Who'll admit to having a "vulnerable" digital music collection?

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by OobuJoobu, May 25, 2017.

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  1. OobuJoobu

    OobuJoobu Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Yorkshire, UK
    I'm thinking here of people whose primary collection is digital (maybe from purchased downloads or rips of your own CDs), rather than those who are primarily vinyl with an additional "not very important to you" digital collection.

    Who'll admit to having their collection existing on a bit of a knife edge? Maybe you've ripped hundreds or thousands of CDs to your laptop, but have never bothered with a backup, or, shock horror, you keep your music on your phone or iPod and don't even have a backup on computer!

    If this is you, how do you feel about this? Do you think life's too short to worry about it, or is it something that concerns you but you've never got round to backing it all up safely (or know how to).

    Tell us your stories of those big collections you've got that could be gone in an instant if 1 device fails or gets lost/stolen! :help:
     
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  2. Kevin j

    Kevin j The 5th 99

    Location:
    Seattle Area
    ever hear of fire? everything's vulnerable, dude.
     
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  3. johnny q

    johnny q Forum Resident

    Location:
    Bergen County, NJ
    Guilty as charged......:(
     
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  4. PretzelLogic

    PretzelLogic Feeling duped by MoFi? You probably deserve it.

    Location:
    London, England
    I spent years without a backup. Now I have two backups in different locations, plus everything in my Google Music.
     
  5. seilerbird

    seilerbird Forum Resident

    I put my entire collection of 3000 of my most favorite songs of all times in mp3 form many years ago. It is backed up endlessly. In the cloud, on my phone, on my laptop, on my Chromebook, on four different flash drives two are backups, one is in my TV and one is in my surround sound receiver.
     
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  6. OobuJoobu

    OobuJoobu Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Yorkshire, UK
    Depends whether you keep all your backups in the same place.
     
    Last edited: May 25, 2017
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  7. Kevin j

    Kevin j The 5th 99

    Location:
    Seattle Area
    i'm talking physical media and the like. I think as long as you have your digital collection backed up in multiple places it's much less vulnerable.
     
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  8. Synthfreek

    Synthfreek I’m a ray of sunshine & bastion of positivity

    None of your backups are lossless?
     
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  9. Digital-G

    Digital-G Senior Member

    Location:
    Dayton, OH
    In regards to hardware failing, it's a matter of when, not if. Eventually, hardware WILL fail.

    Once you have that mindset, or once you feel the pain of actually losing your data, you'll take backups seriously.

    I've got several backups of my data. Hard drives, flash drives and I even have a copy of my music on my work computer (i.e. off-site).
     
  10. seilerbird

    seilerbird Forum Resident

    I am almost 70 years old. Been a hard core rock and roller for the last 55 years. My hearing is shot. I can't hear any difference between lossless and 128 mp3s and I have done plenty of A/B listening tests. Lossless would be a waste of space for me.
     
  11. Holy Diver

    Holy Diver Senior Member

    Location:
    USA
    I'm moving my collection to Fort Knox. I hear it's empty. :)
     
  12. Veni Vidi Vici

    Veni Vidi Vici Forum Resident

    Location:
    Chicago, IL
    About 3000 CDs (at the time) ripped to iTunes with meticulously accurate and fullsome metadata (where the real value resides). Some years ago, running out of disk space - I forget the details - I moved the iTunes Music directory to /tmp for some now unfathomable reason then went to bed half-way through whatever task I was trying to accomplish on the laptop. I believe the daily cronjob ran at 3am and deleted temporary files older than two weeks... woke up in a living nightmare. Quickly arranged to take the morning off work and set about restoring the directory from Time Machine, always a bit nail-biting with hundreds of gigabytes to shuffle about, especially with the flaky T.M. in those days. Phew, it worked, no harm done.
     
    Last edited: May 25, 2017
  13. Veni Vidi Vici

    Veni Vidi Vici Forum Resident

    Location:
    Chicago, IL
    I should add that I think the greater danger to my non-physical collection is the regular futzing about that Apple make to iTunes. While I suppose they will always support the storage and playback of files, they have tended to "streamline" the facilities iTunes offers for dealing with them so it more and more resembles the limited features they offer for streamed tracks, eg. no easy way to display artwork associated with a track other than the single "front cover" you get with their downloads.
     
    Last edited: May 25, 2017
  14. DTK

    DTK Forum Resident

    Location:
    Europe
    I have two complete lossless backups. It's a bit of a hassle dealing with big Flac files, but I could never understand those who rip to mp3 and make lossy backups.
     
