We have unlimited upload and download, so that's not a problem. The problem I have is speeds. We only get 7.9meg so if it transferring a lot of data and I happen to be working in the offices on a Sunday my internet is abysmal.

 

garycase: In reality I could just pay my nephew to get the 10x 84L storage boxes out of attic and pay him 5p per disc (approx. £150 for them all, which is quite a lot for a 12 year old) but I felt like I would be stealing his youth. I figured that this way I have learned my lesson.

garycase: In reality I could just pay my nephew to get the 10x 84L storage boxes out of attic and pay him 5p per disc (approx. £150 for them all, which is quite a lot for a 12 year old) but I felt like I would be stealing his youth. I figured that this way I have learned my lesson.

 

Yes, I could do the same thing with my DVDs, which are stored in 10 400-disc binders in boxes in the attic.    However, when I put these all on my server, I (a) ripped them;  (b) compressed them with DVD Shrink;  © extracted the movie only;  (d)  catalogued them in DVD Profiler;  (e)  set the parameters in Profiler so that they'll play with a single click;  and (f) for those that happen to be letterboxed, I re-rendered them with DVD ReBuilder to eliminate the letterbox.

 

I've built this collection over ~ 10 years (and it's still growing).    The process I go through probably takes an hour or so per disk [mostly "computer time" -- not "human time"].    But considering that a modern 4TB drive can hold 850 of these, that's perhaps $0.24/DVD to never have to do all that again ... certainly inexpensive insurance !!    [in reality my backups cost me more than that, as disks weren't so inexpensive when I first started doing all this;  but that's water over the dam]

 

Good to see more folks getting serious about backups => it's always amazed me how many folks spend the $$ for a fault-tolerant server for their data; spend YEARS accumulating it (and who knows how many total hours !);  and then don't back it up.

 

It's easy to say "... I'll just rip it/download it/recreate it ..." => but if you seriously consider how many hours it took to do that; organize it;  catalog it;  etc. the cost of a backup suddenly doesn't look so bad  :)

 

I guess it's just a question of cost vs risk/importance. To backup 20TB is gonna cost upwards of $1,000 (cheap PC and 5x4TB). I know I've got better things to spend $1,000+ on. I do make sure anything I can't get back is safely backed up in the cloud (my basement isn't good enough (due to fire/flood/etc. risk). Worst case, I'll probably have to revert to putting discs back in a machine for a few months (another one of those first world problems :-) ). As of next week, I'll have a spare HP microserver and a few drives, but I really need to find an unbelievable deal on 4 x 2-3TB to cover me for the next year.

 

What's the cheapest way anyone else has got to backup 20TB?

 

 

However, when I put these all on my server, I (a) ripped them;  (b) compressed them with DVD Shrink;  © extracted the movie only;  (d)  catalogued them in DVD Profiler;  (e)  set the parameters in Profiler so that they'll play with a single click;  and (f) for those that happen to be letterboxed, I re-rendered them with DVD ReBuilder to eliminate the letterbox.

 

 

How much do you charge an hour? 

 

 

I've got 39TB of space -- about 34TB used -- and it's all backed up.

 

If I had gone merrily along and never backed up, then yes, it'd cost a good bit to back it all up from scratch.  But I have ALWAYS had good backups ... so my backup cost is spread over the time I've built up the data.

 

The incremental cost of backing up is based on how fast you're accumulating data.    Suppose you add 50 DVDs/month to your collection (I did that for a brief time when I first started, but do far less now).  50 DVDs, if you store them compressed to DVD-5 size, takes about 235GB.  That's less than 3TB/year => so a $110 3TB drive is enough for a years' backups at that rate.  [Prices obviously vary, but that's the best price currently shown on the "Good Deals" listing here:  http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=30098.0 ]

 

That price is $36.67/TB => so if you're starting with NO backups, and need to backup 20TB, then it'd cost you $733.40.    That sounds like a lot -- but consider how much you spent to acquire/tip/catalog the media -- and for the hardware for your UnRAID server that holds it ... and I suspect it's not a large percentage.

 

I've got 39TB of space -- about 34TB used -- and it's all backed up.

 

If I had gone merrily along and never backed up, then yes, it'd cost a good bit to back it all up from scratch.  But I have ALWAYS had good backups ... so my backup cost is spread over the time I've built up the data.

