[GAMER101]

I finished ripping my entire bluray and DVD collection. The average DVD rip is 1.5-2GB after compression. As for my blurays I have only compressed a couple. It got me thinking what will I do if my drives fail on me? RAID is not really a backup.

What's the best backup method I should use that will last me decades? I don't want to lose anything. I was thinking 50GB bluray discs but do I really want to stick in 100 discs to copy my data back onto the computer?

I was thinking for each hard drive that I have buy 2 or 3 hard drives and keep the same data copied on each of them. Would this be a good way to go about it? What's the lifespan of an unused hard drive?

[PatK]

I think the best backup is having the originals, and you do. To save some of the rip effort , a lot of users implement a system of drives (NAS) with a parity drive that potentially can rebuild.

I've had enough experience with disk material to know that you can't use them as economical back-up , there are very expensive long term storage disks (gold & M-disk) but the price is high enough that a re-purchase of originals would be sensible.

Duplicate hard drives as a back-up is pretty reliable (after all it's not likely 2 drives fail the same day) but it becomes laborious to update and maintain this kind of set-up. Drives sitting on the self will deteriorate over time, the platters are mostly raw metal which rusts & oxidizes, so even then there is no guarantees. Large institutions like Banks use the enterprise level of drives ,about twice as expensive as the consumer level and the switch them out between 3-5 years. as well as having redundancy at multiple locations.

I find shuffling the data upwards as larger storage solutions materialize leaves me with the spare hard drives as back-up and as someone else said, they're only movies. This link might be good to have a look at. http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid...id=1692232

[GAMER101]

So your saying I should just look at my originals as backup and setup a NAS with a parity drive? From what I know a parity drive protects against a single hard drive failure. Am I right? Also can that be any drive in your system that can fail?

I am planning on getting a 12 Bay NAS. Isn't it the more drives I own the more likely 2 will fail at the same time? Is there a raid that gives 2 parity drives?

Sorry but I don't understand the RAID stuff all to well.

[l'pc]

There's a lot of information about this subject and raid in general in the (recent) thread PatK linked. Although they were more concerned about the cost than you seem to be.
Quick answers : Yes, you can have 2 or more parity drives, meaning that in order to lose your data at least 3 drives have to fail during the time needed for rebuild. With some raid setups, you either lose all your data or nothing, with other, you only lose what was on the failed drives.

If cost isn't really an issue, and you really want your rips to be safe, just pick two identical NAS, set both of them up using 2 parity drives and **manually** mirror all the data from one to the other. Keep a NAS on for day to day usage, and the other to backup the first one. Don't put them both at the same location, of course (think theft, fire, flooding, etc). The backup NAS could be in a fireproof safe for example.
This should protect you from pretty much any drive failure, from human error (deleting a whole raid array by error is possible), and from about anything I can think that could happen to your data.
The downsides is that it is costly, and it requires manual intervention (every week ? every month ?) to copy new data to the backup NAS.

IMHO it isn't worth the cost nor the effort vs. simply putting your ripped blue-ray's and DVD's in a safe and re-ripping them when/if necessary. Of course, that's a subjective opinion.

[GAMER101]

My HTPC holds 6 hard drives. Kind of more than I need at the moment. Can I do a cheap build for it (as in $500 or less) and turn it to a DIY NAS?

[protocol77]

How i do it is i am not a fan of RAID i just find it not a good fit for me so what i do is like mentioned above i keep identical offline backups


I have say a 2TB Drive in my home server then once a week i perform a backup of only the new or changed files using a program called FreeFileSync i put my offline hard drive in a Docking station (my case has a built in one) and i run the comparison scan then see what is new or changed then run the backup i then end up with two drives with identical files and i do this every 1 to 2 weeks until the drive is full it only takes a couple minutes each week beccause i am only copying new or changed stuff everything that hasnt changed stays the same and is skipped


once the drive is full i then make sure there is a label on it say HDD_1 (Backup) and then place in a Antistatic Bag that it came in (or have been buying plastic hard disk storage containers when i can find them in stock) and place them in that once both drives are full i go an buy another two and repeat the process i now have about 9 hard drives all but 3 are completely full then about once a month or so i put those full drives in the dock and let them spin up for a couple minutes to shake the cobwebs off them (not actual cobwebs of course) this i believe will keep them in good state for a while and also i can check if still working before the drive in the server dies

i find this a simple straight forward method and whilst i have been fortunate to not lose a drive yet (Knock wood) i am fairly confident that if the drive in the server died i could go buy another drive then put the backup in the server then do a full mirror backup to the newly bought drive and then that becomes the new backup hence the circle of HDD life

another benefit of this is being a simple mirror of the drive if i lose one HDD i can within minutes have my files back as i can just swap it out for the backup no rebuilding arrays or download large files off the cloud at my crappy speeds

I just use a straight up JBOD Mirror Backup and it works well for me

[jammyb]

I'm staying out of this thread.

[GAMER101]

Your post is kind of confusing. I get some of what you are saying but not all of it.

