Aurender Backup Strategies
 

For all the Aurender aficionados backup of the valuable digital music is essential. Here is the backup strategy that I am using.

I have a couple of demands on my backup.

1) Backup Format
No fancy software that creates a backup file/volume in a proprietary format. I want my backup to be readable and accessible with the file system explorer on my computer, whether it’s a Mac or a PC or whatever.

2) Backup Location
I want a local backup for fast access and a cloud backup against catastrophic events like fire etc. The cloud backup should also allow me to access my music library anywhere in the world with a large range of devices.

3) Backup Cost
Backup Cost must be low.

4) Backup Management
I want to set it up and forget it. I want to get a mail informing me when something goes wrong. I want a simple process to check if after a bigger update of my music library everything is backed up.

My local backup device is a Synology Server, basically a computer with slots for hard drives. The Synology Servers or Diskstations as they are called, come in different sizes depending on the amount of hard disks you need. The software is a nice appliance-shell based on Unix. But you don’t need any Unix knowledge, like with the also Unix-based Aurender.

Most backups are push processes, but I wanted the Synology Diskstation to pull new data from the Aurender. So I mounted the Autender to pretend it’s harddrive is a local folder on the Synology Diskstation. I configured the Hyper Backup (included in the software for the Diskstation) to backup the mounted Aurender to another directory. Hyper Backup will issue a warning as it thinks, we are backuping one directory to the other as it doesn’t understand what we are doing. This backup runs every night and creates a copy of my Aurender on the Synology Server. This gives me a fast and cost efficient local backup.

Then I use Amazon Drive. For under 100$ I got unlimited space as an Amazon Prime user. The Cloud Sync software (included in the software for the Diskstation) synchronizes my Aurender backup with my Amazon Drive. You can configure the Cloud Sync package to never remove, so even if I delete the entire Aurender disk, I can easily recover all data.

I am pretty sure you can do the same with other platforms. What are you doing to backup your Aurender?

Best regards
Ecki

Nicely done! You covered backup, archiving, and automation.

Before I retired, I architected similar solutions for enterprise customers with hundreds of Terabytes and often multiple Petabytes. Lots of proprietary technology though, it was the only way to accommodate the scale and bandwidths they required.

I use Synology for my backups, but as yet no cloud for audio files. My archiving is to USB drives and stored at my brother’s house. Cloud is a no brainer for personal files though (non audio).

God I miss those commission checks!

In my mechanical room is all my incoming internet, Cat 5 and more so it only made sense to move the Mac Mini where before it was adjacent to the DAC with the addition of the Aurender.

And now since the Mini has been relocated into the Mechanical room, I have added a monitor, keyboard, mouse and Time Capsule with an external drive.

I now rip CD’s to the Mini with its outboard disc drive and/or download hi res tracks from the internet.

From there, I copy music to the Aurender keeping music now in two places as backup - this is where the monitor and keyboard come in handy plus out of site from my sound system not dealing with noise factor and the unrelated visual aspect.

I also was backing up the Mac Mini to Time Capsule, but T/C sees all my devices and backs everything up running it out of space so I need to address this. I may nix Time Capsule and back up the Mac Mini to the cloud base DropBox.

Sorry for the long answer but hope this helps someone in the process as if you don’t backup, it will hurt at some point.