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

[jimx1169]

I have an 8TB HDD and rent a safe deposit box from my local bank for $75/year.  Once per month or so I retrieve the drive from the box, bring it home and sync any new media, and take it back to the box the next day.

Very low tech but cheap & easy.  I could save the $75 and keep the drive at a friend's house but I always know when the bank is open.

 

[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. 

[foodfiend]

@agladstone

I am quite sure that we can assemble 5 or even 10 users for the access to unlimited storage. However, I do hear you about the throttling, which would surely impact the rate at which the users will be able to upload their music. This makes it hardly any better than many of the other cloud backup solutions available.

[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. 

[foodfiend]

@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.

[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! 

[The Computer Audiophile]

On 8/19/2017 at 5:46 PM, jimx1169 said:

I have an 8TB HDD and rent a safe deposit box from my local bank for $75/year.  Once per month or so I retrieve the drive from the box, bring it home and sync any new media, and take it back to the box the next day.

Very low tech but cheap & easy.  I could save the $75 and keep the drive at a friend's house but I always know when the bank is open.

 

If the safety deposit boxes had network connections, that would be really cool. 

[foodfiend]

8 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

If the safety deposit boxes had network connections, that would be really cool. 

Don't forget the power supply too...

[EuroChamp]

Thumbs up for the streamer project!  

[nsxelent]

Just went through a similar data backup decision a few months ago.  

 

I have 20TB of music on a Synology DS1517+ NAS.  I researched several of the cloud-based storage solutions but ultimately went with a matching Synology NAS for backup.  It's not a cheap option (cost approx $3k for 50TB) but it should provide backup for many years and when you spread that cost over its life, it's not too bad on an annual basis.  The setup is expandable too if I ever need more in the future.  

 

After I completed the initial 20TB backup on my local network, I moved the backup server offsite (to my in-laws house) and now just perform incremental updates nightly (at 2am when we're not generally on-line).  Synology's Hyperbackup utility makes the whole process relatively easy.

 

Best regards,

 

Tony

[Johnseye]

28 minutes ago, nsxelent said:

Just went through a similar data backup decision a few months ago.  

 

I have 20TB of music on a Synology DS1517+ NAS.  I researched several of the cloud-based storage solutions but ultimately went with a matching Synology NAS for backup.  It's not a cheap option (cost approx $3k for 50TB) but it should provide backup for many years and when you spread that cost over its life, it's not too bad on an annual basis.  The setup is expandable too if I ever need more in the future.  

 

After I completed the initial 20TB backup on my local network, I moved the backup server offsite (to my in-laws house) and now just perform incremental updates nightly (at 2am when we're not generally on-line).  Synology's Hyperbackup utility makes the whole process relatively easy.

 

Best regards,

 

Tony

 

+1

[ednaz]

I'm using Carbon Copy for my 4TB music library.  Runs nicely in the background, appropriately alerts when things go wrong.  Weaknesses: took me two months to get backed up to them with my library size of the time (2.1TB) because for whatever bizarre reason, they throttle incoming backup. They also make a big deal out of their "restore acceleration" which is to ship you a 1TB disk of the initial 1TB... yeah, that first TB will really accelerate things...

 

Ended up staying with them because I couldn't find a cloud backup service near the price and ease of use. There's also a significant amount of gravity from any backup service because of the slow speed of the initial image.  Once you're on, the operational cost of switching is heinous.  I did realize I could probably buy a cloud URL and set up my own backup servers at roughly the same price, even a cloud web host, but the backup software (which does de-dupe, compression, etc) does have value.  I'd rather listen to music than code backup scripts.

 

All that said... I have four online backups, and three offline. Don't trust, constantly verify.

 

I'm a couple days of thinking away from building my own zfs cloud backup. one at home, with a backup to a couple disks that live off site at my wife's law offices. Haven't found a cloud where I could run zfs with scripts for backup. That's my fantasy... minus having to code the scripts.

[The Computer Audiophile]

Thanks for the info guys. Good stuff. 

[kennyb123]

Bad news this morning from CrashPlan:  "It's because of this trust that we want you to know that we have shifted our business strategy to focus on the enterprise and small business segments. This means that over the next 14 months we will be exiting the consumer market and you must choose another option for data backup before your subscription expires. We are committed to providing you with an easy and efficient transition."  

 

Grrrrr

[The Computer Audiophile]

Wow. What timing (for me at least).

 

I guess my research and ultimate decision on what to do , may be useful to more people now.

[mrvco]

On 8/16/2017 at 1:53 PM, mrvco said:

For off-site backup I use Crashplan (including my digital music library).  The Family Plan is $149.99 / year w/ unlimited storage for up to ten machines.  There is also a single machine plan for $59.99 / year.

 

LOL... scratch Crashplan Family.  I just received an email notifying me that they are ending their 'home user' plans next year.  Their "Small Business" plan is $10 / month / machine.

[Johnseye]

7 minutes ago, mrvco said:

 

LOL... scratch Crashplan Family.  I just received an email notifying me that they are ending their 'home user' plans next year.  Their "Small Business" plan is $10 / month / machine.

 

So $120 per year?  What's the storage capacity?

[kennyb123]

3 hours ago, Johnseye said:

 

So $120 per year?  What's the storage capacity?

 

Unlimited.  So it looks as though this just ends up being a price increase for me - from $5.99 per month to $10 a month.  

[Johnseye]

25 minutes ago, kennyb123 said:

 

Unlimited.  So it looks as though this just ends up being a price increase for me - from $5.99 per month to $10 a month.  

 

So that's "relatively" nothing.  $720 over 6 years which is the typical lifetime of hardware like a NAS.  @The Computer Audiophile wouldn't that work for you?

[The Computer Audiophile]

Just now, Johnseye said:

 

So that's "relatively" nothing.  $720 over 6 years which is the typical lifetime of hardware like a NAS.  @The Computer Audiophile wouldn't that work for you?

 

I'd really love a solution I can configure on my NAS rather than have to run a PC just for the backup application. 

[foodfiend]

Time to ask Crashplan if their "small business" solutions support NAS back-up directly.

[kennyb123]

2 minutes ago, foodfiend said:

Time to ask Crashplan if their "small business" solutions support NAS back-up directly.

 

Since their focus is now on small business, I suspect they will be inclined to support that.

[kennyb123]

10 minutes ago, foodfiend said:

Time to ask Crashplan if their "small business" solutions support NAS back-up directly.

 

They provide guidance on how to get there, but they won't support it:

https://support.code42.com/CrashPlan/4/Configuring/Use_CrashPlan_on_a_headless_computer

[The Computer Audiophile]

Clicking on the Synology link is a dead end. I found some other info and it looks like a cluster.

 

 

 

https://crashplanbackup.com/you-want-to-install-crashplan-on-an-headless-server-such-as-a-synology-nas/

 

 

https://pcloadletter.co.uk/2012/01/30/crashplan-syno-package/

 

 

 

 

[foodfiend]

I remember someone had developed a package to run Crashplan on a Synology NAS. However, I am not sure how to get it to work. Crashplan also mention that they do not support NASes - no customer support for that in the "small business" tier.