Article: Music Storage, New Music, Remote Access, and a Cool Streamer Project

[agladstone]

On 8/18/2017 at 2:16 PM, The Computer Audiophile said:

 

I wonder if you're grandfathered into the plan. I looked at it yesterday and Google wouldn't enable me to select less than 3 users for the unlimited plan.

FYI, at this time, even though G-suite marketing says 10/ per user per month and up to 1TB limit per user for 1-4 users and 5 users or more - unlimited data, they actually DON'T enforce it, they will actually allow you (as a one person / one user G-Suite account to have unlimited storage anyhow! )

Note, this is under G-Suite (not G-Drive), however G-Suite includes G-Drive in addition to all Google Docs, G-Mail, Google Calendar, and a bunch of other features and products and it's only $10/ mo / per one user account and they DO actually allow unlimited storage at this time for one user accounts (it does not state this, but they just seem to allow it anyhow). 

I suspect that eventually they may start to enforce the rule as written, but perhaps it depends on if a lot of people start to abuse it or not? Their main goal / priority is trying to steal away all of Microsoft Office, OneCloud, and Amazon Drive and Dropbox's customers, that's all they care about as of now. 

I've also thought about (to play it safe in case they start actually enforcing it), to just get 4 other audiophile friends to pool together so that each person pays the same $10/ mo per user as they would with an individual account, but as being 5 users as a group, we would all then "legally" be entitled to the unlimited data anyhow if and when they did start to actually enforce it in the future. 

The only problem (which seems to be universal of all cloud storage services) is that they throttle the uploading, thus it's really slow! It has taken me many months now (about 4/5) to upload 10 TB's of music to G-Suite. 

Also, FYI you can do automatic syncing of a Synology NAS to G-Suite just the same as with Amazon cloud. 

[agladstone]

@foodfiend - it's a shame that they throttle, it's soo slow to upload (about 10mbps) and I've found the more I attempt to upload at once, the slower the upload speed (so one song or one album is about 20mbps, but a 500GB folder will be like 2mbps). 

Ive asked them about this and they said that:

A. They're NOT a backup service and G-Drive was not created to backup 40TB's of media files, thus upload speed is of no consideration or importance to them or most users. 

B. They have an intensive anti-malware and virus scanning software tool that all uploaded data goes through before being uploaded and that this is partially responsible for the slow upload speeds. 

If you currently have your media stored or backed up on another cloud service (I don't), you can use a service / tool called mult-Cloud or Multi-cloud (can't remember exact name/spelling) and apparently (per some of my friends), that tool will transfer media / data from Amazon Cloud or Dropbox, etc to G-Suite at about 200 mbps, so that is a much faster option. 

[agladstone]

39 minutes ago, foodfiend said:

@agladstone Is it possible to write a script to upload a folder/album at a time sequentially, thereby circumventing the throttling? 20 Mbps, while not speedy, is much better than 2 Mbps.

I'm sure it's possible! I'm not at all technical nor capable of such a task, but I'll bet plenty of CA members are! 

[agladstone]

Google's G-Suite is only $10/ month and despite what they advertise, it IS UNLIMITED! 

It also syncs and backs up automatically with Synology and QNAP NAS. 

 

[agladstone]

we need to create a CA "NAS" Buddy program!! 

Wheras (I've been thinking about this concept for a few days now) you "Buddy up" with another CA NAS user and each of you have a backup of your NAS going to the other Buddy's NAS! 

Of course this would require that each of the "Buddies" has the ability to store the backup of the others, so it would probably require that each person had an 8 or 9 bay NAS and was only using 4 bays or so for their own purposes. 

This would work and the "Buddy's" could pay for (ship to the other buddy via amazon, etc) the Hard Drives used for their off-site backup, but really if each person just bought their own extra drives and or extension attachments, it's exactly the same difference anyhow?? 

Any thoughts on this idea?? 

[agladstone]

5 hours ago, Dr Tone said:

 

For versioning and continual backup of your data to work it would need to be pushed to your buddies NAS from the source NAS using the appropriate backup software.  Sending a loose drive with your data initially won't work.

 

Any software that would start from a loose drive would also leave the data wide open for you buddy to browse.  Most of us are backing up photos, tax and other important private data to they clouds.  Encrypted of course.

