care not :-)

[JJinPDX]

NAS backs up to a USB WD external drive. Every week I swap that drive with another that was out at my hangar being used by the music server there. Also out at the hangar are all my CD's.

 

Not a perfect system, but all my ripped and HD downloads are eventually on three physical locations. Plus, an audiophile buddy and I periodically update each other's music library, and he backs his up. So make that five locations.

[Angular Mo]

I am my neighbor' disaster recovery site, we are very close friends. He had been a technophobe; now he is a geekazoid, I love it!

(Took me two weeks to convince him that ripping to a harddrive, then copying to a Passport external drive, then copying to the NAS he installed on his wife's computer was insane.)

 

I started an FTP to his QNAP NAS a month ago he began the process of ripping 4000 titles.

 

I update it daily onto an external hard-drive. Not much on it that I don't have on Tidal.

[joshua.ryan.larson]

Ok, I finished uploading 1.8 TB of data to Amazon Cloud Drive. I began on March 3, and the last upload completed on April 8. I live in a major metro area with fast Comcast internet. This struck me as slow as F, but, now that it's done, la di da.

 

Ok... here are a couple blips about my experiences so far.

 

The actual Amazon Cloud Drive PC application does not allow any playback, and it doesn't allow you to view your files in their folder structure. It is strictly for uploading folders and downloading folders. I didn't even see a way to download an individual file with the program.

 

With that, I went to the Amazon Cloud Drive website. The website is very quick and easy to use, but there was one significant negative. Fortunately, I can log in and scroll through my folders of FLAC files just as quickly as if the folders were on my desktop, and I can download any individual FILE that I want to download very quickly. But, the negative is that I don't appear to be able to play/stream any files via the web browser. I didn't anticipate the inability to stream. I was hoping that, when I am at work or my studio, I could play individual tracks, just like playing them off of my home computer, iPod, or whatever. In fact, my complete assumption is that any "cloud drive" would allow this. Nope. So, that's not cool.

 

The Android phone app is also pretty quick, and I was pleasantly surprised when I could scroll through my folders very quickly and then, when I clicked on a file, it actually streamed on my phone. That was great. The problem, however, is that the app doesn't allow you to select entire folders or multiple files to play. So, to play music on my phone, I need to select a new song every time the prior song ends. Since I mostly listen to jazz or classical music (where tracks are typically at least six minutes long), that wasn't so bad. I was doing an outside project and was streaming over my phone. Playback WAS great, BUT I had to pick up my phone when each song was over. If I just listened to pop music with much shorter tracks, that would totally not work.

 

I just downloaded ExpanDrive to see if I can stream on a PC with it, but I haven't used it yet because I see that the program is not free. It's just a free trial, and a single license costs as much a year of Amazon Cloud Drive. So, I don't really want to throw down for that at this point. I'll probably download it on a different computer just to see how long the trial period lasts.

 

I'll keep messing around with it, but Amazon Cloud Drive isn't nearly as useful to me as a $60/year Dropbox-style interface would be. Obviously, Dropbox, Google, and Microsoft don't offer the unlimited-storage option for $60/year like Amazon. But, right now, if playback from the cloud drive is this impossible, I'm not exactly getting what I thought I was paying for.

 

Lastly, I imagine that, if I lost my physical hard drives, I will be mighty happy that I have my data stored on Amazon's presumably safe servers. I just hope that, in the event that I would need to download my files to make myself whole again, it wouldn't take 35 freaking days!

[AudioDoctor]

I use a Safety Deposit Box and an offsite system halfway across the country myself. Worked out a reciprocal agreement with a friend back home in PA, I host his, he hosts mine.

 

Storage units have to be air conditioned to protect media and you always have the worry about the unit next door being used as a meth lab these days. (*sigh*)

 

I put my Meth Lab way out in the woods away from everyone!

[master]

But, the negative is that I don't appear to be able to play/stream any files via the web browser. I didn't anticipate the inability to stream. I was hoping that, when I am at work or my studio, I could play individual tracks, just like playing them off of my home computer, iPod, or whatever. In fact, my complete assumption is that any "cloud drive" would allow this. Nope. So, that's not cool.

