Article: Reevaluating My Music Storage

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Slightly OT but, I sure hope that all of you who have these (very) large music collections stored on a NAS device also have a physical off-site back-up. Cloud back-up is fine for a smallish collection but I would not trust a six figure music collection to cloud back-up. I don't know what the latest tech for this is but back in the day when I was responsible for data security we backed up our servers every day to a tape back-up unit and someone got to take the tape home with them and bring it back for the next day's back-up.

 

Strange things can and do happen. Houses burn down, get hit by lightning, get broken into, utilities have massive failures and the list goes on. All of which can result in the total or partial loss of data.

 

Another thing to consider is insurance for your data (not to mention the six figure hardware systems). These things are out of the scope of a Homeowners insurance policy and would require riders and/or special placement. Contact your agent or broker.

 

Be careful out there.

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4 minutes ago, Jud said:

 

It's precisely because of these contingencies that I have a cloud backup.  My cloud provider has better provision for such eventualities than I could ever manage with an offsite backup that I owned.

I know cloud backup is far better today but I would still keep a hard drive(s) in a bank safety deposit box and update it periodically if I had a home library. I got tired of all this and switched to streaming only when it got good enough with advent of Qobuz. Plus I am not sure a cloud backup would work well with the size of a library like the one Chris and some others here have. The other thing I found is that like Chris mentioned in the body of the article, I no longer wanted to listen to a lot of what I was storing and that Qobuz( and Tidal to some extent) really suited my current musical tastes. 

 

The other problem with home storage is the legal one. If something is ripped from a CD, you really should keep the CDs to be within the letter of the law. If something is downloaded, you really don't own it. You have only purchased the right to listen to it and delete it if you no longer want it. You can't really even give it away or bequeath it. I admit that I have not researched this stuff in years so it may have changed.

 

My point is that for me it was way more work, worry and hassle than it was worth but I do realize that others have vastly different opinions and I certainly respect their choices.