Safeguarding my digital files

Many have, and those that haven't and willn't will be out of business most likely.  My local dealer has a sophisticated IT department setting up servers and getting networks up and running reliably for customers who cannot or will not do it themselves. 

In the $2-3 million dollar lofts in Boston, people want state of the art network-based audio and video, but have no capability to install or maintain or troubleshoot.  That falls to the dealers.  These folks don't want a wall of dvd's or cd's; they want it all on a server and to be able to listen and watch from a variety of rooms.  Few dealers can address these needs.

I have about 1TB of music files on my Qnap which I backup once a week using the inbuilt NAS to NAS backup to another Qnap (over a 5ghz WiFi bridge) which is located at my brothers house which is about 1/2 kilometre distance.

He also has the added bonus of sharing my broadband fibre connection 

I'm not sure if Timbo is on Shaw broadband up in Ed, but another consideration of Cloud is your Internet cost.

i.e. I've just gone from a 100mb down/5 mb up - 500GB monthly data limit - this costs $100 a month here to 25mb down/2.5 mb up - 250GB monthly data limit - this costs $60

In terms of YouTube/itunes stream etc we only use about 125GB a month, but if I was backing up like Timbo I would eat through that allowance really quickly, inaddition to the time it would take. Hence I rely on the several 3TB USB hard drives. Currently I have a 5 bay QNAP with 3TB hard drives which have Music, Photos and Software/Work stuff and currently the Music and Photos are about 3TB each.

I'm not sure which country you're headed to, but I would look at their internet connection speeds and costs.

Maybe stick to CD/Vinyl in your loft as the only reliable back-up.

Seriously.

Hard disks will fail, even SSDs will. Cloud storage is subject to so many vagaries at the moment we have to see how it works out.

Lots of good ideas @Guy007 I am on Shaw cable and my bundle is an old one of 2mb up and 20mb download. I think  it has been my inattention to the overall mess I have been making over the years. It's like gathering junk and now and again we all have a spring clean. For me it's easy to buy just another NAS box, however I could rip all of my CD's again at some point but don't want to and for the downloaded music I think I'll stick them on some USB sticks. I just purchased a load from Amazon on a Fathers day special Kingston data traveller 64gb for just $26 so i got 20. That will do for a start.

As for the photographs I am going to start making some photo books of the old stuff that I have scanned and cleaned up. That should help a bit and give me something to do when the snow comes.

Oh I forgot I also have 500 cassettes a lot of which I would like to make into digital files, especially the live concerts I recorded off the BBC. Any advice on which digital recorder to use would be helpful (I use a Mac).

Thinking about it and the time involved, not to mention the priorities I probably will concentrate on renovating the family photos and compiling books for posterity, just to get them off the NAS boxes.

Tim

But also CD's will degrade 

But also CD's will degrade 

Yep, had that happen myself, even with pressed CDs.

Recordable optical media are even less robust (the quoted 100 year MTBF for some disks is under ideal conditions - constant temperature of 20 celcius and low humidity).

For those who have access to affordable high speed internet, I actually do think that cloud storage remain a rather compelling option if you consider the total cost of owning a NAS which includes not only the cost of hardware but also the power utilisation. The fact that it is "in the cloud" means that you can also achieve real physical redundancy.

Timbo, Shaw might have ‘auto’ upgraded you, but certainly good to check.

The USB’s are good for incremental backups, but a 1TB usb hard drive should be had for under $100 from Amazon or Future Shop… especially if you are aren’t doing a ton of read/write to it.  Black Friday/ Xmas Lightening is good to watch too.

If you’re on a Mac, for the photos, iPhoto to ‘build’ and then print Apple Books has been our preferred route recently, also it’s nice to save the PDF version of the book and put it up on a web site for the overseas family to download.

Cassettes nice, I have some BBC  ( John Peel & Steve Lamacq sessions )  and some Xfm sessions from 90’s and early 00’s from when I was there.  I used my Mac with Adobe Soundbooth ( now Adobe Audition – I’ve upgraded, but haven’t used the new version yet ) the results have been good enough for me.

In terms of CD’s degrading, I have 5k+ CD’s and I’d say to this point, less than 10 have had issues.  The ones that have the surface ‘crazed’ and I believe it was a result of chemicals reacting in the Tetra pak packaging ( the black matt plastic inserts in the cardboard CD cases – Crowded House Single Fingers of Love  / Star Wars 2Cd Phantom Menace are a couple of examples.

In terms of the recordable DVD/CD’s, I think there are some ‘archive’ DVD’s but they have gold in the surface.  The key is constant not too hot temperature and out of the light.

In terms of cloud storage, at the end of the day its music, there isn’t really a privacy thing. If you can get all your stuff up in an Apple / Amazon / ‘reputable’ company you should be ok, but it’s just another ‘backup’ method, remember, don’t keep all your eggs in one basket…

One point that I have not seen mentioned as yet is that of recovery time in the event that you need to do a "restore". The time to do an upload to cloud has been well covered but you should also consider how long it will take you to get your data back. I appreciate download speeds are usually much faster than upload but if you need to get all your data back quickly this should be considered.

