On 12/07/13 12:29 PM, Rob Owens wrote:
----- Original Message -----From: "Intense Red"<intnsred@golgotha.net> Okay, here's a different backup software question. The scenario: Call me weird, but I buy plastic CDs and refuse to buy "electronic" music. I tediously rip my CDs to Ogg files and store them on my file server. (The CDs go into the basement.) Great, I'm happy. I have 12-15 GB of Ogg files. Each Ogg file is stored in a tediously-named subdirectory tree arranged by "Genre -> Artist -> Album". I want to back up this music subdirectory tree.I'm with you on buying music on CD. But keep in mind that you don't have a "true" backup of those music CDs unless you're encoding them in a lossless format such as flac. The filesize will be larger, but you can configure Rhythmbox to automatically transcode when you move a file to your portable player (assuming you use one). Now as for backing up your ogg files (or flac files) to data DVD, I think you're doing it wrong. It's an interesting technical problem, but you could solve it really easily by just backing up to a USB drive. I know that's sort of throwing money at the problem, but as your music collection grows your backup-to-DVD scheme is just going to get more and more annoying. You could get a 32 GB USB flash drive for $20, or a 500 GB USB hard drive for $50 from newegg (US dollars). -Rob
Good point about the use of FLAC instead of ogg. However, I wouldn't advise a USB hard drive for backup. The problem is that they are prone to failure (as is any mechanical system), are expensive, and you need multiple drives to have an offsite backup or redundant backups.
Optical media works because you only need a single drive (the expensive component) while the media is cheap. Moreover the media is lightweight, compact and portable so you can store it offsite. The low media cost allows for multiple copies providing redundancy.
A single BD-R disk can store perhaps 75 CDs converted to FLAC format.Perhaps we're also looking at the problem the wrong way. Rather than looking at backing up the directory periodically, why not recode the CDs to FLAC in a special directory, then copy the new album to the music directory. When the special directory approaches 24G, archive it to a BD-R and erase it.
This way you always have three or more copies of the music (the original CD, the music directory copy and the special directory copy or a BD-R copy) at any time. You don't require any special software and the time spent in making the archive copies is minimal (unless you by a lot of CDs).
The BD-Rs are also easily copied so you can store a set in a safety deposit box or at a friend's house for offsite backup for greater safety.