NAS Backup Strategy

Nope. You can't have enough backups. I rip my files to 4 locations. Also manually put them on thumb drives. In addition to this I backup NAS #1 to NAS #2.   

Once I figure out how to do it, I am going to get my parents a NAS and figure out how to backup across the Internet to each other. 

I have a Synology (RAID-1) loaded with WAV & DSD.  I back up to a USB drive as & when I add new material & thats kept in a fire safe.  I'm a bit nervous of having a backup permanently wired to the main unit (NAS to NAS) thinking electrical storms, hence my back up is in another & disconnected place.  I have all my CD rips as CD's in storage boxes & all my Qobuz/HRA/HDT (etc) downloads are - additionally to the main back-up - loaded onto USB sticks (thumb drives) & also kept in another place. 

Glyn

I think this is as good as one can get. Perhaps backing up to a redundant NAS of the same capability as your current one could be added. If you had that, an automatic periodic back-up could be scheduled. I will most likely install one of those.

Whenever I buy a new album I immediately copy it to my QNAP NAS (running 2 x 6TB drives in RAID mode) and two external WD drives. Copy of ripped CDs is run every quarter or so.

Adam

My HDX backs-up automatically to 3 other locations, (NAS drives) plus I occasionally do a manual back-up to another NAS drive which resides away from home.
I also have an external USB hard drive which I also back-up at least twice a year.

In the worst case scenario, hopefully I'd only lose a dozen or so albums.

first rule - you can never over back up!

copy each new purchase to a seperate hard drive this takes 5 mins and then once a quarter re back up from whole NAS just to make sure

I connect a USB drive to my Synology NAS and this drive unit isn't accessible from the network, it's only accessible to a standard internal Synology user account.  This drive unit is the target for a routine incremental backup.  Where the NAS is the primary store, I similarly back up stuff back to the PC.

If I were hit by a ransomware virus on the PC, the main NAS store would be encrypted as would the PC's disks.  However the virus wouldn't be able to touch the NAS backup drive.  As this is an incremental backup, then once the working data are deleted from the NAS and the PC is re-based, then the data can be restored to a point before the virus activated (and programmes either disinfected or restored to a point before it was downloaded).  If a ransomeware virus hits the NAS, then the PC's copy of the data will be OK (but this is unlikely as my NAS isn't exposed to the internet).

I also have a 3rd tier of off-site storage on NAND Flash RAM.

I also have two other manually controlled backups that aren't held off-site: An internal backup disk in the PC and an external USB disk (only connected to perform the backup).

Any downloaded music goes directly to my main PC that has an attached backup drive. This then gets manually copied to a NAS (because I put hires in a different folder and it's easier done manually).

CDs get ripped directly to the NAS.

I then have a second NAS in a second country that gets real time mirrored from the first over the internet.

The second NAS is about to get a backup solution.

My music collection is on the Mac Mini that is also the renderer. I have a duplicate copy on a NAS in another room (which otherwise is used for other purposes). And I have an external USB  disk that is stored elsewhere.

Whenever I rip or download anything new it goes first on a computer, then is copied to both the MM and NAS, and remains on the computer. Periodically I connect the USB drive and do a full backup of the music on MM, only after which I delete the recent files on my computer. Periodically means when I remember, maybe 6 months to a year. So if everything in the house was taken out by, say, a lightning strike when wverything is plugged in, the offsite backup means the most I would lose is music downloaded or ripped since last time, which for me is normally only a few albums at most.

Worth noting, The same principles should be applied to other irreplaceable materia such as digital photos (the ease of which is an additional practical benefit over film-based photos)

It's also worth pointing out that it's only a backup solution if you've proved you can restore from it.

Blue.Dog posted:

It's also worth pointing out that it's only a backup solution if you've proved you can restore from it.

Yes and no.

Most people are doing simple file copies as backups which is fine. You only need to do restores if you are using a solution that encrypts or uses its own compression meaning that you need to use a proprietry program to do restores.

My offsite NAS plays music just fine and I can play from my attached USB drive as well.

I also do a backup from my Synology NAS to two USB disks. One of them is stored at my parent's home. But I am thinking of a cloud backup to Amazon, as they sell unlimited storage for 70€/year. As far as I know Synology Hyper Backup doesn't support Amazon Drive so far, but it will in the future. Synology cloud sync could be an alternative.

I keep copies on three units, Synology, Melco and Drobo and they synchronise with each other but I'm afraid they are all in the same physical location.  It's illogical, but I say to myself that I will have much bigger upsets to contend with in the case of fire including a large  lump of melted vinyl.

lowdean posted:

I keep copies on three units, Synology, Melco and Drobo and they synchronise with each other but I'm afraid they are all in the same physical location.  It's illogical, but I say to myself that I will have much bigger upsets to contend with in the case of fire including a large  lump of melted vinyl.

I'd say the physical location is less of a concern - it's mostly the hard-drive failure that we must be prepred for.
I keep my back-ups in a fire-proof safe.

lowdean posted:

I keep copies on three units, Synology, Melco and Drobo and they synchronise with each other but I'm afraid they are all in the same physical location.  It's illogical, but I say to myself that I will have much bigger upsets to contend with in the case of fire including a large  lump of melted vinyl.

It depends on the replacement value of your collection, and whether insurance truly will cover it, and also on whether anything is irreplaceable, and how long it might take to source evrything...

However,  as Adam said, the biggest risk to electronic music storage is disk failure. Next is electrical spike (e.g. From nearby lightning strike) via either the mains or external telecoms cabling, which could take out everything that is connected at the time. A backup offline and unplugged would cover that - and if you live in a house at least, storing it at the other end of the house would very reduce the the chances of losing all to a fire, and even to burglary.

lowdean posted:

... in the case of fire including a large  lump of melted vinyl.

You probably won't have that problem, odds on the vinyl-acetate co-polymer will probably just add some more fuel to your house fire and get almost completely consumed in the resulting inferno!  

"You probably won't have that problem, odds on the vinyl-acetate co-polymer will probably just add some more fuel to your house fire and get almost completely consumed in the resulting inferno! "

Very comforting, thank you!