Raid 0 or or store in hard disc

[hols]

I plan to backup my music files. So one set is in NAS running Raid 5 for playing. And I want to keep another set for backup. Can I ask for opinion whether I should store it in hard discs and only run them every 3 months or so or is it better to keep it in another NAS running Raid 0 and run the hard discs all the time? Which way can the files be kept better? I am not considering another set in Raid 5. Thanks.

[Audio_ELF]

The prime factor of a backup is something which you are (close to 100%) sure will be readable in an emergency. Relying on another NAS with its complexity of RAID.

 

Use individual drives; formatted to a simple filing system: FAT / NTFS or HFS if you use Macs so long as its supported by both the NAS *and* your main computer systems thats good.

 

(All IME of course)

[Axiom05]

The prime factor of a backup is something which you are (close to 100%) sure will be readable in an emergency. Relying on another NAS with its complexity of RAID.

 

Use individual drives; formatted to a simple filing system: FAT / NTFS or HFS if you use Macs so long as its supported by both the NAS *and* your main computer systems thats good.

 

(All IME of course)

 

I agree. I use a portable drive attached to my Synology NAS that I manually back-up to once a week or so. This is only one of the back-up strategies that I employ.

[ericuco]

For true backup, you need to keep at least one copy offsite (bank, neighbor, work, etc.) to guard against theft (someone steals your NAS even with Raid, your music is GONE, GONE, GONE) and disaster such as fire.

 

I do a weekly backup of my NAS to one of two USB drives. One drive is obvious attached to the NAS and the other is kept at work. About once a month I swap out the drives so at worse case I lose a month worth of music.

 

Whenever I rip a CD or purchase music on-line, I save everything to a third USB drive before moving the files to my NAS. So in total, I have four copies of my music. HDD are dirt cheap so why not.

[Axiom05]

For true backup, you need to keep at least one copy offsite (bank, neighbor, work, etc.) to guard against theft (someone steals your NAS even with Raid, your music is GONE, GONE, GONE) and disaster such as fire.

 

I do a weekly backup of my NAS to one of two USB drives. One drive is obvious attached to the NAS and the other is kept at work. About once a month I swap out the drives so at worse case I lose a month worth of music.

 

Whenever I rip a CD or purchase music on-line, I save everything to a third USB drive before moving the files to my NAS. So in total, I have four copies of my music. HDD are dirt cheap so why not.

 

Agree, great advice. I keep three independent copies of my music library. It is a pain when you have to redo tags three times but worth it.

[mansr]

I back up my music to Amazon cloud drive. $60 per year for unlimited storage.

[Jud]

I back up my music to Amazon cloud drive. $60 per year for unlimited storage.

 

Same.

 

Two 4TB HDDs, one upstairs, one downstairs, each with a full copy; a bunch of 128GB SD cards which together have a third copy and which I take with me when I travel; and Amazon.

[astrotoy]

I am very interested in cloud storage with Amazon. I have a very large collection, about 40TB which is backed up multiple times, including several 8TB HD in the bank. A $60 annual unlimited storage sounds very attractive. However, I am concerned about the uploading times for 40TB. I do have Comcast Business, but I did a rough calculation that it would take many months, maybe close to a year to do a complete back up. Any experience anyone?

 

Thanks, Larry

[mansr]

I am very interested in cloud storage with Amazon. I have a very large collection, about 40TB which is backed up multiple times, including several 8TB HD in the bank. A $60 annual unlimited storage sounds very attractive. However, I am concerned about the uploading times for 40TB. I do have Comcast Business, but I did a rough calculation that it would take many months, maybe close to a year to do a complete back up. Any experience anyone?

 

Thanks, Larry

You could just let it take however long it takes. You'll be no worse off than now while waiting.

[wwaldmanfan]

I am very interested in cloud storage with Amazon. I have a very large collection, about 40TB which is backed up multiple times, including several 8TB HD in the bank. A $60 annual unlimited storage sounds very attractive. However, I am concerned about the uploading times for 40TB. I do have Comcast Business, but I did a rough calculation that it would take many months, maybe close to a year to do a complete back up. Any experience anyone?

