I wanted to get some advice on how others are managing their music collections in unRAID. I would like to keep my music collection off of the main array, as my drives will be mostly spun down during the day. I watch movies much less frequently then I access my music. I do have an SSD to store my music collection on and am looking for the best way to utilize it.

 

Is storing your collection in cache the best way to keep your music backed up? Or is it better to store it in unassigned devices and find a way to back it up? My only concern is I want to have it backed up automatically and ignore any manual process if possible.

I handle music in a way that keeps it on the array!   I handle music/audiobooks by having a share that is restricted to a particular drive (and that drive is excluded from shares movies/tv).    I also set that drive to have a longer spin down delay.   That way in normal use only that single drive is spun up.   Because the music drive is still part of the array I get the normal parity protection for its contents (although I still have off-line backups in case disaster strikes)

I handle music in a way that keeps it on the array!   I handle music/audiobooks by having a share that is restricted to a particular drive (and that drive is excluded from shares movies/tv).    I also set that drive to have a longer spin down delay.   That way in normal use only that single drive is spun up.   Because the music drive is still part of the array I get the normal parity protection for its contents (although I still have off-line backups in case disaster strikes)

I also restrict my music to a single drive, have it backed up and parity protected.

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I like the idea of designating a drive for music, but I would prefer to use an SSD to save power and my collection is large so an SSD should help. Is there any options out there for using an SSD and avoiding a manual back-up?

Store on an SSD off the array using unassigned devices and back up to array on a schedule?

What I use is a Pi, running Minimserver to listen to music across my home network.  Working on automatically syncing between it and my unRaid.

@tjb_altf4 What app do you use to back up your SSD to the array?

Can anyone share the method they use to backup an unassigned device on a schedule?

My music is on the array, I was suggesting something to fit your requirements.
If you have a windows client or VM, SyncBack is a great little program for backup/syncing files.

Not got far enough with my research for docker based solutions.

@tjb_altf4 Thank you for the suggestion. I do like programs like FreeFileSync to run on a VM, but I am leaning towards Resilio. There is a Docker managed by Limetech called Sync that utilizes Resilio, I am still working on getting it to see my drives. The tutorials I have found reference an older version of the Docker that looked easier to config and I am struggling with this new version. If I can't get it to work, I may just throw an SSD in the main array. It is still experimental and it looks like your writes will suffer, but all I care about is quick read times and keeping my larger HDDs spun down as they are only movies and don't get watched that often.