I was curious what everyone on the board is using for backing up their hard drive(s) of MP3s. We all know what a pain in the butt it is to rip them, so it would be a major catastrophe if you lost the data and had to do it all over again.

I'm thinking RAID 1 (mirroring) is a good way to go. An advantage is that the mirror will always be up-to-date. A downside is that the mirrored HD could get fried as well (remote chance, but possible).

Tape backup isn't a bad idea, either. An advantage is that It can always be used to backup the rest of your computer data as well. Also, it's more safe, since it can be put away and stored, separate from the computer. A disadvantage is that you have to do incremental backups. But, I suppose once you've ripped your CDs, you won't be adding new ones quite so often.

We've all determined CD-R storage is pretty much out of the question, given the size of most of our collections.

Anything else?

DVD burners and media are starting to get to a 'resonable' range. This is the route im looking into...

I was curious what everyone on the board is using for backing up their hard drive(s) of MP3s.

I have a 40GB C: drive, and a matching 40GB D: drive. Whenever the mood hits me, I use DriveImage software to copy the C: drive to the D: drive, giving me a fully bootable D: drive should I ever need it.

I decided not to use mirroring software because that way any mistake I make on my C: drive (deleting the wrong file, etc.) is instantly mirrored on my backup drive, somewhat defeating the purpose of having a backup.

These days 40GB drives are cheaper, faster, and more reliable than tape drives... so why not? Just think of it as a very fast tape drive with full random access.

tanstaafl.

I'm planning to install a small quiet PC, with a large hard drive, in the home office of another friend who also has broadband. I am then going to have a bunch of scripts that mirror my MP3s and photos (and the handful of other documents I generate) onto that remote machine.

I already mirror my data from my desktop machine onto my server, which lives in a different room, but at the moment I would still be screwed if the house burnt down or something stupid like that.