Long-term storage and backup of digital music files

There's very little difference between the features of MSFT OneDrive and Google Sync.

 

The Office 365 integration with MSFT is a pretty big difference, if you're a subscriber. MSFT is giving away a LOT of storage space with that. Space you just have to pay for with Google, unless you buy some Chrome device that comes with gobs of space.

I suspect Amazon will also get into this business at some point.

 

I think GilesM was on the money elsewhere on this forum with his suggestion of buying and creating your own server.

 

That's a huge hassle. You'd be better off taking that money and just buying a ton of storage online at Google, and using Google Sync as your backup solution. You can get 2 TB of storage for $10 a month or $100 a year if you buy in advance. That should be enough for virtually any audio library.

I think Google still offers 1TB free for a year or two when you buy certain devices, like a Chromebook or maybe one of those Pixels. So if you're in the market for a gadget this holiday season, you should look to see if one comes with free cloud storage.

 

With as easy it is to set up your own server, even off-premises, it should be no hassle. The best part is that you don't have to pay someone an annual fee for storing your stuff, and risk it either being hacked or the business closing up shop or taking it offline.

 

I do both, but let's be realistic here. It's not "easy" and it is indeed a hassle compared to paying Microsoft (et al) $60/year to store it for you. Plus, any major cloud services is going to be more resilient than anything you set up in your house. Microsoft/Google/Apple are not closing up shop or getting hacked.

 

Not even close. Most of my acquaintances need 10x that or more. I would say that 2TB should be enough for most audio libraries.

 

Easy in terms of how the manufacturers have made it for an average user to set up.

 

The main part of my music library just passed the 2TB size. A few months ago I was able to carry around my library on a 2TB portable drive stuffed to the gills. Then I added a few more albums to the library and I can no longer do that. Time for a 3TB or 4TB portable drive for my transportable music library.

That's just what I consider my main library. When I add in extras like my Grateful Dead live recordings and SACD ISOs and music related video rips (concert videos on DVD or Blu-ray, opera videos, etc.) then it gets to about 4TB total. Add in regular movie video rips and the total gets bigger still. And I consider my library size to be small fry compared to the serious audiophiles and collectors. There are many people on the forum here who have way more (many thousands more) CDs than I have, and more high-res. If they ripped all their CDs and high-res audio discs (SACD, DVD-A, BR-A) their library size would be much larger than mine.

Libraries that large get to be less practical for online backup storage. It's not just the upload speed to transfer that much data. It's the bandwidth caps that will get you. Most people are on home internet plans that have bandwidth caps, or if they're "unlimited" that word "unlimited" doesn't mean what you think it means. Most home ISPs are not going to be happy with you if you use 8TB or more of bandwidth to upload or download your media backup from online storage.

 

It is absolutely not "easy" to setup a server, especially off-premise. The hardware also isn't free, and neither would it be free to rent a server and storage space at Amazon or elsewhere. Whereas buying 2TB of storage from Google and setting up Google Sync literally takes about 5 minutes and a handful of clicks, and costs $99 a year. They handle the backups and pay the power bill, and I guarantee you Google is more secure than anything you can setup on your own, unless you do this for a living.

2TB is enough for probably 90% of computer users, and more than enough for most FLAC libraries plus anything else from your computer you'd want backed up. I'm consuming more than that, but I've got around 50,000 music files. I think my music library alone is approaching 2TB.

One thing I've run across recently - some of the FLAC files I've downloaded from HDTracks and others are only minimally compressed. I saved a ton of drive space by having MediaMonkey burn thru some cycles re-compressing a bunch of stuff I'd bought online.

The simple solution here is to not backup everything at once. They're usually more sensitive to upload bandwidth than download. You also keep a local backup, which is your primary backup. The cloud backup is what you turn to if your home burns down or your local computer and backup are otherwise destroyed or stolen.

(A cloud backup can also be great for accessing files while you're at work or on vacation.)

 

I believe learning a new skill far outweighs whatever percieved convenience you gain from paying somebody else to take your posessions, then trusting them with them.

This is why I always keep my money in my mattress. Since it's a waterbed mattress, it's pretty heavy, so I doubt anybody will try to pick it up and take it away. What could go wrong.

 

You don't delete your local files when you upload them to a cloud service provider.

 

I assume then that you have all of your money stashed in your mattress.

What's your address?

 

Read closer. You may get it.

Nevertheless, I believe learning how to store things yourself (and learning for yourself what else you can do with them) in what appears to be the most compelling new musical interest if this board is any indication, is worth a lot more than throwing your money at a cloud, or a geek, or anybody who will take your task so they can get better at it themselves.

