HTPC Backup Strategy

System image of OS, and a RAID5 for my movie/music collection (which is four 1TB drives). Technically not a backup solution, but protects me from having to re-rip my entire collection if a drive fails (which happened once already). Since I own/have all my movies and music (on the original disks) I don't need a full backup of my RAID.

My NAS/HTPC is up 24/7.
I use Acronis to make a ghost of my OS drive every night.

And I use SnapRaid to secure my data. See there:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1329348

My media collection is made of about 950 HD movies and a few Gos of music and photos.
They are currently stored on 5 * 2To Hard Drives. So i use a sixth 2To hard drive as a parity drive, this is globally the same principle as a RAID5: you can lose one disk without losing any data (except the modifications done since the last parity update)
This is not a live RAID. I run the parity update every night, it takes about 30 minutes (depending on the amount of data modified/added, but generally I add 80-90Go each day).

SnapRaid is really great! It works on disks already full, does not require to modify anyhting on the disk architecture, works fine with Windows/Linux filesystems. It does not write anything on the data disks themselves. And it has very good performances from my point of view.

I'm currently thinking to extend my NAS/HTPC from 6 2To Disks to 10 or even 14, and will keep this "backup" strategy.

You don't. You've already got backups, the original discs.

Now if you want to talk redundancy, to protect your time spent ripping that data, that's a different story.

Probably less time to re-rip them than it would be to re-download, especially if you re-package as iso/mkv/file folders.

The only stuff i backup off site are images/photos..

Then you're into redundancy (RAID, etc) which has been discussed many times, a search should get you lots of juicy info.

Here's my very low tech strategy.

HTPC OS Drive: No backup other than manual backup of a few configuration files. For times when I have to reinstall everything, I prefer to just use that time to install the latest drivers, programs, etc. I used to make images of the OS drive but I never wanted to use them, even for the times when I really had to reinstall everything.

Small media (music, pictures, etc): Manually mirrored to at least one other drive. I tend to have this kind of stuff copied all over the place.

Large media (movies): Manually mirror the movies I watch most often, just to help reduce reripping time, to other drives in my 'server' (which is my office/gaming computer). I ruled out true RAID long ago. I've also used WHS and Unraid in the past. This simple approach works best for me. Of course, the original disks are the backup. I've thought about adding flexraid to the mix but I'm too lazy.

I use FlexRAID which provides an excellent and free snapshot RAID implementation (a live version is also currently available). You can easily expand your FlexRAID configuration by adding more drives later on and it works like a charm. You only need to "waste" one extra drive matching the largest drive in your RAID config to use as a parity drive.

It comes with it's own scheduler which I use to perform nightly rsynch operations. You can also perform full validations once a month if you like to test for data-rot on your hard drives. It even has some nifty features like automatic email and SMS updates when any of your scheduled operations fail/succeed/complete (you can pick which you would prefer).

What I love about it is that it just runs as an added service on top of your OS (Windows 7 in my case), is rock stable, and lets me use the same PC as an HTPC, FTP server and NAS without having to have a separate box running 24x7.

I download a lot and lets say saturate my download bandwith 24-7 using my server and get about 1.5-2TB a month at I think its a 15MB connection. So if you were looking to upload that amount it would mean a very very fast upload let alone how long it would take to download it again. But it would be there safe and sound unless there was another disaster like carbonite had.

HTPC

OS Partition: Backed up nightly with WHS v1 on an HP MSS EX495

Recorded TV Partition: Most programs: No backup, On "important" shows, the shows are migrated to my WHS. Note: Migrated, not backed up, so I am taking the risk that if I lose a drive in my WHS, I will lose "some" but hopefully, not "most" or "all" of that "important" Recorded TV. If I suffer a total loss of WHS, then I will lose everything. Again, not that critical as I can just re-record the series.

"Ripped" movies and television series from Blu-Ray/(HD)-DVDs: Stored on my WHS in the "Video" folder with "redundancy" turned on. If I lose one drive in my WHS I should not lose my content. Obviously, a complete failure of my WHS will result in me having to Rerip all this content.

