Off/Online library backup strategy

[Fuzi]

Hi there, as I am running out of space on my machine I am considering options for migrating 2T to a safe place. Either I purchase a hard drive and become liable for yet another piece of physical equipment, or I enslave myself to a cloud service… which of these do you reckon is best, and which cloud storage do you like best? Thank you and enjoy the weekend!

[tonyc1971]

Howdy !  I have a Mega.nz account and pay a small amount each month for storage. I believe it comes with 2TB of storage but to be fair, I use it mostly to share albums to users here on LMT.  I am toying with the idea and upgrading and uploading all my collection to the cloud. It will be more secure than having it as physical data on a hard drive.

The only problem I see is if your circumstances change and you don’t pay, you lose your account and more importantly lose your music collection.

[Fuzi]

Good point Tony, providers can also change their pricing anytime. Also once you choose one you're likely to stick to it, else you spend 2-3 days moving files someplace else… kinda like moving house with the inevitable anxiety of losing items arghhh

[Psyclon]

I am strongly against Cloud services.

The reason why I have a large library of everything (music, photos, movies) is that I don't want to be dependant on anyone or anything. There are just too many things that might go wrong. I often hear: "Why do you have your HD movies in MP4????" and I tell them that Netflix removed shows and AppleTV removed movies... I still have them here, on my disk. Ready at my fingertips.

Imagine, someone files a complaint against your account due to you sharing these tracks. Gone.
Or the service simply terminates because they can. Gone.
Changes in the EULA. Unsecure.
Changes in the world (e.g. an embargo. See Russia). Unavailable.
The ISPs might have a problem. Unavailable.
Connections might be busy. Unreliable.
Connections might be slow (see the "KPM CDs thread"...). Annoying.
The servers might have a problem. Unavailable.
Servers in the U.S.A. and some random guy (e.g. Trump) changes laws/rules for forgein users like me from Germany - Gone/Unreliable.
Your bank payment bounces for your storage. Gone/Unavailable.
Who to talk to / who is responsible in case of trouble? Unsecure.

A local hard drive - mine is stored at my parent's house - connected via SATA is fast, reliable, nobody can take the stuff away. Fair enough, you have to pick it up, but you don't back up your stuff daily anyways. Well, at least I guess so.

If you use it to share on LMT, it's fantastic. I see that. I am also massively profitting from it. But as a backup solution, the only one, nope, never. I know the chances are low, but they are there. I am paying with cash for example. "Who does that in 2022?". Well, Wirecard terminals stopped working, then many POS terminals had an old certificate here in Germany, causing lots of trouble. Was an eye-opener.

EDIT: My cousin uses a RAID10 system for his backups. But I do not want to have a large case with several HDs/SSDs standing about. My 5 TByte WD does it

[Bronic]

Given this modern age, a beautiful day the cloud service starts to analyze your files and decides that it breaks their terms of service and you will lose everything anyway.

Better off with physical media. Just make use of optimization of the virtual space and redundancy of the physical media.

I backup my stuff in the *.wim format. I just rename and drag the same changing music folder over and over to the same file. This format keeps a single copy of duplicate files no matter the current file structure or naming scheme while only preserving the changes and keeping the file on a manageable size. This is called deduplication. After this process the file can be even more compressed in other format.

Files active on the computer can also be deduplicated. I keep a folder of favorite albums and tracks alongside the main folder (I hate playlists). The folders look like duplicates but all the files are hardlinked to the original files so they are not occupying hard drive space. You don't need to keep track of what is original and what is a hardlinked copy. The last "copy" to be deleted from the system will be the original. Look out for Hardlinks and Symbolic links.

[Flemming]

Backup on two harddrives. 

[Fuzi]

Thanks all for the great insights and I'll look into this aliasing business @Bronic

[malibuconvertible]

Cloud services have their uses (like sharing files), but for me I am in complete agreement with Psyclon and others above who keep it local and physical for exactly the same reasons they stated. And always back-up, so if one HD goes kaput (rare but it happens to the best of us), you have that safety net, get another HD and keep at least one back-up/mirror of your media. I always tell people, if it's worth keeping, it's worth backing up. 

[kpmhill]

You need off-site backup. The dedicated cloud backup services are not going to block your music- that's a non-issue.

Backup … or lose your music.

[Psyclon]

Why do you take both extremes? Either on-site or giving away my data to a private, off-shore/foreign company?

I have a hard disk stored at my mom's house, as stated above. That is "off-site", but no cloud servers involved.
My parents are certainly not remote servers stored in the U.S. at a private company that has in the EULA ToS that they can shut down my account for whatever reason? And yes, they can remove your files, as they are not in your hands. Look at all the DMCA claims that kill links quickly.. Why would you backup towards anything that is not in your hands? That sounds grossly negligent.

[kpmhill]

Psyclon: >>"Why do you take both extremes? Either on-site or giving away my data to a private, off-shore/foreign company?"<<

Mostly because you're neither "giving away data" – nor dealing with a foreign company – if you choose not to. I use Backblaze. If you live in a country without native BU services, then you would need to do your due diligence, as everyone needs to these days, with large swathes of our digital lives.

>>"I have a hard disk stored at my mom's house, as stated above. That is 'off-site', but no cloud servers involved."<<

If this is both steady and frequent, then you're set. For most people, it will be neither.

>>"Look at all the DMCA claims that kill links quickly."<<

That has zero to do with private, personal backup.

>>"That sounds grossly negligent."<<

In my view, taking shortcuts with backup is what leads to problems, as we recently saw here.

[John_Fred]

A whopping-great external hard-disk would be the order of the day, for me at least.  I've never really trusted cloud websites as they could, technically, cut you off from your archive at any time they like, by you not having quite adhered to some of their rules stringently.  It shouldn't matter, but there's always that off-change that it might happen.  I invested in a 6Tb hard-disk a number of years ago, which contains all kind of audio/visual archives.  I have approximately 1Tb left on it.  I want to try and archive that archive, (as in save everything into ZIP or RAR files), and keep them on a separate drive, just in case something happens to the main one, but that's proving to be an arduous and time-consuming task.  Plus, the hard disk in question isn't really that big.  The answer would be to get a bigger hard disk and transfer everything across, then use the old hard disk as the second archive.  But, having looked at the external hard-disks on offer, (and picked myself up off the floor when I've seen the price tag), I can't see that happening any time soon. 

[testcard]

TeraBox can have 1TB capacity space for free, which can be uploaded and downloaded. However, it may require a mobile phone number to register,
It seems that it can also be registered with Google or Facebook account.

[testcard]

If you want to buy a mobile hard disk, you must distinguish between SMR and PMR before you buy it. These are two kinds of mechanical mobile hard disks with different structures. SMR has a short life, poor stability and performance. Be sure to buy a vertical (PMR) traditional hard disk.
The manufacturer will not mark the structure of the hard disk specially, but the buyer needs to confirm it himself, because SMR is the product of the manufacturer cutting corners, in order to reduce the cost.

[nidostar]

I'm with John_Fred re putting my trust (and entire music collection) in the hands of a cloud service. I have a 4TB hard drive which is half full and backed up on my Mac via Time Machine. In addition I periodically make a further back-up on another hard drive. I have full control over my music collection and with, effectively, two back-ups the only thing to knock it out would be an EMF for when the bomb drops. But then I'll revert to my wind-up gramophone and 78s!