back-up for music files

[peterLBR]

Hi there,

 

I just placed an order for a new (high end) PC with a sound-insulated case, plenty of hard disc space (2TB), everything as quiet as possible etc, meant for "general" purposes as well a for audio purposes: I intend to put all my CD's on it and hi-res downloads as well. And of course I need to buy a USB-DAC,

 

but that's another can of worms.

 

In order to prevent my music from becoming "lost" by accident or a hard-disc crash, I think it's wise to have a back-up of all music files.

 

Now, there are external "E-SATA" harddisks, external USB hard disks,NAS-boxes and what have you.

 

Is there any audible - or otherwise - difference between these various forms of data back-up? My computer retailer tells me that a simple external USB hard disk is good enough; I only would need to manually enter a "back-up" order, once a week or so, which would be fine with me.

 

Any advice from somebody who knows is much appreciated!

 

PeterLBR

 

[dsnyder]

Hello,

 

Any external drive and good backup software will do the job with no audible difference (unless something goes horribly wrong). Look for software that has good support for incremental backups so that you don't have to wait hours for a full backup to complete each time. For example, each time your backup runs, ideally it should only copy the new music that you have added to your library and any metadata updates that you have made rather than the entire library!

 

It sounds like you have invested a lot into making your new PC as quiet as possible, so you may not want to have a potentially noisy external drive sitting there. If you can attach backup storage to another computer (or NAS device) located elsewher in the house but on the same network, you may be able schedule incremental network based backups of your library.

 

On Windows, DeltaCopy and Syncrify are a couple of (free for personal use) utilities that do a pretty good job of performing this type of network backup. DeltaCopy is compatible with NAS devices that support the rsync protocol, so look for that as well.

 

I personally store our music library on a PC running Linux and access that library over wired Ethernet from a small notebook computer that is connected to our audio system. Not everyone here wants to be their own Unix administrator though, but if you are familiar with Unix or Linux, this can be a nice way to go.

 

Hope this helps.

 

-- David

 

 

[peterLBR]

Hallo David,

 

Thanks for your reply!

 

I checked it out and wound that within Windows there is an incremental backup function. As Windows (7) will be on my new PC anyway, that would definitely be the easiest route.

 

As to the external harddisc - I'm leaning now towards e-sata as it is the fastest - and the noise it (potentially) creates;

isn't is an option to just have it in operation when making the (incremental) backup (once per week), and have it switched off or unplugged when listening to music (most nights)?

 

PeterLBR

 

[chryses]

One other suggestion - store your backup drive at a different location than your music server. For example, store it at the office, in a safety deposit box, at a friend's house, etc. I keep a hard drive at work and bring it home once a month on the weekends to back my music up. This way, if something catastrophic (like a fire or flood) happens at home, you won't lose everything.

 

[zerung]

I store my music on an ext WD 1TB drive connected via FireWire. The limitation of the physical size and the lack of security has made me look elsewhere. I recently put vortex box on my old pc and connected this to Mac. The installation,possible raid configuration,etc all made this very easy to set up and use. I ditched this as the old Dell was as loud as could be. I am sizing up some fan less clone pc to see if I could set up a vortexbox server system?

I am also aware of WD and others offering some raid system in an external HD arrangement. Sooner or later you will think about safeguarding you digital files, they are too valuable to loose, or will be as you collect music, pictures,etc....hence a raid setup now would be a potential wise thing to do IMHO.

 

[jhwalker]

I have a family plan (up to 5 machines, unlimited data) with CrashPlan for about $100 / year. All my computers' user directories and my entire music library (currently about 250gb) are backed up online. This is in addition to a couple of terabytes onsite (stored on a NAS) and a TimeMachine backup of just the music server. Probably overkill, but certainly wouldn't want to lose that much data (I'm also into digital photography and have 20k+ photos online, as well).

 

[khollister]

Here's what I do (I'm Mac centric, so actual software is different)

 

I use OS X Time Machine to create hourly snapshots for archival purposes. This is not to guard against HW failure of natural disaster as much as operator error - I can go back and access previous versions of files or deleted files.

 

I also use a bare drive dock connected via eSATA and have 3 rotating sets of bare 3.5" SATA drives (stored in plastic boxes designed for this). I use drive cloning SW to create complete clones of all my internal drives and keep 2 of the sets in a safe at my home and the 3rd offsite (my office). There are a few critical bits of data I also keep online via DropBox.

 

The thing to keep in mind is that a backup solution that involves a drive(s) permanently attached to your computer is not a true backup since it will not survive a natural disaster or theft any better than your computer will. It only provides protection against individual HDD failure (granted that is the highest probability).

 

HDD's are cheap (I use 2TB Samsung's I got for $89 on sale at Newegg), so don't screw this up :-)