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. Tribute

    Tribute Senior Member

    Not the best solution, although it is one option as a reserve. If you have a huge collection, with countless artists, it is nearly impossible to organize, store and retrieve particular items. The hard drive automatically alphabetize each folder and allows better organization of folders.

    I have a huge number of data dvds, going back years. Though they are not scratched at all, there have been a number of instances wher the dvd drive cannot properly read a data dvd

    Another key factor: cost.

    The cost of storage, per terrabyte, is now far less in hard drives (8TB typically) than on data dvds
     
    Grant likes this.
  2. TonyCzar

    TonyCzar Forum Resident

    Location:
    PhIladelphia, PA
    You can say that again.
     
  3. Tribute

    Tribute Senior Member

    That's the other problem. Broken and scratched records repeat over and over and over again
     
    GonnaGetcha likes this.
  4. musicaner

    musicaner Forum Resident


    if a hard drive blows up you lose 8 tb if a dvd goes south......do the math. i have had more hard drives go south
    than dvds.
     
  5. plextor

    plextor Forum Resident

    I have 4 TB of lossless audio copied to two places at my house and a drive kept at my desks at work. Hope I have all my bases covered. Been all digital in audio for 10 years now.
     
    Kristofa likes this.
  6. Kristofa

    Kristofa Enthusiast of small convenient sound carrier units

    Location:
    usa
    I am thinking of storing my portable drive at my wife’s office and backing it up every week. I wouldn’t have to travel with it then and would only lose a week’s backup.
     
  7. subzro

    subzro Forum Resident

    Location:
    Tx
    I have 10 separate backups of my collection, several of which are in different off site locations.
     
    James Bennett likes this.
  8. DolphinsIntheJacuzzi

    DolphinsIntheJacuzzi Forum Resident

    Location:
    Houston, TX
    Well, that explains why I've been so baffled by stories of degrading CDR's, when my collection (most of which are over 15 years old) is fine. I never used adhesive labels. I was too cheap. Never thought chintziness would save my bacon. But here we are.
     
  9. ranasakawa

    ranasakawa Forum Resident

    While I am in China I have spent many hours going through every FLAC file from my massive CD collection. Every file is checked and any extra artwork, info etc is added to the files. It is a painstaking job but once it is done I hopefully will have a safe and listenable digital representation of my CD collection anywhere I go.
    I will have a backup of everything on a separate drive. I will also store the drive on my NAS in Australia once I am back for a short break.
    I believe digital files are a very relevant format for music especially if you travel like I do.

    Next task is to find a Bluetooth stereo speaker set that truly sounds good that is portable.
     
    Grant likes this.
  10. mbrownp1

    mbrownp1 Forum Resident

    Yep. Lots and lots of “hard to find” Dead and Stones stuff. I really need to back up my MacBook.
     
  11. Eleventh Earl of Mar

    Eleventh Earl of Mar Somehow got them all this far.

    Location:
    New York
    If you want a back that will likely last you forever without issue as long as you only use it to recover - invest in SSD

    I'm sitting here with all my music on a mechanical drive while having TWO solid state in my rig...
     
  12. perplexed

    perplexed Forum Resident

    Location:
    Northeast NJ, USA
    Sorry nothing vulnerable. Always have a backup.

    I do have a large digital collection of burned CDs, and downloads. I was very important to me from 2000-2012. Since getting back into vinyl and the advent of streaming, I rarely use the digital collection.
     
  13. hurple

    hurple Forum Resident

    Location:
    Clinton, IL, USA
    Had the same happen to me, but mine was a house fire rather than a storm. Amazingly, a computer forensics guy I know was able to rescue everything off all our hard drives even though the PC enclosures were partially melted.

    I have been an avid backupper ever since!
     
    Hokeyboy likes this.
  14. Tribute

    Tribute Senior Member

    you back up the hard drive with another that is left on the shelf and not spinning. at least the hard drive provides easy access and ability to locate files. I agree with dvdr storage for smaller collections
     
  15. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    I have CD-R that nothing was written on and they still went bad.
     
  16. ranasakawa

    ranasakawa Forum Resident

    All the CDRs I foolishly attached stickers to are in the bin.
    Adding adhesive labels to CDRs is a great way end up with more landfill :nyah:
     
  17. Tribute

    Tribute Senior Member

    That is variable, of course. It can depend on the type of CDR dyes used in the original blank, the method, speed and quality of the burn, and conditions in which the CD was stored and used. Many variables.

