How To: Backing up your movie collection
Why would you need this:
If you’re anything like me, and you rip your movies at the highest quality possible, you’ll never want to lose your data. Those large file sizes and long rip times should never have to happen again. If you lost all that data, think of how long it would take to re-rip your whole DVD library. That’s why you want to back up your files.
How to:
Lets face it, inevitably your hard drive is going to go kaput. Wouldn’t you feel better if you had a backup of all that data? These days, hard drives are cheap, but finding a good backup solution that works for you could still end up being costly. I’m going to look at two solutions here. One’s cheap and requires some initial set up from you, and the other is a little more costly, but is a no brainer for security and ease of use.
The first solution is to just go purchase a second hard drive, in most cases you’ll be getting an external USB drive of some sort. Get something large and cheap, hopefully large enough to hold your collection. Drives come in sizes up to 1TB currently unless you buy a RAID set up (see step two). A 1TB drive can hold roughly 200 5GB movies. Obtaining the drive is the first part, the second will be to install an application that you can use to automatically copy the files over to the drive for you. On the Mac, I would recommend something like SuperDuper! It features basic scripting where you can set it up to backup your files in the middle of the night when you’re away from the computer. This is a fairly secure method, however there’s always that .01% chance that both drives fail at the same time. Eww.
The second solution is a RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) setup. For a setup like this, I’m going to recommend a Drobo storage device. The benefits of a setup like this is immense. First off, this isn’t a backup solution, it’s a storage solution that provides redundancy if a drive fails. No backup’s necessary. You’ll store your whole library on this device. It’s a set of four drives in one storage unit. The magic of Drobo is that if one drive fails, another drive has it it mirrored, and you just pull the defective drive out, and stick a new one in. What’s even better about the Drobo is that you can swap in drives of any size. Let’s say you stuck in a 500GB drive because it was cheap, later on if it fails or you just want more storage, yank the drive out and stick in a 1TB drive. The drives can be hot swapped, you can use any size, and you don’t have to worry about losing data, the Drobo takes care of everything for you. The only down side is that a fully loaded Drobo with 4 drives will cost you $750 or more depending on the size of the drives you use.
Leave a message in the comments if you have a solution that works for you. Now go back up your media!
Tags: Backup, Drobo, Mac, PC, RAID, SuperDuper!
