Cloud backup solution for movie library

General Discussions
1

since my movie library is starting to grow pretty large, i’m looking into a cloud solution for backups in case a disk or two fails. i am hoping some of you out there can toss out some of your own recommendations? Can you share your experiences with any of these companies?

i found some threads on here, but they are a little out dated now.
Jan, 2014 - https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/94791/online-backup
July, 2013 - https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/76009/best-movie-backup-options

What i need
I’m looking to use the cloud option primary just to hold a single copy of each file (i don’t need multiple versions).
I intend to backup all/most of the data on my NAS, lets assume it is 4 TB. I would like to also backup my PMS DB & settings, but if needed i can back that up to the NAS first. all files should be less than 3-4 GB.
i dont expect to be downloading much, except in the event that i somehow lose my library, in which case i would need to sync it all. I am expecting that to be a lengthy process to get the data back locally. I expect to upload 10’s of GB / week as the library continues to grow.
I am not looking for some kind of cloud streaming solution for my library. i still want it all to be local, just using the cloud as a remote file store.

What i’ve looked into so far

  • i looked into Google Cloud Storage, but that seems to be geared for enterprises. even their cheapest plan would be 4TB * $0.01/GB ~= $41/month, which sounds a little pricy. I assume that i pay for egress (downloads) as well, ingress (uploads) appear to be free.

  • I assume Amazon AWS has a similar priced plan, with a similar feature set.

  • Google Drive has a 1 TB plan and a 10 TB plan, which is $99/month. that just sounds crazy. I currently use this for photo backup, with a legacy $5/year plan which is enough for my photos.

  • Crashplan (subscription) sounds great, at $5/month for a single computer.
    i have heard some horror stories about the clients crashing, especially when backing up many TB of data. Crashplan recommends to allocate 1 GB of RAM for every 1 TB of data to be backed up, and since i’m planning on backing up a NAS, my available RAM is pretty limited. i might be able to expand the RAM on my NAS to get enough for a 4TB backup, but what happens when i get to 5 TB? 6 TB? and so on.

Thanks in advance!

2

Can I ask if you’ve discounted local back up?

I use HDDs in a usb 3 caddy and then when each HDD is full I store the HDD at a relatives house. It’s a very cheap and flexible solution.

3

thanks for your input!
can you describe your idea in more detail? i think i understand what you are saying, but just in case… : )

this assumes that i have a disk that is equal to or greater than the amount of storage i need to back up. i guess when the storage becomes too much, multiple disks can be used, or an array of disks. Do you use multiple backup disks/arrays in case one of them fails?

i was thinking about having a second NAS at family/friends house, identical to my own, and figure out a way to sync the data (i don’t know how, but i’m sure something like this is possible). the downside to this is that i already need to buy a new NAS for higher capacity storage, so doing this doubles what i need! i would either have to double my new-NAS-budget, or get something half as cheap which would mean lesser storage.

4

It might not be applicable to you but if you have a Gmail account through an educational institution you should get unlimited cloud storage. I still have mine from my university that I graduated from years ago and use it to back up>

I have also done a trials of or considered Backblaze, Carbonite, and Crashplan. I ended up just using my Google storage, since it was free and unlimited but I would go with Crashplan, for a number of reasons, if I were to choose something else. I still may get it as a secondary backup since it is cheap. I also have unlimited storage from Amazon Cloud drive for $60 a year but I do not use that for this purpose yet.

5

I use Crashplan’s free backup to a friend’s house
https://store.code42.com/store/

6

I use SMAC Cloud - Secure cloud storage app