    Just like people, CDRs age differently.

    That goes for almost everything
     
    Grant likes this.
  18. colinu

    colinu I'm not lazy, I'm energy saving!

    Questions:

    To all the people with no backup - Do you realize a virus or ransomware or hardware fault or theft could wipe out your collection?

    To those with a backup - Do you have an off-site backup in case of a natural disaster? Is there a way to verify the quality of the data backup? A damaged backup file is useless. Is it encrypted?

    If data is stored with a cloud provider - could they cease to exist, or be victims of ransomware or destruction by a disgruntled ex-employee?

    My current backup strategy - local storage, local NAS backup, portable hard drive stored at work with backup of my music, photos, videos and documents. Some stuff (original content such as photos) is also burned to BD-R (25GB Blu-ray disc).
     
  19. Tribute

    Tribute Senior Member

    My feeling is that if there was a natural disaster that destroyed all of your media, you would have other things to be thankful or unhappy about besides whether you had your favorite Miles Davis, Bob Dylan or John Lennon recordings at your fingertips. If you still have your hearing, you will always be able to enjoy music.

    But, as far as your children go, do not keep your only photos of them on a hard drive or flash drive
     
  20. colinu

    colinu I'm not lazy, I'm energy saving!

    A good backup could help you in the event of a natural disaster - scans of legal documents etc. Accessing your music and other collections during the rebuild process might make things a little more bearable.

    To some degree I speak from experience. About twenty five years ago my apartment was broken into and most of my CDs as well as photo and video equipment were stolen. This predates the widespread availability of CD Recorders by about five years. I had a list of my CD collection, and it still took years to reacquire the discs. This was also before Ebay and Amazon.

    I feel I have a starting point if something like this happened again.
     
    Gaslight likes this.
  21. bherbert

    bherbert Forum Resident

    Location:
    South Africa
    My collection is 300 GB of music in Flac format. It is stored in Google Drive and an external HD.
     
  22. Tribute

    Tribute Senior Member

    That was terrible! Today, some people ask me if I worry about whether someone would steal my music collection. Well, they would need six strong men, a tractor trailer truck and several hours to remove my vinyl. Someone might notice. But CDs, very unfortunately, do not have much quick cash value today. A thief cannot turn them around for hardly anything in a used shop, and they know that. When your robbery occured, they brought good fast money.
    I hate streaming services and will not use them, but if a disaster occured, I would turn to them.
     
  23. kevin5brown

    kevin5brown Analog or bust.

    I have tons of CDs, so I'm still most physically based. But over time, I have ripped quite a few of them to MP3 for lunchtime listening. I do not have backups of those MP3 files. The irony is, I just bought two 1T drives specifically to back up that drive, but I still havent found the time!
     
  24. Gaslight

    Gaslight ⎧⚍⎫⚑

    Location:
    Northeast USA
    I had this argument with someone on this forum not too long ago, as I recall, on this topic.

    Even if burned DVDR's / BDR's do last longer than your average HDD, the major disadvantage is simply the time it takes to copy data over. Back in the day when all my digital files could fit on a few DVD's, not such a big deal. But today I have close to 2TB of lossless files and there is simply no way I would even attempt to back this up weekly in that fashion. My local HDD is literally mount it on a external USB3 dock, run a script and come back 15 minutes and it's done. And then HDD replication even easier as it's a dual dock.

    I will say that one interesting long-term advantage of read-once optical media is that I have a bunch of "slice in time" backups from twenty years back now. And most of those actually still work. Not much I would use them for today of course but it's interesting to look at them and wax nostalgic for a moment or two. My HDD backups I just rewrite over and over again.
     
    Runicen and Kristofa like this.
  25. Tribute

    Tribute Senior Member

    I have been spending the last two weeks rearranging and cloning a series of hard drives. I have too many to count. But this project has been to organize and clone a series of 8TB hard drives of music.

    I have one 8TB hard drive (all nearly full) for each of the following categories in lossless:

    Jazz
    Folk/Singer-songwriter (including some rock)
    Blues/Soul/Country/Roots/World
    Jazz Vocal/Classic Pop Vocal (Sinatra era)
    Classical

    Then there is an 8TB drive of mp3 collections.

    Then there are the film and video hard drives.

    These represent only a fraction of my music, as most of my "physical media" (vinyl and CDs) has not been transferred.
     
    Runicen likes this.
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