 

Nobody said that. I'm referring to giving your personal information (your music that you already paid to choose for yourself) to do your work with it for you, denies you the experience of leaning what you can do yourself with it. Do you pay somebody to come into your house and set up your turntable for you? Plug in your equipment? Take pride in a hobby you hand over to somebody else to play with for you, so you can just come into the room and have it playing for you, while you have no earthly idea how it all works? I didn't bring up whether you are giving them your toys, or copies of your toys. I brought up what you waste by paying somebody to learn what you could do yourself. Then they walk away with both your money, and your edifiying experience.

 

Not sure which cloud provider you’ve looked into using to store files, but the ones I use have zero access to the contents of my files. Should I really care if Amazon knows how many Bob Dylan albums I have (they don’t)?

If you really want to get paranoid, think about what your ISP, bank, and mobile phone provider know about what you do, etc.

And I don’t consider it a “waste” if using a cloud provider as both a music server and a file storage repository is a more resilient/redundant way for my to preserve my carefully curated collection. All those poor folks that lost their homes to fires, floods, hurricanes, and earthquakes this past year? None of that would impact my ability to stream and download my lossless files.

What makes you think I don’t know how it works, or how to set up my own home server? I’d say it’s more complicated to set up a cloud-hosted server, with cloud hosted files, accessible anywhere in the world (via home or internet), than just setting up a NAS on your desk.

 

I'm on vacation right now and have all of my music files with me on a portable hard drive. And while I'm here I'll update a offsite backup drive that my brother keeps for me.

 

It should be as simple as getting a seperate computer, installing a huge drive, adding a wi-fi card if it doesn't have one already, and adding/mapping it to your network.

 

That's what i'm talking about! Do it yourself and you don't have to worry about paying someone to do it for you.

 

How do use your method above to back up the contents of my smartphone? My tablet? My precious photos taken when I’m vacationing 1000 miles from home?

Will you patch the OS for me? Will you send me an alert if this system goes offline? Will it back itself up 4x-8x (common for public clouds)? What happens when a power supply fails and it’s critical I get a file off of this computer in an urgent manner?

 

You're wasting your time. Dunning and Kruger here are so proud of their abilities to assemble a computer that they'll never understand why people use cloud storage. That's for people who don't know how to use a screwdriver, you see.

 

I read it again. I think it got even dumber on the second reading.

Oh, that's simple...



It's still not offsite, even after all of that work. So if your house goes, or a burglar snags it, your stuff is gone. And you have to buy the computer, buy and install the big drive (assuming the computer didn't come with it), setup the computer, maintain the computer and pay for the electricity to keep the computer running. You also haven't included the cost of the software to backup the data from your library onto that second machine, or the difficulty of setting many of those packages up. (You can roll your own backup solution with cheaper or free software, but the complexity is generally greater and the reliability and overhead generally worse.)

That's a lot of effort which still doesn't achieve the goal - a reliable, safe, secure backup of your data. And the initial cash outlay is well north of $300 for all that kit. That's 3 years of 2TB worth of storage from Google, with no hassles.

Well, 3 years assuming the price doesn't drop. Which it's likely to do as more competitors enter the market. I wouldn't be surprised to see Microsoft offer a year of free storage in the 1-2TB range and automated cloud backups with the next version of Windows, with prices undercutting Google's thereafter. Amazon is almost certain to get into this game as well - they already offer storage for prices similar to Google's, but don't (as far as I know) have a backup/sync app. They will.

 

Dunning and Kruger.

 

Who says you can't set it up offsite?

Go down to Fry's Electronics, order online, or whatever, buy a pre-built NAS, install a couple of drives, and set it up with the software. Or, get an old computer and set it up. You don't even have to waste your bandwidth or time. Just clone your music drive, and insert the copy into your intended server.

 

Can I set it up at your place? Is anyone's desk/office OK? What happens when I need an OS/security update? Can I call you at 3am to reboot it for me when something hangs? How will I know that a drive goes bad? Who is paying the power bill at your place, me or you? Do I have to give you the password to the system? What if I need to expand/add more drives? What happens if the internet connection to the NAS you're keeping for me goes down? Is that my problem, or yours?

Inquiring minds need to know! In the 30 seconds I took to type that above, I could have bought 1TB-2TB of iCloud/Google/Microsoft storage. Literally. I get 1TB-2TB of storage with zero headaches, with the click of a button. $10/month means nothing to me.