 

The incremental cost of backing up is based on how fast you're accumulating data.    Suppose you add 50 DVDs/month to your collection (I did that for a brief time when I first started, but do far less now).  50 DVDs, if you store them compressed to DVD-5 size, takes about 235GB.  That's less than 3TB/year => so a $110 3TB drive is enough for a years' backups at that rate.  [Prices obviously vary, but that's the best price currently shown on the "Good Deals" listing here:  http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=30098.0 ]

 

That price is $36.67/TB => so if you're starting with NO backups, and need to backup 20TB, then it'd cost you $733.40.    That sounds like a lot -- but consider how much you spent to acquire/tip/catalog the media -- and for the hardware for your UnRAID server that holds it ... and I suspect it's not a large percentage.

 

All good points. For me, at least, I'm always trying to get the best I can *reasonably* afford, so I'd spend extra on a Red or Black drive over a green or cheaper vendor. Adding a backup whacks that up a great deal more. Being more sensible, I should buy two greens for the same price (or a much lower increment)

 

I'd certainly be a bit miffed if I lost all my RIPs but as I do Video_TS/BD ISO, it's a bit less human-time to get them back (than having to make MKV, etc.). I've given up being too finicky about meta data because I've change products a few times and lost some. I do make sure all movies have a good thumbnail and backdrops. Right now I'm using genre cleaner in MB3 so that gets rid of all the ridiculous genres like "Black and White-Thriller-Shot in Foreign Country-With Romantic Ending  ). I think having the meta data in movies.xml, etc. is good, because it's easy to backup that and the images in a few GB

 

All that said, I'm hoping that if it ever comes to (and I haven't got my movie backup server up and running), CrashPlan will actually turn out to unlimited (unlike these "unlimited" cell phone data plans)

 

Regards

 

Mark

Despite the attraction of "unlimited" cloud backup plans, I don't think it makes sense for backing up TB's worth of data.    Unless you happen to be on fiber with a VERY high upload rate (which most of us are not).

 

My ISP doesn't have any plans with > 3Mb upload speeds ... and even that costs more than I'm willing to pay.  I have 20Mb download, 1.5Mb upload => and there's no way I'd try to backup my media at those speeds.

 

Crashplan does, of course, allow you to use a local server as the backup target => THAT makes some sense.  I've toyed with the idea; but haven't switched to that from my current process.

 

Despite the attraction of "unlimited" cloud backup plans, I don't think it makes sense for backing up TB's worth of data.    Unless you happen to be on fiber with a VERY high upload rate (which most of us are not).

 

My ISP doesn't have any plans with > 3Mb upload speeds ... and even that costs more than I'm willing to pay.  I have 20Mb download, 1.5Mb upload => and there's no way I'd try to backup my media at those speeds.

 

Crashplan does, of course, allow you to use a local server as the backup target => THAT makes some sense.  I've toyed with the idea; but haven't switched to that from my current process.

 

To me the bigger issue isn't the backup, who cares how long that takes, as long as it finishes before you encounter a failure, it's the restore.  Most cloud backup services seem to have anemic bandwidth.

 

Sent from a mobile device, sorry for any typos.

 

 

 

 

To me the bigger issue isn't the backup, who cares how long that takes, as long as it finishes before you encounter a failure, it's the restore.  Most cloud backup services seem to have anemic bandwidth.

 

Sent from a mobile device, sorry for any typos.

 

I've never tested their restore, but it's there as an option. Even if it takes 3 months, it's a lot less work that manually re-ripping. I don't watch that many movies, so I could give my BD player a workout for a month or while everything is restored. Again it's a nice to have backup and not the key reason I use CrashPlan. Only having an unheated, uninsulated, detached garage in Chicago gives me little option for a proper local backup that would survive fire/theft/flood in the main structure. I've tried having a disk that I take to work and every week with the current backup. That lasted a month.

 

Regards

 

Mark

 

I've never tested their restore, but it's there as an option.

 

Drop everything and test the restore.

 

Don't bother investing in a backup that you haven't proved the restore.  So many things can go wrong...

 

Sent from my mobile

 

 

Like I said, it's not critical that I can restore x-TB of ISO's from the cloud. I will eventually have a local backup and worst case I have the discs. I works perfectly for my critical data and meta data. If it works, it's a bonus, if not it'll cost me a few minutes here and there to insert a disc and make a new ISO and there's certainly no rush to do it.