Store your FLAC files on the cloud?

Cloud is good for backup, but I wouldn't use it for daily streaming...

PS. if you don't already have a backup ... go buy an external drive and back it up NOW!!!

But affordable cloud backup  would be a fantastic last resort. For a short time I had symform working on my netgear readynas, but netgear ****ed it up, and I am not sure it has been corrected. Very unfortunate since you "paid" with storage from your nas, so if you had the space to give to the cloud, the backup was free. Very good idea, so bad that Netgear destroyed it.

Quite a few cloud services also mirror your files locally - OneDrive, Dropbox, iCloud , Carbonite for example - which effectively saves you the hassle of at least one backup. I've just happened to use Carbonite for years, not just for music, but for all my data and it's fine, though I'd probably choose something different if I was starting now.

If you have 3TB music in the cloud and try to restore it, well...it could takes weeks...

Would rather go for a 2nd NAS or USB backup...

likesmusic posted:

Quite a few cloud services also mirror your files locally - OneDrive, Dropbox, iCloud , Carbonite for example - which effectively saves you the hassle of at least one backup. I've just happened to use Carbonite for years, not just for music, but for all my data and it's fine, though I'd probably choose something different if I was starting now.

Mirror isn't backup.

The cheapest access to cloud services I have found is Microsoft 365. For 7 quid a month you get a TB of online space plus the office suite for five computers and five handheld devices. Its actually good value considering dropbox is is the same price just for the storage.

Not sure if a TB covers your needs.

IN terms of having music on the go, I use PLEX, this sits on my home network and my phone/ipad connect to the server and plays the music, its very easy to set up.

1. Why would you want to entrust your expensive music collection to a remote server, administered by someone else?
2. What happens when that service goes belly up? Will you get your music back?

Make as many local backups as you need, add another and store them in different places.  I wouldn't be inclined to trust a third party with my music collection. I don't know what the cloud is like (I've never used it) but the internet is an inefficient way of storing and restoring music and video - it would tale weeks/months,

You can stream from your Synology NAS over the Internet when out and about. Works very very well. When at home use the NAS to stream locally.

Local back ups are a must. Attaching a USB drive to your NAS is the simplest way, but any type of local backup is pretty much supported by the Synology.

Backup in the cloud definitely gives you the best protection and is not too bad price wise. Google are $10 p/month for 1tb. Amazon. Microsoft. Dropbox etc. will have something similar. Biggest issue is getting your starting point and uploading all your FLAC files to the cloud, after that it is just the changes, but the initial upload is going to be interesting depending on your Internet speed and size of files.

Cloud for backup and Synology for your streaming needs.

Good luck

My thanks to all for comments and feedback -they are very useful. Point taken: backup onto a £40 USB mechanical drive is a compelling safeguard, and I have no excuse!

I am trying to work towards having less hardware that can fail, and has to be updated/managed. :-)  Hence for storage, I like solid-state drives and cloud storage, generally speaking.

I use cloud storage with local mirroring on a SSDD for all my work data, and I'm happy with the paradigm. It's made one Windows system crash recovery very easy. (Touch wood!)

DLNA/UPnP, etc. don't take a lot of computer power: wouldn't be interesting if a cloud storage provider also supplied the streaming server as well? 

It's great that there are lots of good alternatives. :-)

Adam Zielinski posted:

1. Why would you want to entrust your expensive music collection to a remote server, administered by someone else?
2. What happens when that service goes belly up? Will you get your music back?

If google, amazon or apple go belly up it will probably be because of the apocalypse, so that will be the least of your worries! Actually I didn't mean to suggest cloud storage as the only way to backup your music, clearly local storage is going to be quicker to restore from - though it is also the case that some cloud storage providers will fedex you a usb drive with all your data on if you wish. I've just organised my computing so that all my data - documents, photos and music - happens to be in the cloud as well as backed up locally, so I feel very secure. It's great being able to get at any document or photo or whatever from any of my devices anywhere. And old versions too. 

MikeUK posted:

 

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I use cloud storage with local mirroring on a SSDD for all my work data, and I'm happy with the paradigm. It's made one Windows system crash recovery very easy. (Touch wood!)

 

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I know someone who lost a LOT of data due to that form of 'backup'.  The data drive failed in a way that made it look  like an empty disk and it showed no allocated files, the remote mirror dutifully and correctly replicated this.

Data drive was unrecoverable, and the mirror had correctly deleted all the files - total loss.

Mirror is NOT backup.

I don't understand the question. Do you want to get rid of the synology? Or are you afraid that when your synology crashes that you have lost all your files and you would have to rip all your CDs again?

in case you want to have a safety backup of your files to be able to recover them if the synology breaks, there are some backup apps on the synology that you can use to backup the synology in a cloud based storage.

I am using Amazon Glacier for this. It costs me less than 4 US dollars a month with current data sizes .

I backup my files in the cloud.  Currently I have only backed up music I have bought from download sites but I will gradually add ripped CD's at some point.  I don't see the point in streaming from the backup though, it's slower and a waste of bandwidth.

I have provisioned some storage with Microsoft Azure and my Qnap NAS has an application called Azure Cloudbackup Station which I use. It is all automated and very reliable.  I use it for photos and important documents as well.

This has retention policies, which mitigates the risk that Huge quite rightly highlights where a mirror could be completely lost.

I see this backup as the last resort backup due to the time to restore.  Local automated backups satisfy the 'normal' backup.

I think it is important with backups to automate as much as possible, with alerts for failures.  A manual backup is so easy to put off, especially with the busy lives most of us lead.

Richard

JMTENNAPEL: in a perfect world I would like to get rid of a piece of hardware, yes. I do get it that NAS drives are excellent as backup targets and sources, if you want. As a backup source the target could be another piece of local hardware (ugh!), but I concede that it has significant practical advantages. 

Richard: good points. Streaming from that backup - why not? Is it fundamentally that different to listening to streamed radio? I enjoy quite decent internet service now. 

Data retention on the cloud? Yes, a small concern - but I do think that the market is stabilising, and major corporations and Universities are entrusting their data and server requirements to the cloud.  

I understand that many users are very happy with NAS devices. 

Disclaimer: I am a regular "Joe" with no affiliation to IS/IT services!    ;-)

MikeUK posted:

 

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Data retention on the cloud? Yes, a small concern - but I do think that the market is stabilising, and major corporations and Universities are entrusting their data and server requirements to the cloud.  

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Those "major corporations and Universities" are typically using multiple redundant services, but in any case, they always include service level agreements and arrangements for access should a service provider get into financial difficulties.  These contracts are much more expensive than the cloud services provisioned for the general consumer.

Indeed, HUGE, and the average user would not have off-site backup storage in fire-proof facilities, etc. It's a balance of risk & consequence.