HOW DO YOU PRESERVE YOUR DIGITAL MUSIC FILES? I WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU! INCLUDES MY OWN 'SHOW & TELL'

[@rosswarren436]

Thanks! People really need to consider this for their music files and for those precious irreplaceable digital photos. Back up, back up, back up!

[@TheAudiophileMan]

Very kind of you, Ross - thank you!

[@techmed-rainer]

Danke! Thank you very much for this nice overview. I hope I just didn't miss it, but I'd always suggest having a NAS. From this you can also stream, e.g. via roon. And in case your property ist destroyed by flood or fire you can place a second NAS somewhere else.

[@TheAudiophileMan]

Thank you for your support - very kind of you!

[@techmed-rainer]

@@TheAudiophileMan You're welcome. You're producing a nice show for us Hifi enthusiasts.

[@petervdveenmuis]

Hi Paul I store my audio data on SDD. With a backup. Also on SDD.

[@petervdveenmuis]

SSD

[@melvlnleese7499]

Hi Paul, I have a present a 1000+ vinyl lp's and a few hundred cd's. A few years ago, I purchased a cd recorder and gradually ripped my vinyl to cd, then transferred to my laptop. I also have a NAS where the music is also stored and backed up. This allows me to play my collection through my streamer and make playlists depending on my mood.

[@Meerlu]

Dedicated 2TB NVME on my main PC for main (audio only) library. A copy of that is backed up to my unRAID NAS every time I make any changes to the files. This back up is usually where i play/stream from. This backup folder is also backed up to one more drive every few weeks.

[@RaviNewfarm]

I have a home NAS with dual RAID disks. about 3TB disks, backing up each other.

[@andymill8552]

Hi Paul, I store my digital music files on a NAS. The NAS is backuped every night to another USB hard drive. The USB hard drive is backuped daily to the cloud ;). I also have boxes full of CD's, but they are all ripped to the NAS too. Until now I use mechanical hard drives, because SSDs are still a bit to expensive to my taste.

[@miguelbarrio]

I curate my library on my mac pro, where it sits in a hard drive. That same machine keeps a copy of that library in a TimeMachine backup. The curated library gets copied to a NUC10i7's SSD drive from where Roon plays the library. For external backup I cycle between four external hard drives (bare drives). In total I have 7 exact copies of the library. On top of that 5 of those 7 copies contain a recurring backup of my Roon database.

[@jozefserf2024]

One hidden problem with storage is OCD. For most people 1TB should be more than enough.

[@soundknight]

More details on cataloguing would be great please...

[@maxx99988]

ripped all of my cds and bought a lifetime subscription to pcloud. Now all of my cds backed up in the cloud. My working copy is at home on an ssd that I stream through Roon. I also made a complete copy on my laptop. As I am not going to buy any more cds the collection does not change (i mainly stream).

[@sWonSwon1]

for me I realised recently that if I buy something digital online, its best to do it by album instead of song. This is because I like to burn it to Cd or put the files on dvd to save the files. I prefer it to be in .wav or .Flac just so its the highest quality possible. But in the end I think the best backup is to get the manufactered cd. I also have a offline mp3 player that my music is on it has thousands of songs on it. The mp3 player sits on the shelf with all the cds and dvds. I am considering a .flac player

[@flyergowest]

I enjoyed this. Informative. Saving this for future reference. From Toronto. Cheers.

[@j.neumann1722]

I store my music on a synology nas. This nas runs in raid mode, that way even if I have a dead HD I still have a functional copy.

[@gerasimger15]

the only problem ssds for data storage is the added cost and that the information on an ssd doesn't stay as long as a hard drive which if the mechanical parts don't fail can stay theyre for very long amounts of time, or so i've been told

[@kevinsheppard6085]

I have all my music from cd backed up via my desk top pc, i use Seagate iron wolf 4tb internal drives in a Terramaster 4 bay external enclosure in JOBD (just a bunch of drives. ). However have a copy of this that lives on a synology NAS drive, (so it lives in two places) and this Nas is configured in raid so has redundancy, so my music streamer, phone and what ever else connects to the Synology NAS, the terramaster unit is solely just in case, plus the nas runs in raid, so in effect three copies of everything. The terramaster lives in the house, the Nas lives in a shed at the bottom of the garden so if disaster strikes hopefully at least one copy will survive, plus i have everything on cd anyhow.

[@pt9009]

I burn my organized library on to 25-gigabyte Blu-ray ray discs as squashfs images. Each disc has a range of albums according to my own cataloging system, and each has a list of all the albums in my possession as of the date of burning. Blu-ray discs seem to be rather durable and long-lasting, provided you store them in individual cases on a shelf.

[@Meerlu]

Careful with SSD for backup. They can corrupt if left unpowered for a while. Sometimes only a few months. They need power to maintain themselves.

