Lightning strike destroyed my Raid array and music collection

Argh! I know the feeling. I also lost my collection many years ago. Fortunately I kept the CD’s so it could be rebuilt.

Been doing this to extend the life of the otherwise-always-on equipment, but this is a much better reason!

My Synology DS918+ uses the Btrfs file system.

"As of version 4.12 of the Linux kernel, Btrfs implements the following features: Checksums on data and metadata (CRC-32C)"

My music is stored at a Synology NAS and backup on daily basis to Synology C2 Cloud backup. Works excellent. It is only not a free service.

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I back all my music up to my Dropbox account. Would probably take an eternity to re-download but at least I know it’s safe up there.

I use a hybrid backup strategy. All my music resides on a Synology NAS. I have a combination of CD rips and digital downloads. The CD rips are backed-up by the physical CDs. The digital downloads are backed up on Google Drive. I also rotate two external USB drives as backups for the whole NAS. This all works for my moderately-sized collection (~17k tracks), but it might have to be changed if I keep buying music at the current rate…

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Very sorry to hear this, when it happened to me, I found that my backups were incomplete - although my backup software reported no issues. Scotch did help with the pain, a little.

Like others, I have a few different backup strategies (RAID, rotate drives to and from safety deposit box, cloud storage).

One technique that I found helpful is to get a friend or family member who is technical (or semi technical) and agree to provide online storage to each other.

I happen to use ARQ, and a buddy and I both set up an SFTP server. ARQ encrypts the data with your user defined key… so even if I get nosy, I can’t see what my friend’s data is (and vice versa). ARQ allows you to set time and bandwidth limits, so neither one of our network gets hammered if I’m backing up a new 40 disk box set.

Again, sorry for your music loss…

The lesson here must be offsite backup.
Unplugging when you are away doesn’t help, a lightning strike can happen when you are there.
And local backup devices are vulnerable to many kinds of loss, electrical, water, fire, theft…

The people who operate cloud services thing in terms of what is the scope of a loss: drive, server, rack, room, building, region, state, country, continent. (Planetary loss is not yet covered.) Living in the U.S. has recently reminded us of earthquakes, wildfires, mudslides, hurricanes, flooding…

We amateurs should adopt a version of this thinking.

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Actually I didn’t sell the CDs - I donated them to local charity shops in batches some time back.
The SO actually has some CDs kept in the loft but oh dear what a load of tripe. Even she admits she would be embarrassed to donate them to charity now.

I have been working on the company NAS where the backup was stored to see if anything can be recovered, sadly it seems one single iSCSI machine backup obliterated my recovery chances.

A different take on the record/(film) industry and licensing would be - why are we as users paying for the same thing over and over at full price in different formats? Eg If I have the LP - why dont I get the CD and then the download at a reduced price as I already paid for the licence for the music and should just be paying for the media. Also why is a high def download direct from the artist eg Muse 50% more than the CDQ or mp3 one? The answer of course is obvious.

Still fretting about what to do about this, and just want to say again how much I appreciate everyones support here. Fortunately work is so busy right now that I am working 7days/week and it is keeping me distracted - for a while at least.

Jees - sorry to hear this and thanks for the warning. I have hung on to my CDs “just in case” but a separate backup would be a good idea for me too.

Sorry for your loss. Lightning fried my Synology 213 a while back, but the drives survived. I added a Surge-X suppressor to all of my Roon endpoints. I also keep 3 auto-sync backups on USB drives connected to my PCs around the house and one in my office… Expensive, but I sleep better.

I don’t say this to affect your sleep :sleeping: :grin:

But even those 6kV suppressors won’t help with a direct lightning strike. Only an air gap can be guaranteed to work (unplug from wall). They can help with other potential surges though, so not a waste at all.

Remember lightning is capable of jumping from cloud to cloud and to earth - a great distance. It can be the magnetic pulse that results from the strike that does the damage to media storage.

I had a friend in London whose house took a strike he told me, and while this was back in the 80’s there were no HDD’s or NAS’s back then, every cassette tape and video tape in the house was wiped - so an air gap is a good idea but not always.

THANK GOODNESS FOR VINYL :stuck_out_tongue:

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Vinyl can melt. Just give up and let’s go back to humming.

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Hehe noted. I was only saying that an air gap may be better insurance than relying on a surge suppressor to save all your gear in a storm and direct lightning strike - better but not perfect.

But your point links directly to all the earlier great suggestions of having off-site offline backups.

Or just put it all in the cloud and worry less.

All the way to Reno :grinning:

It’s all been said sorry for the misfortune, it’s a cruel natural world out there

I live in Johannesburg and we get real wonderful lightening storms most days in summer . Too late to advise.

I have UPS on the Roon core Pc and another on the hi fi kit . Everything gets unplugged Even phone lines 2 years ago an ADSL phone cable cost me R 40000 worth of kit when a neighbors tree took a direct hit. Insurance is worth it I got like for like replacement

To add insult to injury I am just having my car and caravan repaired after a savage hail storm literally golf ball sized hail stones. My birthday holiday treat, no garage and cotton wool in a Game Reserve

Yea I am paranoid and back up every day

Mike

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I bought a 4TB 2.5 inch WD drive to backup my music collection and I do this every 6 months incase my NAS gets struck. I looked into ways of protecting it but nothing seemed worth it so this is my process. I’ve spent weeks ripping cds and I NEVER want to do it again. Sorry for your loss.

with my IT hat on - watch some of those 2.5inch 4TB drivers - not all are that reliable. I stick to 2TB myself.
The ones to check in particular are the Seagate ST4000; WD don’t seem to be as bad but still reports of >1% failures so tiered backup very much applies multiplied by your paranoia squared.

Does 6months mean you never add to your library

6 days is risky, 6 hrs (well) is safe

Mike