 

Amazon is strictly for backups.

 

For out of home streaming, Plex on a PC is excellent.

 

Or a NAS.

 

If you don't want to use a PC or a NAS then a $35 Raspberry Pi with the likes of Nimbus, Tonido, etc. is a perfect fit too.

[AudioDoctor]

Ok, I finished uploading 1.8 TB of data to Amazon Cloud Drive. I began on March 3, and the last upload completed on April 8. I live in a major metro area with fast Comcast internet. This struck me as slow as F, but, now that it's done, la di da.

 

Ok... here are a couple blips about my experiences so far.

 

The actual Amazon Cloud Drive PC application does not allow any playback, and it doesn't allow you to view your files in their folder structure. It is strictly for uploading folders and downloading folders. I didn't even see a way to download an individual file with the program.

 

With that, I went to the Amazon Cloud Drive website. The website is very quick and easy to use, but there was one significant negative. Fortunately, I can log in and scroll through my folders of FLAC files just as quickly as if the folders were on my desktop, and I can download any individual FILE that I want to download very quickly. But, the negative is that I don't appear to be able to play/stream any files via the web browser. I didn't anticipate the inability to stream. I was hoping that, when I am at work or my studio, I could play individual tracks, just like playing them off of my home computer, iPod, or whatever. In fact, my complete assumption is that any "cloud drive" would allow this. Nope. So, that's not cool.

 

The Android phone app is also pretty quick, and I was pleasantly surprised when I could scroll through my folders very quickly and then, when I clicked on a file, it actually streamed on my phone. That was great. The problem, however, is that the app doesn't allow you to select entire folders or multiple files to play. So, to play music on my phone, I need to select a new song every time the prior song ends. Since I mostly listen to jazz or classical music (where tracks are typically at least six minutes long), that wasn't so bad. I was doing an outside project and was streaming over my phone. Playback WAS great, BUT I had to pick up my phone when each song was over. If I just listened to pop music with much shorter tracks, that would totally not work.

 

I just downloaded ExpanDrive to see if I can stream on a PC with it, but I haven't used it yet because I see that the program is not free. It's just a free trial, and a single license costs as much a year of Amazon Cloud Drive. So, I don't really want to throw down for that at this point. I'll probably download it on a different computer just to see how long the trial period lasts.

 

I'll keep messing around with it, but Amazon Cloud Drive isn't nearly as useful to me as a $60/year Dropbox-style interface would be. Obviously, Dropbox, Google, and Microsoft don't offer the unlimited-storage option for $60/year like Amazon. But, right now, if playback from the cloud drive is this impossible, I'm not exactly getting what I thought I was paying for.

 

Lastly, I imagine that, if I lost my physical hard drives, I will be mighty happy that I have my data stored on Amazon's presumably safe servers. I just hope that, in the event that I would need to download my files to make myself whole again, it wouldn't take 35 freaking days!

 

I think that to get playback from the cloud as you are envisioning would require your own NAS with the correct software on it.

[Sal1950]

Lastly, I imagine that, if I lost my physical hard drives, I will be mighty happy that I have my data stored on Amazon's presumably safe servers. I just hope that, in the event that I would need to download my files to make myself whole again, it wouldn't take 35 freaking days!

 

Speeds are most likely being limited by your ISP Comcast. Download speeds will be much higher than uploads, amount depending on your plan. Run a speed test to see what your getting on both sides.

Speedtest.net by Ookla - The Global Broadband Speed Test

[Sal1950]

I backup to 2 separate external HD's every couple of weeks, only my music and photos. Looking at the cloud services, would rather be able to just run a simple rsync command every so often or setup a cron job to do it but I think I'd need a hosting service / ftp for that?

[master]

I backup to 2 separate external HD's every couple of weeks, only my music and photos. Looking at the cloud services, would rather be able to just run a simple rsync command every so often or setup a cron job to do it but I think I'd need a hosting service / ftp for that?

 

Hosting services will be fine, but don't rely only on them. Not exactly known for timely backups or even redundancy. Cloud services like DropBox, Amazon Cloud are more secure.