In a year or so I expect to completely fill up my iPod Classic. I expect at some point that wonderful device will break and the thought terrifies me! I never, ever, ever want to lose my music. Beyond “the cloud” and my computer hard drive where else can I store my music (files)? (Say, for instance, I want to put it a lead box and bury it.)
Back up to an external hard drive. Several of them, if you’re that paranoid. And keep at least one of them off-site (i.e. not in your house).
I keep my music on a Drobo, so even if a drive fails I don’t lose anything. I’m not paranoid enough to worry about keeping an offsite backup, but if I were, I would periodically copy the data to another external drive that I kept in my safe deposit box.
I modified this procedure recently, due to ransomware risk - the kind of ransomware that infects you, then hangs around for a long while to infect all your backups before activating and encrypting everything. Rather than backing up repeatedly to a single large external drive that might become corrupted in its entirety, I periodically copy important files to a dated USB stick that I never touch again. The next dated backup goes on a new stick. This may be too expensive if you have a vast quantity of data, but high speed USB sticks are now available for around $10 for 32GB or $20 for 64GB. And it’s probably safe to reuse them after 6 months or so.
In addition to a hard disk backup, I also back up my hard drive on a cloud service, in case the computer is stolen or the house burns down. Right now I’m using Carbonite. You can get a 15 day free trial on their website.
Yup, Crashplan is also very good. It does store dated copies of all files, but my guess is that these dated versions are not really independent copies, and that it may not be proof against ransomware infecting everything. That’s why I also make dated backups periodically on a medium that I physically remove and never touch again.
I have (thankfully) never had to try this, but you can restore your music library by transferring it from the iPod back to your computer.
Google Music backs up all your songs and probably several other entire music collection. They’re up to some huge number of songs (50,000?)
Carbonite is good but it costs, however Google only does music formats. RAID 1/5/6 or Drobo (a proprietary equivalent) is a good idea too, though $$$$.
I’ve used CrashPlan to recover earlier versions of files that were corrupted or deleted.
Yes, me too, in the normal course of things. Crashplan is my primary backup.
But I’m not sure I would trust that ransomware could not penetrate earlier versions, so I think it’s quick and cheap second layer of security to copy key files onto a USB stick once a month, throw it in a drawer and never touch it again.
Heck, external USB hard drives are getting cheap enough that I have a few lying around in drawers.
I just might “save my fave” on a few of those. Would Google Music help if I lost a live recording from the 70s of Elton John’s mom singing Truckin’ with Leonard Cohen at the Blue Note after the last show at Deadapalooza…?
Get a LaCie rugged drive. They are cheap. Do a backup using your Mac or PC to this external portable drive and store it off-site like in a safe deposit box.
If you update it frequently, get two drives. And periodically swap it with its mate in the safe deposit box. That why you will always have a backup at another location.