[protocol77]

Your post is kind of confusing. I get some of what you are saying but not all of it.

if you are talking about my post what i was saying was instead of a RAID which really isn't a backup solution just redundancy i prefer to keep a mirror identical copy of all my files on a second hard drive of the same size so if anything goes wrong i can put that backup drive in my server and be up and running then go buy another one and then perform a full mirror backup of that drive i just put in so then the backup drive becomes the in operation drive and the new drive becomes the new backup

this is how i prefer to keep my data safe

hopefully that is a little clearer i tend to blather on quite a bit trying to explain things

[brazen1]

Yes, you can "turn it to a DIY NAS". But, why not use your HTPC as your playback machine and your server for your other devices as well as your PC for every other computing desire? Then it would be better in every way than the 12 bay NAS you're considering. It would take some dedication and patience but don't most hobbies? I too am in the 1:1 backup camp. As hard drives get larger and your collection grows, it makes sense to 'retire' old drives as backup drives. I use a couple port duplicators with 'retired' drives in them. After I rip a title to my server, I copy the rip to a retired drive and turn off the port duplicator until I add another rip. I've had drives just flat out fail but most of the time they get corrupted with no user intervention for one reason or another. Format it or replace it and copy over what you lost. This holds true for drives in the HTPC and the backups. The original discs are truly the ultimate backup though. Problem is, you lose all the time and effort spent ripping them and if you ripped your neighbors disc who has since moved it's gone forever. All my opinions are debatable since people are unique and in threads like this everyone will have their own. You will read enough of them to form your own and what ever you decide is best for you I hope it works out well for you.

[GAMER101]

Your post is kind of confusing. I get some of what you are saying but not all of it.

if you are talking about my post what i was saying was instead of a RAID which really isn't a backup solution just redundancy i prefer to keep a mirror identical copy of all my files on a second hard drive of the same size so if anything goes wrong i can put that backup drive in my server and be up and running then go buy another one and then perform a full mirror backup of that drive i just put in so then the backup drive becomes the in operation drive and the new drive becomes the new backup

this is how i prefer to keep my data safe

hopefully that is a little clearer i tend to blather on quite a bit trying to explain things

That clears it up. Thanks. But hard drives have a shelf life. What if say your hard drive is full and it decides to die in 15 years and you go get your backup hard drive and it doesn't work. How do you remember what was on that drive so you can recover what was lost.

The way I initially planned on doing it is use 50GB bluray discs and as I fill my server or RAID I'll burn the new data to the discs and put them away in a DVD binder. If there are movies on it I'll write movies, if there are TV shows I'll write Name of Show plus whatever seasons are on it. Then after 15-20 years I'll re copy them onto new media. If I lose a few bits of information on some discs it's fine with me. As long as it's not the whole collection. For extremely important data such as pictures, home videos, rare songs I'll copy onto the mdiscs. Only problem with this method is that is extremely time consuming and I have more stuff to do than be at a computer all day burning discs. I do expect a higher capacity disc will be made by then anyway.

[GAMER101]

Yes, you can "turn it to a DIY NAS". But, why not use your HTPC as your playback machine and your server for your other devices as well as your PC for every other computing desire? Then it would be better in every way than the 12 bay NAS you're considering. It would take some dedication and patience but don't most hobbies? I too am in the 1:1 backup camp. As hard drives get larger and your collection grows, it makes sense to 'retire' old drives as backup drives. I use a couple port duplicators with 'retired' drives in them. After I rip a title to my server, I copy the rip to a retired drive and turn off the port duplicator until I add another rip. I've had drives just flat out fail but most of the time they get corrupted with no user intervention for one reason or another. Format it or replace it and copy over what you lost. This holds true for drives in the HTPC and the backups. The original discs are truly the ultimate backup though. Problem is, you lose all the time and effort spent ripping them and if you ripped your neighbors disc who has since moved it's gone forever. All my opinions are debatable since people are unique and in threads like this everyone will have their own. You will read enough of them to form your own and what ever you decide is best for you I hope it works out well for you.

True the original discs are the best backup. Only thing is it takes a long time to compress a bluray. It takes me 2 hours to compress a DVD movie on normal preset. and 12 hrs to compress a movie on high profile preset. I'm going to build a new HTPC and buy a Intel Core i5-3570K Quad-Core Processor 3.4 GHz. Not sure how much faster I'll be able to compress with a processor like that though.

[Starstream]

I'd be interested if anyone's collection actually lasts that long, you've no clue were life will take you in 20 years and most people don't plan out that long for a movie collection. Absolutely nothing remains of the media collection I once had starting out with XBMC on the original Xbox many years ago.

I think Blu-ray might be the last physical format for a very long time if it even survives into the future, the whole market is moving towards digital delivery.

I would guess the vast majority of people do not have a backup system in place and at best might have some form of RAID redundancy which is good enough for as long their interest in this hobby remains. A small few take it to the extreme the sort of thing you would do in a commercial environment with multiple backups, offsite, fire proof safe etc.

Shelf life of BD-R is estimated 5-10 years. I'd go with some RAID style mirroring system and just live with that until it's eventually replaced a several years down the road.

[GAMER101]

Yeah that is along time. But not everything will ever be completely digital. Collectors such as myself prefer physical media over digital. Also what about the people who live in rural places? The highest cap I can get is 25GB and that's expensive. A 10GB bluray quality movie would put me over the limit. Plus cable companies are going to start implementing caps. I hear Comcast is trying out a 300GB cap in some places. 300GB wouldn't go to well for a movie fanatic such as myself. FIOS doesn't get installed except in major cities. Not to mention there's license issues. If places such as Amazon, iTunes, or Amazon doesn't renew their license the content is gone.

Which RAID can handle the most disc failures?

[aceman118]

See this.

Click the (i) next to "RAID Type" to get a good explanation of the different RAID types and their advantages/disadvantages.You can ignore the SHR types as those are just for that NAS type.