Preferred Digital Music File Backup?

While I understand that some cloud services will mail a drive containing your files to you if it ever becomes necessary to restore them, keep in mind that downloading a large backup from the cloud may take an absurdly long time.

For example, if you have say a 100 mbps Internet connection, which is fairly fast, and if the download speed is not limited by the speed of the service at the other end, or by any of the servers in between your computer and their server (all of which are optimistic assumptions), downloading 2 Terabytes will take more than two days of non-stop downloading. While a reasonably fast external mechanical (non-SSD) hard drive connected via USB 3.0 (or higher) should be able to do that in around three hours or less.

Also, since upload speeds are usually a lot slower than download speeds, if a 2 TB music collection were to be uploaded all at once it would take far longer than those two days. Probably more like a week.

I would therefore recommend backing up to at least one (and preferably two) external hard drives that are in your possession, at least if you have a large amount of music to back up.

Regards,
-- Al

Yes @almarg you are right about the restore time.  Sending a physical device to restore is needed. Who does that?

My digital files reside on a NAS.  I have about 3 TB of files.  I recently started using Robocopy, a program that is included with Windows, to create a mirror copy of my files to an external HDD.  I learned how to use Robocopy by watching a YouTube video.  I can store the drive in my safety deposit box.

mapman

Sending a physical device to restore is needed. Who does that?

That is a service offered by iDrive. The company will also send you a drive to load your files onto, saving you the burden of dealing with slow uploads.

I back up to external HD and iDrive and have been happy with their service.

I back up to a solid state drive on my computer which is only for music back up.  I also have a USB hard drive I back up the music files on.  I have 2 different back ups.  I did this because I lost all my files once with no back up and spent the next year re-ripping all my cd's.