And what happens when they go bust?  Maybe you need redundancy of cloud storage provider!

I heard that a US based data storage company failed to pay tax and the IRS confiscated the equipment. The IRS would not accept a claim for the return of the data (images) to the data owners saying that there was no intrinsic value or copyright as it was just a series of bits.

Cloud is a backup of convenience for sharing data between different locations or users not as a repository.

The only safe backup is based on a process that you run yourself and have control of yourself (or your servants/employees)

Tim, wouldn't one usb external drive be so much easier to manage?? And a lot less expensive??  You can buy quite a few 2tb hdd's for $520.  A name brand 2tb usb 3.0 drive is about $120 now. Just a thought!

You are right -- I shall turn this over to my servants.  Now where has my valet run off to . . . .

@Guy007 unfortunately Shaw haven't auto upgraded me. I keep moaning at them because I am sure they do turn down the wick, as every time I complain my download and upload speeds see to get better. I'm using Apple Aperture and have completed quite a few photo books, but because they get a bit expensive when large I also manufacture a PDF file with photo descriptions and context to go with the book and keep the text within the book to a minimum. I have a lot of old photos that I don't know the people in them or where they were taken because all of my family of my generation (except my sister) have long passed away. With hind sight I should have talked to people and recorded the conversations. Oh well, it's a very interesting exercise to do.

@Bart with so many hard drive failures, probably because some of my NAS boxes are 4-5 years old I'm reticent to keep files on a hard disk. Also two of my NAS box failures have come from the circuitry in the box i.e. a dry solder joint, it's very dry here in Alberta.

Cheers

Tim

Hugo - I meant to reply to your post but forgot, apologies. Yes I have been looking at large scale storage solutions with say 20 TB of fast storage with some redundancy and then a backup to that of similar size, plus a few extra plug in hard drives as spares.

Cost is prohibitive but I'm looking around to see what I can get for $8 to $12 thousand that would be easy to transfer to England as I will be moving back in approx 2 years. Currently I'm doing a quick audit of actual space used on sac NAS box and how many back ups of got of each set of data. I keep the main stuff I'm working on in the house and the duplicated stuff is in the garage. I've been a bit messy over the years and maybe I can make do with less HD space if I have a good tidy up.

Tim

Hi Tim,

Just looked it up on Amazon US...

Tier 1

Synology DS1813+  plus 8x 4TB WD Red EFRX drives

Tier 2

Synology DS1813+  plus 6x 4TB WD Green drives

Tier 3

6x 4TB USB drives

Total = $5600

Still a lot, but less than $8K, and that's Amazon so you may well be able to find it cheaper.

The Synology NAS enclosures use SMPS that run 100-240v 50/60Hz, so you'd only need to change the mains inlet cables.

If there is a cloud service that works, I see no problems with it as a second or third backup strategy.

The likelyhood of all backups being destroyed at the same time is very small, so even with the problems with legal and technical issues the sky is one of several possibilities.

For a short time I could use Symform with my readynas duo 2, until Netgear screwed the system up, and they do not seem to care at all, but of course I am using last years model so not a customer they should care about.

Claus

Thanks Hugo, that looks like a terrific solution, however I will shop around.

Guy I had one DLink share store fail with 2 x 2TB drives in it, seems the internal board had problems and one WD Home Store 2 x 500GB which I think was the board in which the drives plugged in to which got a bit loose and kept dropping out.

My QNap boxes seem to be the most reliable so far and the most easy to configure.

Tim

I have learned that HDD don't like to travel. The only HDD I have broken is one I moved constantly from home to office and vice versa.

For more than 2 years I have been moving only a LACIE rugged 500 GB. And keep redundant HDD's. 

Also I change the HDD's about every 2 years. When I can buy more capacity for the same price.

I am considering to move to RAID, considering I will import my collection of about 1000 cd's.

Regards.  Erich

Hi Erich,

Reading your last sentence, it sounds like you're considering RAID as an alternative to external drive backups.  You don't mean that, right?!?!?

My Synology nas sets up raid automatically; very simple.  I'm sure other top brands do as well.  Just don't stop backing up.

3.5" HDDs are more vulnerable to mechanical damage than 2.5" (or 1.8").

Many years ago I switched from tape to 2.5" HDDs for off-site backup, and the only failures that I've had have been the 3.5" disks that haven't moved (but they have seen a lot more running time and many more power cycles).

This isn't really an issue, is it? I assume you're backing up locally as well as to the cloud. The only time you'd lose data is in the unlikely event that your house burned down (or you had it all stolen) in the period between when the service provider went bust and when you backed up to a different one.

The main thing is:

Don't rely on just one backup, and don't have all your data storage in one place (hence the 3 tier solution).