 

Thanks, Larry

 

#1 I guess I'm a luddite, but I don't travel much, so I personally wouldn't want to rely on an internet connection to access my own music library. I would think that your physical backups are probably secure enough in a bank safety deposit box, in addition to the ones you have at home.

#2 How did you manage to amass such an enormous music library? What is that, 50,000 albums?

#3 What percentage of your collection have you listened to in the last year or so? Just curious...

[astrotoy]

#1 I guess I'm a luddite, but I don't travel much, so I personally wouldn't want to rely on an internet connection to access my own music library. I would think that your physical backups are probably secure enough in a bank safety deposit box, in addition to the ones you have at home.

#2 How did you manage to amass such an enormous music library? What is that, 50,000 albums?

#3 What percentage of your collection have you listened to in the last year or so? Just curious...

 

The vast majority of my digital collection (35+TB) comes from my rips of my vinyl and tape collection. About 11,000 records and R2R tapes that I did over the past six years (2010-2015). All in 192/24 with Merging Technologies Pyramix software and Mykerinos card on a Pacific Microsonics Model Two. Also Isotope RX3 Advanced for post processing. Everything is in real time, so it represents over 10,000 hours of work. The post processing was mostly done when I was asleep! Fortunately I am retired. It was a mainly done to leave a legacy of the best of my 15,000 records and 1000+ tapes (90+% classical) to my daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren. The records I chose to rip include y almost complete collections of Decca and EMI classical stereo analogue catalogue as well as many others. Hence my interest in Decca records which led to the book I wrote for FIM and Winston Ma - Decca: Supreme Stereophonic Legacy.

 

Now I get to listen to the fruits of my labors, probably 500 -1000 albums a year.

 

Larry

[Jud]

I am very interested in cloud storage with Amazon. I have a very large collection, about 40TB which is backed up multiple times, including several 8TB HD in the bank. A $60 annual unlimited storage sounds very attractive. However, I am concerned about the uploading times for 40TB. I do have Comcast Business, but I did a rough calculation that it would take many months, maybe close to a year to do a complete back up. Any experience anyone?

 

Thanks, Larry

 

Hi Larry -

 

The great thing is that unlike other online backups I've tried, uploading to Amazon didn't interfere with my internet access. So as mansr says, you can just let it take however long it takes.

[hols]

When we talk about errors in the hard disc is it more likely to get error when the hard disc is run all the time like in an NAS running raid 0 or when the hard disc is lying there and only gets connected once every few months or so ?

[astrotoy]

Hi Larry -

 

The great thing is that unlike other online backups I've tried, uploading to Amazon didn't interfere with my internet access. So as mansr says, you can just let it take however long it takes.

 

Thanks, mans and Jud. Sounds like a very small cost to try it out. Larry

[AnotherSpin]

Some sticker with a line similar to that one would help greatly.

[Pepsican]

When we talk about errors in the hard disc is it more likely to get error when the hard disc is run all the time like in an NAS running raid 0 or when the hard disc is lying there and only gets connected once every few months or so ?

 

Depends whether you use the right drive for the right purpose. For example, western digital drives come in multiple 'colours'; green for low energy usage in laptops, blue for desktop, and red for network storage. If you use one of their green drives in a NAS, you're almost asking for trouble; the drive is not optimised for spinning up and down so often. But my red drives have been trouble free for four years running. The same applies to other manufacturers.

[fragoulisnaval]

I plan to backup my music files. So one set is in NAS running Raid 5 for playing. And I want to keep another set for backup. Can I ask for opinion whether I should store it in hard discs and only run them every 3 months or so or is it better to keep it in another NAS running Raid 0 and run the hard discs all the time? Which way can the files be kept better? I am not considering another set in Raid 5. Thanks.

 

I have one Qnap TS-421 in raid 5 as my main NAS and I keep a copy every week to a Qnap TS-231 configured in raid 0 which I keep at work.

[mansr]

Hi Larry -

 

The great thing is that unlike other online backups I've tried, uploading to Amazon didn't interfere with my internet access. So as mansr says, you can just let it take however long it takes.

 

If you limit the upload speed to no more than 80% of your upstream bandwidth, the impact on casual internet usage should be minimal. Depending on the ISP, allowing it to run at full speed can cause very high latencies (buffer bloat) for other traffic.

 

I use rclone for bulk access to cloud storage.