Yes of course!! I meant not sending the drives for a first backup, I meant so the "Buddy" would. It need to pay for / buy additional blank Hard Drives for your backup, but while writing that I realized both "buddies" would need to buy extra hard drives equally (unless they already had them with enough free space) , so it does not matter anyhow! 

Also, by no means did I mean nor would I ever backup and personal information or data to the buddies NAS - Music ONLY!! And just via Synology or some other backup software so it's encrypted, etc !! 

[agladstone]

44 minutes ago, foodfiend said:

Speaking from my personal perspective, I would just want my music data to be backed up (since it takes the most storage, and is the biggest hassle to rebuild/re-rip). I wouldn't even care about versioning, or images. I would also have no need for that data to be encrypted.

Agreed!! 

So I guess I need to buy the 1817+ and you and I can be the first "CA Buddy team" as a trial  

[agladstone]

Just now, The Computer Audiophile said:

I have 1 Gbps upload / download with no data cap or any restrictions :~)

I'm jealous!! 

I just finally got 500mbps down , but Comcast is still keeping the 11 Mbps up for this plan  

[agladstone]

4 minutes ago, foodfiend said:

@The Computer Audiophile I am still very much interested in the archiving of a single set of lossless music files, which all of us have partial access to (depending on our ownership of music) for the sole purpose of remote back-up. It would really be cool if that service could then populate a new HDD and send it to the member (at additional charge to cover costs of the HDD and transport), should that member's primary back-up fails.

 

I still think that it would be a worthwhile project to explore, although there may be some teething issues with metadata and file formats. However, I definitely would still prefer transcoding a bunch of music files, to re-ripping the said files from CD (this would be needed if they are in different file format - FLAC->AIFF, for example).

 

Am I the only one? Or can we really get something like this going? If we are serious, then we should really try to get a show of hands as to how many are willing to jump on to share the costs of setting this up.

Maybe we could sign up for an unlimited data corporate enterprise server account and then all split the monthly costs? That would also allow for personal folders for each member of the group with password protection, etc so not to worry about your very good idea, which would be much more difficult to manage and implement?? 

[agladstone]

40 minutes ago, foodfiend said:

Part of the rationale is to cut the storage requirements (and associated costs) by cutting out all the duplicated data.

I understand! Basically you're suggesting an audiophile version of what itunes Launched years ago, except minus the 320mps downgrade of all your music  

its a great idea, but how to Manage such a task? 

Roon could do this! But how could we?? 

[agladstone]

5 minutes ago, mlknez said:

Check out opendrive.  They are $99/year unlimited with 2 users and no throttling.  They also have a bunch of access methods that work well.

 

https://www.opendrive.com/

Thanks for the information. 

Its odd, they offer a custom plan option, if I select 10TB of total storage and 1TB of daily usage allowed the price is $840 per yr or 85/ mo   

However their unlimited plan is only 9.99 / mo or 99.00/ yr. 

I wonder if this means what they call "unlimited", really has some un-written limits?  Otherwise, why would a custom plan with 1TB upload and download per day and 10TB of total allowed storage cost 8 times more than what they call the "unlimited" plan?? 

[agladstone]

I was reading over BackBlaze website and they have a new program called BackBlaze Fireball. 

They will send you a server in the mail with 40TB's of drive space, you can copy your data to the server, and then you mail the server back to them and they will copy it over to their servers for you!! Unfortunately, they currently charge $550 for the service, but if they charged say $200 or so, I would do it in a second!! (With my current upload speeds to 12mbps, it will take 6+ months or longer to backup my 16TB's of music I think, so worth a couple hundred for piece of mind and speed!, at $550, I'm not so sure). 

[agladstone]

3 hours ago, Kal Rubinson said:

How long will they store it for $550?

Forever!! It just gets copied from the server that you ship back to them onto a BackBlaze B2 server and then you can continue to add new syncs and updates to via online Cloud backup as you would do normally and you also will have online cloud access to all of those files and can also select to share them, etc. 

Another nice thing about the BackBlaze B2 is that if you need to restore your files or drives (in your NAS for a rebuild) or to a failed drive, etc. They will ship you external hard drives with your backup data on them for you to use for restore / rebuild and if you ship them back in 30 days the cost just gets credited back to your credit card (I think they charge like $179 per 4TB drive but if you ship the drive back they credit you back, so realty it's free minus shipping costs).