  15. OobuJoobu

    OobuJoobu Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Yorkshire, UK
    Ouch, lucky escape! I had a similar experience a few years ago, formatting Windows on my PC to do a clean reinstall, and for some stupid reason, when it asked if I wanted to also format any other attached drives, I said "Yes". My one and only backup of all my music, and more importantly every photo we'd ever taken of my daughter since birth, wiped.

    Also a lucky escape for me, I paid a company £99 to try and retrieve my data, and they managed to get everything back! Potential divorce (due to the photos) avoided!

    I'm never going to be in that position again.
     
  16. Thermionic Dude

    Thermionic Dude Forum Resident

    With a good backup plan, a digital collection is a lot MORE secure than a physical media collection. I have ripped roughly 5500 discs over the past ten years (still have all the discs), and I am taking as few chances as possible with regard to losing all those labor hours! My method isn't the cheapest (about $1300 worth of discs and boxes) in absolute terms, but gives a lot of peace of mind.

    I use a Mac OS machine for music/media/pictures and store all the libraries on an external HD. The external HD consists of JBOD with four drives configured as two RAID 1 (mirrored) disks. Two of the drives are for music/media/pic libraries, the other two are for Time Machine backups (configured to back up the media files disk in addition to the main HD). Therefore I have four continuously up to date copies of my music library across four hard drives. Additionally, I manually copy the Time Machine backup to another external RAID 1 box containing two drives about twice monthly and store off-site at my mom's house. Hopefully, this is enough redundancy to keep everything safe (IT experts, feel free to chime in if it is not).
     
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  17. Jeff Kent

    Jeff Kent Forum Resident

    Location:
    Mt. Kisco, NY
    I used to work next to a CD library of 400,000 CDs. Also from about 2000-2009 one of every CD released came across my desk. I ripped a lot to my 160gb iPod classic. In fact I'd delete files if I owned the CD to make room, so most of what's on there only exists for me digitally. I tried backing it up years ago, still not sure if it worked. Plus I think that hard drive is dead or gone. I know one day my iPod will crash. Maybe I'll have my son back it up for me.
     
  18. OobuJoobu

    OobuJoobu Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Yorkshire, UK
    I think we have a winner so far! :)
     
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  19. Robert C

    Robert C Forum Resident

    Location:
    London, UK
    I've got about 1,000 CDs and 500 records. I have three copies of my CD collection. I don't have three copies of my records. Now, which is more vulnerable?
     
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  20. Eric Weinraub

    Eric Weinraub Forum Resident

    Location:
    Oregon
    Fire aside... my RAID array is getting old. I need to purchase something newer and migrate.
     
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  21. mwheelerk

    mwheelerk Sorry, I can't talk now, I'm listening to music...

    Location:
    Gilbert Arizona
    I've been backing up since fairly early on with my digital music library. My main library reside on an external HDD. Then I have to other external HDD that act as backup one using the Time Machine Feature of my MacBook and another using Carbon Copy Cloner. I have a third external HDD that receives a monthly backup and is stored in a fire safe. Even still I'm a little nervous that I don't keep one offsite in remote storage. The other thing is I am always aware as to the age of the HDD drives. I would like my next move to be to SSD for these purposes but they are still too size and cost prohibited for me at this time.
     
  22. Pizza

    Pizza With extra pepperoni

    Location:
    USA
    After spending a year ripping my CD collection I made four copies.
     
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  23. marcb

    marcb Senior Member

    Location:
    DC area
    Hard drive space isn't a garage or attic. You can get a 4 or 5 TB external drive for $100 or so that takes up no more "space" than one with less capacity and would easily hold a lossless 3000 album collection with plenty of "space" to spare.

    Too late for you I suppose, but consider this advice for anyone starting now who is somehow worried "space" and lossless music files.
     
  24. Deaf_in_ LA_1974

    Deaf_in_ LA_1974 Forum Resident

    I have lost two drives, and an eternal drives, lost music and more importantly client photographs and proofs.

    Rarely have I ever lost a CD, cept maybe under the car seat temporarily, and never lost an LP, but did loose a cover or two to a teething puppy.
     
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  25. Terrapin Station

    Terrapin Station Master Guns

    Location:
    NYC Man/Joy-Z City
    I've got my primary drive, a back-up drive, and two additional drives that I rotate so that one is always at home and one is always in a safety deposit box. So I have four copies of everything, one always off-site in case of a fire etc. The extra drive at home (the rotated one not in the safety deposit box) also goes with me to my studio (I have a studio in a different location than home).

    That might seem excessive, but it's also my own work that I'm worried about.
     
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