I make sure I have a reliable copy of all my media BUT I do not backup my library. My stored copy is in several forms but mostly it is in the form of media available for ripping. I can restore my library pretty easily, all it would take is a bit of time.
To guard against having to do that I use a pooling program (StableBit’s Drive Pool) with duplication turned on for items in my library. That means that if any single disk fails I never lose anything important. But remember that DrivePool is NOT a backup solution. If a file gets actually deleted you cannot recover it using just DrivePool.
With the setup I use I have only had to re-rip about five or six movies and one TV series and those were all due to me doing something stupid.
In other words I do have a backup of my media but it, mostly, is not kept in the form so it is directly able to be restored.
I STRONGLY believe in using pooling instead of any form of raid. Raid is too expensive and too easy to loose everything on a hardware failure for me to use it. If the computer DrivePool is running on totally fails all I need to do is hook all the drives up to a new computer and install DrivePool on the new computer and my pool is reestablished just like it was before. Also in DrivePool all files are stored in standard Windows form so I “can” access them just like any other file on my system if needed and I do not even need DrivePool to do that.
Again DrivePool is NOT a backup solution but, as long as you keep the original media, it works quit well to protect library files.
