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?
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You think you can get the media again if need be.
Depending on how large your collection is, would you remember every item in it? How much effort did you put into organizing it?
IME it’s far more of an inconvenience and expense rebuilding data from scratch than properly backing it up. And the peace of mind from a robust, tried and true DR process is golden.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters Git Popular version control system, primarily for code NAS Network-Attached Storage Plex Brand of media server package RAID Redundant Array of Independent Disks for mass storage RPi Raspberry Pi brand of SBC SBC Single-Board Computer SSD Solid State Drive mass storage VPN Virtual Private Network
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I can always get the media again if need be.
Doesn’t that mean you already have backup? It may not be the easiest to restore, but it is a backup nevertheless.
Living life on the edge currently, but thats because I dont have a means to backup my media at the moment
“RAID is not a backup” just means that the entire RAID disk counts as one copy of the files.
Non original media doesn’t matter unless you think you have old obscure things that aren’t even on Internet archive or private torrent groups, or it has some sentimental value like a VTR recording of something you watched as a kid. Most you can download again and likely in better definition.
Focus first on getting at least 2 separate backups of the most important stuff: your family photos and videos. Then records, then work stuff.
That saying also means something else (and imo more important): RAID doesn’t protect against accidental or malicious deletion/modification. It only protects against data loss due to hardware fault.
If you delete stuff or overwrite it then RAID will dutifully duplicate/mirror/parity-check that action, but doesn’t let you go back in time.
Thats the same reason why just syncing the data automatically to another target also isn’t the same as a full backup.
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.
I’m probably an outlier, but I have a full 3-2-1 backup. Over 100Tb myself, with it all backed up. I have a safe off-site I back everything up to weekly and then annually I do a full backup to LTO tapes.
I lost my media once. I don’t want to go through that again.
Wow!
Given your previous experience, your approach is understandable.
I have an old raid setup on which the card died, and Crashplan deleted my Backups when the array went offline (yea, I was pissed)l.
One of these days I’ll find a card on ebay, recover everything, and back it up again.
If I’d had a second backup…
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.
Media Server? No content backup at all.
If you lose everything, just download new stuff you want to watch, or redownload a few TV series/movies.
Music? There are streaming services.
Only backup configurations and maybe application data, so that the reinstall will be easy. Those few kB/MB could sit anywhere. I’m using GitLab for this purpose.
Edit: Images! If you have your photos on there, back them up! They can’t be replaced!
The streaming services wont work if you have no access to interner lol.
At my last job I had to travel to my work dailly for over an hour in one way, for almost the whole travel I didn’t have any network or phone reception.
Will much rather just have music on a media server and a client that allows me to locally download some of my favouritr music for such situations like navidrome and synfonium than pay for spotify premium to allow me to do that.
Streaming services let you just mark playlists for offline use, I have my whole spotify library offline.
