Reliable Digital Music Storage

My Marantz CD 67 (1997) is still going strong! When it becomes wonky I can buy a replacement laser pickup and install it myself! But I still remain an LP fan and collecter! 

Does your Marantz CD 67 have any digital storage?  If it has a hard drive from 1997 I suspect I might have some related concerns.  I have a performing artist I like.  I own 17 of his CDs.  Last night I made a directory under his name and copied 400 files of his into a single directory.  28 files of the 400 were duplicates.  That leaves me with 372 of his songs I can play without interruption when I am busy.

Mirroring does not give you full protection. Controller fault, virus etc. can wipe all of them. I just keep two unpowered copies of my mechanical drive - one at home and on in the bank vault (in case of theft, fire, flood etc.) Unpowered mechanical drives tend not to fail. Recently I replaced them by SSDs (I use only 1TB, but keep data in ALAC). They don’t last forever, but main problem is not the data retention but limited number of write cycles, that doesn’t play any role here. Even if data on SSD drive stays only 10 years it does not mean, that drive fails in 10 years. Data on such drives is stored as charge that will eventually leak out (faster at higher temperatures), but writing new data starts another 10 years. I update my SSD backup drive every time I add 5-10 CDs and switch them next time I’m at the bank. That way data on them is not older than couple of years. Program I use (Super-Duper) erases drive first and then writes exact copy of main drive. Writing places new charge in memory that is good for another 10 years. I use two (unpowered) backups, because with only one backup I risk error in backup process (like computer failure) that can wipe/damage both drives. I hope it helps.

I also found interesting chart at the bottom of this article:

https://www.premiumusb.com/blog/how-long-can-usb-drives-last

It shows 51 years average data retention for SSD.

@kijanki That was very informative, thank you.  I have my archive on three NAS, and I assume that if any one dies I can restore from any one to any other.   Both of your notes are very helpful.  I did get my 2TB SSD USB drive and I'll start using it in preference to my USB hard drives.

I keep images doesn't take as much space as cloning

I use plain old spinning hard drives in external enclosures. I use SyncBack (a free program) to do an incremental sync (only copying files that have been added since the last copy) from one drive to another every night. I also backup everything to a cloud backup. If you have a fire, burglary, etc. having all your backups in your house isn’t going to do you any good, no matter how many you have.

I got another 4 CDs today, Sunday is a slow day.  All the incremental sync to all the destinations can be a big job.  I've tried to set up an off site archive but no one else is interested in helping me.  I avoid the Cloud since I value my privacy and a 30TB restore could take forever.

Timothy,

It's good that you've been thinking about your data as something that is valuable to you and needs to be properly backed up.  Most people, unfortunately, don't have that foresight.

I can also appreciate that you have this information mirrored on what appears to be 7 different locations.

That said, I'm not exactly sure what you're referring to by "mirroring".  Does that mean that you're using a copy mechanism (like rsync) to make an exact copy of the data?

If so, there are mechanisms that could improve your data integrity with fewer devices.

1)  Mirroring isn't an optimal strategy for minimizing data loss.  Best would be incremental backups, as this can be rolled back to what it looked like in prior dates.  So this provides protection against corruption, viruses, and accidental deletion.  If using true mirroring, then any of those get sent straight to your backup destinations, and therefore they can't help you get out of it.  Most modern OS's have good solutions for this (like Time Machine for Mac and Windows Backup for Windows), and it only requires one connected hard drive (or hard drive array).

2)  You need an off-site storage mechanism to be able to recover from something like a house fire or theft.  You can have multiple backups but if they're all located at the same spot, then they are all vulnerable to this.  I know you're concerned about privacy with cloud-based solutions (and rightfully so), but some offer the ability to use your own encryption keys to encrypt the data located on the cloud storage.  That provides good protection against prying eyes.  I use Backblaze B2 cloud storage (and have several terabytes backed up there) and use my own encryption keys and backup tools, but there are other options as well.  Keep in mind that many cloud backup sites can also seed the information with you sending them a hard drive full of the information, which makes it easier to start a multi-terabyte backup.  

3)  If you're absolutely against the cloud backup (which I feel represents the most reliable protection against fires, severe weather, etc), then have backup devices that you rotate to an offsite location.  I have two backup drives that alternate being located in my drive array and my office at work.  So if I have a house fire, I can recover most of my data with the offsite hard drive, and can get the rest from the cloud backup.  You mention an "off site archive", so you might already be doing this.(Backblaze would also send me a drive array if needed, but I think that it's a $500 upcharge -- but that is a low price to pay considering how much that data is worth to me.)


Ultimately, I think that you can reduce the number of locations where you store that data and just be smarter about how it's stored, what software you're using to do it, and where it is stored.  The simpler (and more automated) you can make it, the better.  And don't discount cloud-based solutions, as they offer a number of advantages, the least of which is now having to purchase new drives.

Michael

By mirror I mean that I use "Beyond Compare" to keep every location with identical files.  So yes I do incremental backups almost every day.

I can lend a friend one of my NASs and by doing that I would have an offsite backup, of when I gifted the NAS.  I am working on that.