Music - Same as "Ripped" movies, music folder on WHS with redundancy enabled

Photos - Same as "Ripped Movies" and "Music" stored in Photos folder on WHS with redundancy enabled.

I create a windows image backup of the OS drive everytime I made a big configuration change like reinstalling the codecs.
I have second copy of my rips on a set of drives stored away safely. I resync them once a month.

I do something similar to this. I have a 3tb external drive and I copy the rips every so often. Now that I have the entire collection ripped, I dont add to it all that often.

Pictures get backed up using jungle disk.

I use Windows home server to backup the os drive, nothing worse then trying to remember what every show was in the record list...

This is one of those issues that is so personal and unique for each individual setup.

For me, I decided to just have a built-in extra redundancy that was borne of the unique limitations of my house and the size of my library. You see, I have about 1500 movies (about 600 of which are HDDVD/BR), 50 complete TV series, and a load of music. With my house, getting a connection between my upper and lower floors could've been done, but I decided it was the best way to FORCE myself into redundancy of storage to just have my library duplicated upstairs and downstairs. So:

On the top floor, I have 4 Drobo's, a couple eSATA drives, and 4 SATA drives on a mac pro, serving 3 rooms. The Drobo's have good redundancy, but I didn't want to rely solely on that.

And on the bottom floor, I have a Sans Digital TR8MB 8-bay eSATA RAID/JBOD tower set up as JBOD (for me, this is just easier, as, if one drive fails, I don't have to rebuild an entire 16TB RAID array -- I just have a record as to which folders are on which drives, and, if one drive fails, I re-populate a replacement drive) w/ 8 2TB HDD's connected to an old 2007 Macbook Pro that is no longer my main laptop. It serves my 3 downstairs rooms.

OS-drive-wise -- there are a bajillion options. As I only use my Windows HTPC for HTPC duties, doing image backups is the way to go.

I have absolutely zero doubt that others would see my situation as a terrible solution, but, for me, it just works. It requires that I consciously make 2 copies of each archived file, and I know that I have lots of redundancy with minimal-to-no startup time when a drive fails.

We use 2 Backline Storage Servers at 16 x 2 tb each. Chenbro makes larger boxes but the Areca cards get pricey after 8 drive capacity each. OpSys is MS 2003 server running 2 Areca cards totaling 16 drives with 32 TBytes in each box.

By Backline, I mean we rarely turn them on. For weekly movies we use 1 "frontline" SuperMicro with 15 drives of 2 TBytes each totaling 30 Tbs. This is a Vista Ultimate system for remote desktop as it's so freaking loud, it's network name is Jet.

We have two other SuperMicro 8 place "Windows 7 Que Servers" called the Matrix and Predator. They are used for cleaning, sorting temporary storage when expanding the main storage boxes.

Finally the "TheaterStation3" is the HTPC we use for projection. It is also an 8 place SuperMicro. TS3 uses a 3 place RAID 0 for Opsys but all others use a single sata drive for windows.

All storage servers are RAID 5. But I think the key is to not use the Chenbro backups. Fire them up once a month, check the drives, update the opsys, run it for a day while reconciling the movies from the front line Server, shut it down, unplug them, cover them, forget them. Many of us, I suppose, have $20k worth of movies and they could be gone in a flash, no no.
gh

HTPC OS SSD: Copywipe raw sector to sector copy to another HDD once a week.

All my BD/DVD: one set of HDD in my server and another set of HDD as a back up.

I do the same thing, but actually rip on my workstation mounted to an eSATA dock and then copy via network to the "server" then pulling the drive back offline. I also have a 3rd HD for all of my irreplaceable stuff - docs, pics, home vids, etc. that is in rotation with another drive in my office. The 3rd drive lives in my parent's basement giving me offsite protection. Actually, most of that stuff is even on my workstation too.

I also create MD5 checksums for all of my data so at anytime I can verify the data is intact.

With 2TB drives now even hitting $60 I no longer have any issues with "wasting" them. Maybe since I only have ~6TB of data, but if I had 30TBs like some of you...shall we say "enthusiast nuts!" I would not be mirroring.