 

Thanks, mans and Jud. Sounds like a very small cost to try it out. Larry

 

There's a 3-month free trial, even.

[Mike Pinkerton]

Another +1 to the amazon cloud storage. I'll give rclone a try (right now i'm managing uploads manually).

[hols]

Depends whether you use the right drive for the right purpose. For example, western digital drives come in multiple 'colours'; green for low energy usage in laptops, blue for desktop, and red for network storage. If you use one of their green drives in a NAS, you're almost asking for trouble; the drive is not optimised for spinning up and down so often. But my red drives have been trouble free for four years running. The same applies to other manufacturers.

 

I think of course we are talking about using the right drive for their purpose. But what I am concerned is that in this back up copy should I

(1)put it in another NAS running raid 0 or

(2)simply keep it in a hard disc (enterprise hard disc) and only run the hard disc once every few months.

In situtaion (1) there is the risk that if one of the hard discs failed then the data in all hard disc are ruined because in raid 0 there is no provision of recovery from failure of any disc. And there is also the risk of overheat of hard disc causing failure

wheras in situation (2) there is the risk that if the hard disc is not run for 6 months or a year a high proportion of them(up to 1/3 according to some reports) is in error.

 

So one is overuse failure. the other is underuse failure. Just don't know which risk is higher?

[Pepsican]

I think of course we are talking about using the right drive for their purpose. But what I am concerned is that in this back up copy should I

(1)put it in another NAS running raid 0 or

(2)simply keep it in a hard disc (enterprise hard disc) and only run the hard disc once every few months.

In situtaion (1) there is the risk that if one of the hard discs failed then the data in all hard disc are ruined because in raid 0 there is no provision of recovery from failure of any disc. And there is also the risk of overheat of hard disc causing failure

wheras in situation (2) there is the risk that if the hard disc is not run for 6 months or a year a high proportion of them(up to 1/3 according to some reports) is in error.

 

So one is overuse failure. the other is underuse failure. Just don't know which risk is higher?

 

I have no data on that. But if in 33% of idle time longer than 6 months, there is a failure, then that is pretty darn high. When running the right disc for the application, premature failure rates are much lower (between 1-5% i believe). So, based on your numbers, i'd go with option 1).

[Audio_ELF]

When we talk about errors in the hard disc is it more likely to get error when the hard disc is run all the time like in an NAS running raid 0 or when the hard disc is lying there and only gets connected once every few months or so ?

 

Raid0 is a very bad idea as with each additional drive you are increasing the error rate by a factor of one.

 

So if a single drive (figures are from WD Red) has an error rate of 1 in 10^14 bits (an error for every 12TB read), then 2 drives in RAID0 have error rate of 1 in 10^13 (every 1.2TB read) and 4 drives an error rate of 1 in 10^11 (every 12.5GB). Of course these are statistical figures so not a certainty, but taken as a guide says that if you read more than 12.5GB from a RAID1 array, then you will have an error and corrupted data.

 

Basically RAID0 is a bad idea for a backup!

[Jud]

Raid0 is a very bad idea as with each additional drive you are increasing the error rate by a factor of one.

 

So if a single drive (figures are from WD Red) has an error rate of 1 in 10^14 bits (an error for every 12TB read), then 2 drives in RAID0 have error rate of 1 in 10^13 (every 1.2TB read) and 4 drives an error rate of 1 in 10^11 (every 12.5GB). Of course these are statistical figures so not a certainty, but taken as a guide says that if you read more than 12.5GB from a RAID1 array, then you will have an error and corrupted data.

 

Basically RAID0 is a bad idea for a backup!

 

Completely agree. When asking which of two bad backup methods should be used, the correct answer is neither.

[rrwwss52]

Completely agree. When asking which of two bad backup methods should be used, the correct answer is neither.

 

Jud, do you dislike RAID1? I use it on a SSD setup, with two SSDs. I also keep several stored HDDs of my library as well.

[Audio_ELF]

Jud, do you dislike RAID1? I use it on a SSD setup, with two SSDs. I also keep several stored HDDs of my library as well.

Not Jud but... RAID1 is fine, but not sure it offers any advantage for people who have good backup strategy. RAIDs only advantage for computer audio users is if you need more than 6TB storage that a single drive offers you.