[@bobbler42]

I’m only a shade over 1tb of music, but that and a bunch of other work I want not to lose had me buying a Synology NAS and 2*4tb hard drives to run as a raid array. Sadly, though, being a partially sighted pebcak, I had to hire in a helpful neighbourhood it guy to set it up. The drives are in it, it appears when I run the utility, but he ran out of time before setting up the files to backup. And now I get stranded between two utilities on windows and iOS that can’t agree if I’m an admin, much less let me store anything. Much picnic. I need to get him back, of course, but this rather puts off from, say, attempting to turn an old laptop into a headless roon server.

[@barryhoward7165]

I purchase all of the music files I have except CDs that I rip via Volumio and all of them are stored on my NAS as well as on my laptop computer with SSD storage and a SSD USB storage device. I do not use any streaming services.

[@marcse7en]

My CD collection is converted to FLAC using Exact Audio Copy. The musical database (including general data, and 40 years of home video) is backed up to multiple hard drives and an M.2 USB SSD (5 drives in total, including two off-site drives). In 27 years of building and using computers, I've never lost any data! EDIT: My HDD / SSD drives of choice are Western Digital. HGST HDD are also bullet-proof! Lately, I've transitioned to 2.5" USB bus-powered drives for backups. My new 2.5" 5TB WD is great! TIP: Don't forget to scan your drives with Victoria! And use a SMART utility, such as Crystal Disk Info, and/or Hard Disk Sentinel. Wouldn't touch Seagate drives with a bargepole! ... WD have NEVER let me down yet! On the contrary, I've had HDD's sat idle for YEARS, and they spin up just fine! It's a good idea to REFRESH the data on an HDD using DiskFresh! Or, you can delete the data, reformat the drive, and copy it back.

[@alexseaford4029]

Hi Paul, what a fascinating piece. Thanks. As part of my BT broadband package I was offered 100gb of free cloud storage with the chance to buy additional storage quite cheaply. This gives me peace of mind. I know Google also offer fairly cheap cloud storage which might be worth investigating.

[@scottbaylor6215]

Not on the same scale as yours but I bought most of my digital files from Apple. So they are in a laptop solid state drive and they are actual CDs. I use some sort of sleeve I purchased from Amazon. I should back up my CDs but never got around to it. I use to digitize all of my music but one day my iTunes library database file for corrupted and while I had the music, I lost ratings, genres and playlists. So I then went back to physical media. CDs are my preferred medium and I buy my music in vinyl as well if I feel it is worth it. Good luck, interesting to learn more about how this works. I think I’ll be okay with things I’ve bought so long as Apple doesn’t go out of business. Best I can tell, they are doing okay. LoL!

[@snapea]

Wow, some music collection you have there! One reason I'm quite glad not to have gone down the hi res route. I'd imagine with so much data to backup, HDDs will remain the most cost-effective for the foreseeable future. In terms of optical, have you considered blu ray? Highly stable, so should be long-lasting and capacity up to 100gb on readily available triple layer BDXL discs (128gb on the more exotic imported quad layer ones). As for optical disc storage, how about one of those multi cd binders people used to put in their cars or take on holiday with them? I'm sure there will be devent quality ones which protect the disc adequately. If it's an archive, I'm assuming they're not being removed or put back in very often.

[@joesharkey1021]

Where do you get good cheap diskx? I get 100GB from Japan for abou £6 each...

[@mr.k905]

Great video, thanks! ...How do you play you digital files? I was thinking about using an older version of iTunes on an older iMac. Seems like a cheap yet reliable/good and fast enough option when connected to some decent amp & speakers (for everyday use. I'm not an audiophile freak but want good lossless quality). I imagine it to be like a packed jukebox basically but way smaller and more convenient. ...Any ideas on this? Is there anything better out there?

[@TheAudiophileMan]

Hi - I tend to play my digital files via an Astell&Kern DAP. That is, via a mobile solution/platform. I tend to go analogue/CD (digital/physical, I know) and the HiFi route at home. But pure files? Mobile. Sometimes I will sit in the lounge and listen to the DAP. I tend not to use computers, personally. I find the DPA is a better quality experience. Convenience is attractive for computer use but I've never found iTunes or its variations to be very convenient at all. I find the entire system hard to manage and manipulate. So I try to find a purer, specialist player such as Audirvana (at least on my Mac). Which might not help you. Basically, I would encourage you - via computer - to prioritise ease of use or at least one that you find easy to use.

[@peterdavidson8603]

For storage of music files at home the obvious solution is a NAS from the likes of Synology. It backs up to two hard drives and in the event one hard drive fails all files are backed up to the second hard drive. Replace failed hard drive and all is good.. You can of course connect the NAS to your HIFI using Roon. Serious archiving is best done off site to a cloud service. Microsoft onedrive is very good but there are many cloud storage services to choose from.. No problems then in hardware maintenance

[@TheAudiophileMan]

Hi Peter - yes, Synology is getting lot of love in these comments I must have a closer look at the brand.

