Media Storage

verb77

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I've set up a home network to run my Media Center off. My main worry now is that the media that I have is only safe for as long as the hard drives are safe.

I understand that I can back everything up but this means have twice as much data round the house.

What alternatives are there for storing my media whilst not having to worry about losing it??
I just not sure what is available for the growing area of media centers for protecting our data.

Yes it is all my music and TV collection that I want to protect.

Since we are now into digital TV / music storage, I still don't want to lose all that I've paid for should my drive (eventually) fail. We would be upset if we came home from work and our CD's and DVD's where gone.

I want to look to protect against it happening digitally.

Does anyone know of anything that is aimed at this??
 
I'm not really sure what you're looking for; any method of storage that you can find will involve a physical storage device of some sort that will eventually fail. It is highly advisable to keep multiple backups of anything that you don't want to lose.

If you don't want to keep extra drives in the house then cloud storage is a good alternative if you're willing to pay for it. Of course, even those companies can suffer equipment failures or security breaches. The upside is that your data would be accessible anywhere you can get an internet connection; if you lose everything in a fire then you at least still have all your files.

The last time I checked, you could get 20GB of free storage with a Windows Live account. It's not a whole lot, but it's free.
 
Well, sure. It's not hard to set up a computer as a file server attached to the network. The hard drive(s) in it would still be at the same risk of failure as any other hard drive, though, and I don't know that it would give you any advantages over an external HD given your stated needs.

If you just want to backup your data and nothing else, your best bet would probably be an external hard drive. That's the cheapest and simplest solution unless you have an old PC lying around that you don't use (and that has sufficient storage space).
 
Any amount of storage device you can get can and will eventually fail. Just buy some good trusted drives to hold your media. I've trusted a single 1TB to hold my personal recordings (which include stuff with my dad who isn't alive anymore) since around early 2009. I got a couple of 2TB drives in early 2010 that hold the majority of my movies and all of my game files. Buying any good Seagate Barracuda or Western Digital black/blue drive to store your media is about all the insurance you can get. The rest is up to managing the things around your drives.

1: Keep them cool. Make sure you have a good fan blowing over your drives in the case that houses them. This is a big deal, because hot drives die faster.
2: If the media is that important to you, buy a UPS battery backup. This is so power outages or browns don't deter the voltage going to your drives. A good UPS will give you enough time to shut down the computer in question, or you can program it to shut down for you.
3: Keep the computer housing the drives safe from others. Make sure nobody including yourself knock in to your computer while it's on. When the computer is on the heads are above the platters and any kind of hard knock can cause them to dip into the platters and cause damage. Thing to note, when the PC or HDDs are off the heads are not above the platters.
4: Continuation from #3, have Windows shut down the HDDs after inactivity. You can find this in the power profile section in the control panel. After 20 minutes or so Windows will shut down those drives so they aren't wasting power, can't get hot, can't be accidentially knocked in to, and reduces the on time of the drive extending the drive life. The only downfall from this is you have to wait for the drive to spin back up when you try to access it. Don't be alarmed, it will look like your computer froze but it didn't. Just give it time.

Bout all the advice I can give before getting expensive.
 
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