Back up your valuable CDs!

AdvprosD wrote: I was reading another thread and noted someone mentioned losing a hard drive in a computer crash. I'm not sure what the storage volume was for their drive, but the question came to my mind as, "Was this person saving music on an internal PC drive?" As in previous posts here, I see that even as far back as 2010, many here had the idea to divorce the storage area from the main computer. whether it be a USB connected drive, or some other form of RAID configuration. These days, it would seem that there are a lot of companies competing to have you store multiple terabytes of data in their cloud service. Is anyone using this? And, is it now cost effective to do storage this way? I'm interested to know if folks are annually plunking down $$ for cloud storage as opposed to the ever increasing storage capacity of an external drive tethered to the computer.

I would hope that in 2022 no one is relying on the internal drive in their PC to be their only archive of valuable data, be it photos
& documents,
music or whatever though you do hear of people keeping lots of irreplaceable stuff in a cellphone.

I have a RAIDed NAS, plus multiple USB drives. I wish I could say I was as dilligent about backing up as I should be, but sometimes
it's way too
easy to put off incremental backups. Don't really have an off-site backup, the closest thing is that I'll keep one of the backups in
a detached
building on my property.

As far as cloud storage goes, it doesn't really seem practical to me to transfer multiple TB of stuff to a cloud server, especially
given the
relatively slow internet speeds we get out here in Podunk. Maybe if you're in/near a major city and have really high speed internet,
but still
sounds like a long process. And then you've gotta hope the cloud service provider doesn't go feet up, change their terms, etc.

As mentioned before, I think it's a better idea to store the music away from the main PC. It makes it a lot easier to save a collection after an OS crash.

Or at the very least, keep the OS on one drive, and any archive material on a second internal drive (though some compact PCs don't
allow for one).


Edited by Hykker

I wouldn't bother with a cloud service at all. Just back
up your stuff to multiple drives.

An internal drive is fine is all you are putting on it is
your media, in other words, don't put it on a boot drive
or a partitioned drive. Just make sure you keep external
backups of that drive.

You can get an internal 4TB Western Digital Red drive for
very good prices these days. I say red because, although
they are made for NAS, they are very durable.

SSD. To me, SSD is the way to go. If you don't do a lot
of writes and just want a place to store your music, a
QLC drive is perfect. They are not made for constant
writing. If you get an m.2 NvMe, again, the QLC is great
for storage.

I have found any quality SSD to be very reliable, and
they last a very long time. Never defrag an SSD, but you
should have turned on, or run, the trim command. Windows
10 and 11 will have this on by default.

Hykker wrote: Not sure I agree on SSDs for archiving though. Price per MB is still much higher than spinning disc drives, and if a regular drive fails, it usually does so gradually and you're often able to retrieve much of what you've stored. Any SSD I've had fail just became a paperweight with no warning whatsoever. Great in laptops for faster boot up and lower power consumption, but for storage, not for me. YMMV

The spinners are great for price per MB, but the one
thing to remember about SSD is that the larger the
capacity, the better they preform and the longer they
last. The technology has also come a very long way in
just a few short years. I am using a five-year-old ADATA
500 GB drive as my music work drive that I use for
editing and short-term storage and it still works
flawlessly. I also keep it trimmed. I use the hell out
of it and still haven't even used a third of its write
capacity. It used to be my boot drive in an older
computer.

But, i'm all about SSD where possible. I have a slot for
one more MvMe on my motherboard. I'd love to throw a 2TB
in there but they are still too expensive at the moment.

Other advantages for SSD of any type is that they consume
much less power and are impervious to shock.

As far as them going belly-up, i've never had that
happen. Just don't attempt to defrag them. You use up
writes that way.

In support of spinners, my main FLAC storage drive is a
10-year-old Western Digital Green drive. The reason it
has lasted so long is because it's a 5400 RPM drive, so
it runs quite cool.