Reading through the forums and seeing some of the sizes of collections I was wondering how many people are backing up their collections to the cloud. PSA: if you aren’t i would highly recommend doing so. Insurance will replace your equipment but it won’t replace the time you have spent ripping discs,curating, and organizing your collection should something tragic happen.
For those who are using a cloud backup service what do you use? Do you recommend them?
Right now im using Amazon Could Drive in addition to my local backups mainly because it was cheap for the amount of storage i need (<1tb). It seems to have improved the last few months but still missing what i would consider basic features. Speeds seem okay but outside of cost with Prime it would be hard to suggest them.
I bought myself an extra external drive and just copied my music files (and other less important files) to it. I keep it at a friends house (and vice versa).
This is what I do and I think this or keeping the backup disk in a desk drawer at work or similar is a better idea than Cloud services
I take it a small step further by keeping a Portable 3Tb USB drive [which has about 75% of my Library]…and I carry that with me while travelling…so now I have easy access to most of my music while away from home…applies to business travel when in hotel rooms etc…but also to family vacations etc.
And I have a Sync Program with a preset Sync routine which runs when I connect the USB Drive to my computer…and Sync’s any changes that I have made to my main library with that on my USB Drive
Main advantage is that not alone do I have a backup…but it’s a backup that I can make use out of on a frequent basis
The main issues I see with using Cloud Services as a Backup is as follows [in descending order of importance]
a) Assuming my Library is between 1 and 5Tb [which I think would apply to most Roon users]…then HOW LONG would it take me to Download my Library in the event of my house being hit by the proverbial Ice Berg…Even though my connection speed is good at 100Mbps, it will take quite some time to download all 4Tb…and verifying that I have recovered it all could be a hassle as well
b) Most ISP’s have their Fair Use Policies [FUP] regarding what they consider “Fair Usage”…and in my experience, even when ISP’s claim “Unlimited”, the REAL limits are not unlimited and some hard number, a lot less than 1Tb per month usually…and there are many horror stories out there about people being charged for data overages…and IMHO, Recovering 1 to 4Tb within a month will definitely draw the ire of many ISP’s
c) Likewise, when First initiating your Cloud Backup, there will be an initial surge of Data…and again, this could draw the ire of your ISP’s
I’m a big fan of Dropbox and similar Cloud Services for other purposes…but I don’t think it’s the best way to backup Media for the reasons outlined above
I am considering using Dropbox as an off-site cloud backup.
Anyone using this now? Caveats?
I have two backup systems in my house now. Everything gets backed up to a local Airport Extreme Time Capsule using Time Machine. Then I have a 3TB Lacie connected via USB to another Airport Extreme which syncs daily overnight with my music library, a combo of iTunes and High Res tracks, about 775 Gigs
I think @Ronnie puts forth a good argument regarding the time to restore a music library from scratch. Not to mention the upload time and usage limits. How long would it take to upload 775 Gigs at 5MBit? I know that for HFC broadband, it’s the upstream network that can suffer from contention issues. My ISP is Charter. So there’s that. I guess I can check with them about any upstream usage limits.
I live about an hour from any market that could be considered metropolitan. Are there any storefront businesses offering hi-speed internet upload services? Where I can take my library and do the initial, high speed populate of the music library backup?
Hoping more users chime in with their solutions or vendors.
I use iDrive as a cloud service, in addition to sync to a PC and a NAS.
iDrive is not particularly cheap, but it is a real backup service, not just cloud storage.
The Synology NAS has a sync service that clearly illustrates that sync is not backup. There are two choices:
If a file is deleted from the synced system, do you want to
A) Copy the file back from the Synology replica? (No, then I can’t remove stale stuff from my working storage while relying on the NAS copies.)
B) Delete the file from the Synology copy too? (No, then I don’t have protection from accidental delete.)
All to keep the two systems synced, but sync is not backup.
Wrt the long time to recover from the cloud, the iDrive service supports shipping a hard drive, both up and down. Many services do.
All that is required is for the Sync program to be smart enough to move “Orphans” off to a “Quarantine” area…whilst keeping the Source and Backup copies in Sync
e.g. Delete 10 Albums from your Home Library [Source]…Sync on a user-chosen schedule
Source and Backup copies are kept in Sync…but the 10 Deleted Albums are moved to a quarantine area, for the User to delete or recover later…thinking of it like the “Recycle Bin” is a reasonable analogy
The Albums / Tracks in the Quarantine can be left there ad infinitum…or deleted by the User at his discretion…or an Auto delete every 3-6 months for example
Quarantine solves the accidental delete problem. Sort of. The user experience on the device when you want to restore is pretty clumsy, you have to be aware of the storage structure of the NAS, which may change over time as you need more storage. But it doesn’t solve the mistaken edit problem, when you want to find an old version. Or the partial restore to a new device. Or the rename or relocate problem. And this and that.
We should remember that this feature is mis-named: we don’t want to do backup, we want to do restore, reliably, after every kind of mishap including stupidity, even after our environment and technology have changed.
Talk to somebody who works with backup. There are as many considerations as in building a music server system. There are trivial music streamers, but Roon is not trivial.
I tried doing my own thing. And then I switched to a professional protection service. Sleep much better.