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how much backing up would you do of a media server?

I have a nas with 2x10tb drives. I mostly just have music, movies and tv shows on it.

People talk about raid not being a backup, but is that relevant for non-original data? I mean I can always get the media again if need be. It would just be an inconvenience.

What would you do?

79 comments
  • I only backup data that I either can't replace or would have to spend significant effort to replace. Most of what's on a media server doesn't fall into that category.

  • It might be worth keeping a text file log of what's on there at least.

    Music is almost by-far the easiest to "restore". In the event you lose everything and don't want to spend time restoring it all, you can fling money at Spotify/etc and use a service that automagically imports playlists.

    The other stuff? That's going to be insanely annoying to back up and insanely boring to rebuild if it's a super-huge collection. Personally, if it's something I think I'm going to watch in the future I'm buying the bluray/dvd and keeping it on the shelf (more-so for that it works as a conversation piece).

    I only care to have a solid backup strategy of stuff where there is a 0.0% chance to rebuild like personal documents, photos, and videos.

    Fortunately, since you "only" have 2 10TB drives (I'm assuming as a RAID1 array), consider this:

    1. Buy a 12/14/16TB external drive (just in case you upgrade disk space in the future, you're using this drive so infrequently it'll last you a few years easily)
    2. Take a full disk backup, put a physical label on it with the date, store the drive in a safe
    3. Wait 6 months, buy a second 12/14/16TB external drive -- you're almost guaranteed to get a drive in a different batch, and if you really want to amp up the paranoid factor, go for a different brand.
    4. Back up your data to the brand new drive, put a label on it with the date, toss it in a safe
    5. Wait 6 months, grab the oldest drive, replace it's contents with a new backup, throw new label on it, toss back in safe.

    Generally speaking, this will give you at least 1 backup that's no older than 12 months, and 1 backup that's no older than 6 months. The only risky time where you'd lose a backup is when you're replacing the oldest backup.

    IMO this 6mo strategy is a fine compromise on cost, effort, and duration of loss of data but tweak as you see fit.

  • Living life on the edge currently, but thats because I dont have a means to backup my media at the moment

  • I was just thinking about this recently. For my original data I already have multiple copies: 2 desktop PCs, home and office, synced with a home NAS, adding a server in the office soon too, laptop has everything but photos (which is a lot since I am into photography and timelapses). My non original media has only one copy, but will soon have a second copy in the server at my office.

    But I can't count on using my office at my job as a long term thing. For my original data, I have been planning on getting something like Backblaze for a full professional off-site copy. For all my non original media, well... It would be ok to lose it I suppose, but I would rather not. Would this be a good use case for some sort of other stable media? I forgot what it was called, but I recently saw a post about some high density disk (like some sort of multi TB blu ray disk thing?) That seems like a decent solution, better to lose 1 year of piracy instead of 20 years of piracy haha. I have lots of obscure stuff that would be hard to get again, curated by and copied from cinephile and audiophile friends, rare movies I ripped from university library DVD discs and even VHS tapes!

    Maybe I need to start learning about some alternative storage media for that stuff. Anyone have suggestions? Some sort of tape or disc for this kind of large but immutable media?

  • I’ve lost my music collection twice. Once when I gave away all my cds in a fit of minimalism, once when our house got broken into and they took all our cds.

    It’s farking annoying and takes forever to get all your music again. At the very least make sure you have a list of albums so you can remember what you had.

  • Very specific media like rare or modified Rips gave an extra copy on an archive folder. All my cloud storage and personal backups also go to the archive folder. That folder then gets backed up to local raid 6 NAS, and then the qnap software syncs that up to backblaze once a week.

  • I back up everything. I use Stablebit Drivepool with duplication for all of my source code, media, photos, documents, music, books, laptop backups, etc. I back that up periodically to a Drobo DAS and 8 Bay USB enclosure setup under Drivepool. I also have off site backup (working on a new NAS which will be accessed over a VPN). I don't want to spend the time worrying about loosing anything I have put time and effort into. Been there and done that. Drives are relatively inexpensive but can fail without warning.

  • I mirror it 1:1
    If you can't afford to mirror it, backup the files that were and are currently the most difficult to get atm.

  • I have some rare media that I know would be extremely difficult to replace, so I back that up, but the general stuff is less important.

    However, with rights holders constantly trying to move away from the idea of permanent physical ownership, some media will become harder and harder to find in their best or purest forms, disks will go out of print and the used market will start to slowly die as media ages and rots.

79 comments