Movies etc backup?

bubsy83

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I just lost about 200 films because my harddrive died and could not recover anything:mad:
What it the best way to backup my films/tv shows/music?
I was thinking about buying additional external hard drives and making a copy of each hard drive on to each ex-HD then just storing them in a cupboard until they are needed.
 
I just lost about 200 films because my harddrive died and could not recover anything:mad:
What it the best way to backup my films/tv shows/music?
I was thinking about buying additional external hard drives and making a copy of each hard drive on to each ex-HD then just storing them in a cupboard until they are needed.

The best way would be to have a external nas box that supports 2 drives and have them raided. Stick all your data on that and it will be backed up to 2nd drive.
 
I had exactly this issue the other day. . I used Active@ File Recovery 7.5 on the drive and got 99% of the stuff back. Worth it for the small fee it costs. You can run the trial for free too..

As for backing up in future I just got an external Usb drive for now - but will prob have to look into a RAID solution in the future..
 
I just lost about 200 films because my harddrive died and could not recover anything:mad:
What it the best way to backup my films/tv shows/music?
I was thinking about buying additional external hard drives and making a copy of each hard drive on to each ex-HD then just storing them in a cupboard until they are needed.

I went for straight duplication.....backup drive for every movie drive...

Might be costly to do but I couldn't bear burning 80 movies for every drive that died!

As soon as I fill a drive I replicate it and store the backup away....of course there's always the chance the drive about to be backed up dies before I get that far lol

With 2TB drives hitting the £70 mark it's more affordable than ever now!
 
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I just lost about 200 films because my harddrive died and could not recover anything:mad:
What it the best way to backup my films/tv shows/music?
I was thinking about buying additional external hard drives and making a copy of each hard drive on to each ex-HD then just storing them in a cupboard until they are needed.
That's what I've done for about 3tb of HD movies that I know I want to keep.

I have another 1tb drive which I use for current films and tv shows, and I use mirrorfolder to keep that dynamically backed up to another drive. Once that's full of stuff I know I want to keep and wont be changing then I'll store that backup drive as well and start again with a new drive.
 
As for backing up in future I just got an external Usb drive for now - but will prob have to look into a RAID solution in the future..

RAID is not a backup solution.
 
RAID is not a backup solution.

lol since when?!!? Raid is one of the most mainstream backup solutions availible provided you use the correct array with redundant drives ie Raid-1 or Raid 1+0.
 
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lol since when?!!? Raid is one of the most mainstream backup solutions availible provided you use the correct array with redundant drives ie Raid-1 or Raid 1+0.

Since always ;) you've obviously never had a corrupt raid before :(

Straight copy is the only backup worth using on an HTPC...raid is a waste of time in this environment IMO....

Yes it's a bit of redundancy but a duff raid can destroy the lot rather than just 1 disk! (and unfortunately I've seen this happen many times in server environments!)
 
RAID is not a backup solution.

lol since when?!!? Raid is one of the most mainstream backup solutions availible provided you use the correct array with redundant drives ie Raid-1 or Raid 1+0.


Both right really, I agree it's more of a redundancy solution which allows for hardware failures rather than a backup solution.
 
Better than no backups at all... plus I forget to get the usb drive out now and again for months.. will have to get a nas at some point
 
Agree with shade.

I think RAID is pretty much a waste of time and space.
It's just a problem waiting to happen in the future, e.g.

1. If you use hardware RAID from your mobo, what happens if the card dies in a few years time and you can't get a replacement one that uses the same hardware RAID? Your data is gone forever.

2. Software RAID is a bit better - means you aren't dependent on the hardware but there are drawbacks too.

I think it's better to copy it somewhere else as data should not be dependent on hardware.
 
I think I will go with the external usb, seems the simplest option. Thanks
 
Agree with shade.

I think RAID is pretty much a waste of time and space.
It's just a problem waiting to happen in the future, e.g.


If that's the case why would pretty much every company going use raid for redundancy?
 
lol since when?!!? Raid is one of the most mainstream backup solutions availible provided you use the correct array with redundant drives ie Raid-1 or Raid 1+0.

Ha ha....joker:D

RAID does NOT protect you from viruses, deleted files, corruption, fire...etc

You should backup your data, so you have multiple copies.

RAID just increases the availability of your data. :lesson:
 
I use RAID for increased data availability ( i don't want to be ripping 2TB worth of Blu-Ray everytime a drive fails :eek: ) and backups incase i lose the whole array, corruption, or incase i get fat fingers, and delete something i shouldn't!
 
If that's the case why would pretty much every company going use raid for redundancy?

It's good marketing. I'm not being cynical but really once mobo manufacturers started adding RAID to their motherboards, everyone had to follow.

In companies where they use big disk arrays, if they choose to use RAID, they don't use the type of hardware RAID that we have on our motherboards, they use big RAID card controllers which are fault tolerant and built with redundancy as well as with as much future-proofing as possible. You don't get this on home PC motherboards. You can buy separate RAID controllers but they cost a lot of money £200 and upwards I think.

If you implement hardware RAID - especially RAID 5 - on your motherboard, IMHO, you are asking for trouble. If you implement RAID 5 from your motherboard, lose a drive, plug a new one and let the motherboard rebuild your new drive using all the parity bits spread across the other drives, and then get an Unrecoverable Read Error in doing the rebuild - that is it - kaput - data is gone forever. Given how big drives are these days - 2TB, the chances of getting an Unrecoverable Read Error is getting higher and higher - some say it is inevitable on big disks - I don't know the truth of this but from what I read, RAID 5 especially was designed around dedicated RAID controllers and banks of much smaller industry class discs.

I'm also told that NAS boxes generally use software RAID which at least takes hardware failures out the equation but you can pretty much buy external hard drives for the additional cost of a NAS device so maybe it's not that cost effective. Anyway, food for thought.
 
No matter how cheap HardDisks are these days I still can't afford the idea of putting them away in closet and not fill them up with new movies. I would rather...legal issue aside...share with friends so you don't have to buy extra HardDisk and still have a backup somewhere. You can see it as putting a backup away from home so in any unfortunate events like fire or thief you won't lost them all include your backup in closet. You never know.
 

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