[@jeffchristian6798]

Multiple micro SD and USB flash drives, keyword multiple. Internal SSD is OK, but I also like to have multiple backups on devices physically discrete from the computer itself.

[@soundknight]

I prefer HDD to SSD, they are salvageable if something goes wrong. And cheaper so I can buy two

[@soundknight]

Cardboard sleeves, you print them and cut and glue them yourself...?

[@julianwarr7246]

Here's my approach: 1. Digital music is stored on a NAS device (with 2-disc redundancy - i.e. two disks can fail and the data is still safe) 2. I also maintain two physical backups on hard disk (plus original CDs) 2. Finally, I use iTunes Match - so I have high bit rate copies in the cloud which can be accessed anywhere

[@stefaandecroo6774]

Dear Paul, Thank you so much for this very interesting video. Very instructive information as usual. All my best wishes and Kindest Regards. 🙂 🙂 🙂

[@soundknight]

I keep the CD, save it on 2 portable HDD, then put it into micro sd cards in my phone, and media players as wav files.

[@peterlundin7953]

I stopped worrying decades ago! 😉 Despite this I currently run a secondhand 8 slot NAS from Synology with 16Tb (Toshiba NAS Spec) spinning discs set up as self mirroring RAID 0 (I think, 4+4 discs), I exchange oldest disks every three or so years and have yet to have a Thoshiba disc fail on me. Also have a few USB discs that I use for transfer/backup (both Spinning and SSDs), stopped buying WD discs several years ago as they seemed to have a greater fail rate. I have a box in the attic with many hundred of DVD-backups on 100-disc spindles that have been collecting dust for I don't know how long, dont use DVDs any more...

[@soundknight]

My wife will know about those bags as she has a bunch from Japan.

[@richardigglesden8193]

It certainly is a knotty problem especially as the volume of data rises. Fortunately (for me) I have less than 10TB so multiple hard discs work for me.

[@edwardsavinon4959]

Case Logic CDS-120 120 Capacity CD ProSleeve Pages (White)

[@TheAudiophileMan]

Thanks for the advice Edward! I’ll check them out.

[@WESDEANEMARTIN]

Multiple formats, including Western Digital HDD's, and a pile of 100GB SSD's (SLC type).

[@tacofortgens3471]

Exact Audio Copy to rip my CD's accuraterip enabled, Musicbrainz Picard to tsg my flac files and embed the album art. Inam oldskool Inuse Winamp to play my files. Or use USB stick with flac files with DAC

[@soundknight]

SSD is expensive to recover and more likely in the event of a failure to be completely lost. In sticking with HDD 4TB -

[@troiter8]

FLAC on an 8 bay NAS 😁

[@robertyork4041]

My 'collection' is not on the same scale as yours so my data management is a bit simpler, at least less time consuming...still doesn't stop me getting a bit paranoid about secure storage, given the time taken to rip all the CDs! My CDs are all ripped to my laptop SSD, backed up onto a hard drive and two separate SSDs, all in FLAC using EAC. The CDs are all stored in their jewel cases. Vinyl isn't backed up although much of it is duplicated by CDs and, therefore, FLAC files. Other data, such as pictures, is on my laptop SSD and backed up onto a hard drive.

[@pc750-V4]

To be honest Paul I am astonished you have the time and patience to go through the massive faffing you seem to be subjecting yourself to... Its painful thinking about it. My mantra is that to be effective above all else it has to be simple and preferably automatic, yours is neither😂

[@TheAudiophileMan]

What faffing? I’m not sure what you are referring to.

[@pc750-V4]

​@@TheAudiophileMan errh ... Well you say you have 36TB or more of digital 'media' and that you generally dont use HDDs of more than 4TB so thats at least 9 HDD drives to manage , then as you seem to indicate that you back up these to internal drives via the caddy device that plugs into your PC thats at least another 9 drives for backups and then you say you spin all the discs up every few months. Thats a lot of faff without the optical media you also mention which given the much lower capacity is many more discs. Maybe it's the way you presented it but that's a lot of faff 😂

[@TheAudiophileMan]

Over the years, I've slowly collected a host of unique data: music, bootlegs, live work, video, radio output... a lot of it completely unique. Much of it irreplaceable as the source sites have all died. I don't back up my physical media, I must add. All of this 36TB data is sourced from the Internet and elsewhere. As this data entity has grown slowly but inexorably, I fear that the lot could disappear in one fell swoop or at least in 4TB chunks. So I decided to back up my back ups as insurance. The actual maintenance in minimal. I have the data, which has slowly accrued. That's there. Done. All I have to do is spin up the disks every few months which takes what, an hour? Rather that than lose unique recordings, I say :)

[@pc750-V4]

Fair enough Paul... It was the way it came over in the video or perhaps I grasped the stick by the wrong end.