Not sure if you are asking if iDrive is able to backup your Plex that is spread out on 3 HDs or if you are asking if you could use iDrive as a cloud storage to run your Plex media from.
If you want to use iDrive to basically back up your Plex media, sure it will work great. They offer basically unlimited computers, network drives, NAS, etc… the only limitation is how much space you purchase. So you would get the iDrive 10TB plan and then you can back all the data on all 3 drives.
If you were looking at using iDrive to upload your media to and then try to run Plex pointing to and streaming from iDrive, then I do not believe that will be a viable option (though I have to admit I never actually tried it). iDrive cannot share files if you use a personal encryption key, but even if you have iDrive hold your encryption key and share files I do not believe that they will be fast enough for smooth streaming. Think of iDrive as cloud backup service instead of a cloud streaming data hosting service.
I am just starting to play with NordLocker. Since NordLocker offers unlimited local encryption, I think I am going to try to use BackBlaze unlimited first (since it offers a monthly plan) before paying for the yearly iDrive 10TB plan.
I reached out to BackBlaze and confirmed I can backup a network connected USB drive, but that would count a separate $10 a month account as they look at it as another computer.
On Black Friday I bought a 14 TB USB hard drive that I have connected to my network. I can backup my Plex server and media to that hard drive. Encrypt it with NordLocker and then back it up to BackBlaze. That way even if anyone does intercepts my BackBlaze encryption key or BackBlaze unencrypted my data it will still have a second layer of encryption from NordLocker making the data still look like garbled garbage to them.
If this works, then there will be two viable and affordable options, one with iDrive and one with BackBlaze, with both utilizing NordLocker as part of the solution.
Here is my Q&A with NordLocker about how I plan on using them to encrypt before backing up to my own iDrive or BackBlaze accounts. They confirm it will work.
Once I encrypt a local folder with Nordlocker, upload to cloud, delete the local encrypted folder, restore the backed up encrypted folder, and can access again locally with Nordlocker… I will post my results after I try it.
Thanks for your answer @Hobbes_Is_Real, i will try only for bakcup and will create my own NAS with a Synology beacuse buy google drive 10TB account is too expensive and already impossible with the new team account politics.
Hi regarding paying for backing up a network drives,just do what I did, use symlinks.
I installed a Linux box so I can mount multiple locations and then symlink them into the local location the software is backing up. They will never know its not local folders or at least the one I was using didn’t
I am leaning towards crash plan ($10 USD / month), but am curious to know if there are any other linux users with > 10 TB doing something else? iDrive is really only viable for less than 10 TB, else you need a multi-user (25) plan, and backblaze personal is not supported for linux (you need the more expensive B2).
I am currently running Plex from a Synology NAS and its not working well, too slow to be honest. I have 2 x 8 TB USB drives attached to my NAS for local backup + Google Drive syncing for the third and offsite layer (G Suite).
I am thinking on moving the Plex server to one of my more powerful Windows machines, attach a 12 or 14TB USB hard drive to it to store all Plex media on it. Then from this computer I could backup to the NAS locally.
If you are using a single drive (ie not raid with redundancy) I would make sure you have a local backup along with an online one… Which is exactly what your plan is.
The one point of advice I would give is of you have spent a ton of time making sure every movie is in customized categories, want to keep your play history, etc… You will want to back up the behind the scenes Plex server files. I am not sure about restoring a server from a Synology server to a Windows one… Someone else I am sure has that answer… But I have a link to show you how to backup the server files.
…but I will have to post when I get home on my computer and not just using my phone to post.
Thanks a lot for sharing, I happen to do this by following the general guide from Plex, but I had to add a registry key to move the whole DB from C drive to an alternate drive on the new target server. Then everything worked quite smoothly I must confess. Thanks a lot!
Now there is a huge difference, the powerful Windows computer where the new Plex Server resides has way more processing capacity than the Synology NAS were I had Plex Server runnning before.
I have 70TB backed up for 8 years now on Backblaze with no issues. l pay $50/year and never had any issues with it being a NAS drive. Maybe I am grandfathered in now or something. Maybe don’t mention it’s a NAS drive and just start backing up on the unlimited plan. It was a pretty crazy deal at the time, but 8 years now I feel like I have at least broken even with them and they will start profiting off me soon. I will stay loyal if they don’t change on me.
Already mentioned by others but I would endorse Backblaze… at least on the basis of cost and simplicity. If you have a huge collection of media you will find the initial upload takes a VERY long time. I have so far uploaded approx 13TB of assorted films, TV and music and it has taken the best part of a year. I’m in UK and most of this has been done via a BT 67mb line and I hardly ever get better than 100gb a day uploaded. But when they say unlimited it really is. Only drawback is you can’t back up NAS drives. Livedrive offers the same service for about the same low cost and will allow you to back up NAS drives. I had a false start with them and had uploaded about 4TB when the upload froze on one drive: it would find the files it hadn’t yet uploaded but wouldn’t start the upload so it remained at 80% complete. They acknowledged a bug, promised a fix but failed to deliver one. They agreed to stop billing me while they worked on the problem but I gave up with them and switched to Backblaze. No problems so far.
This has been very helpful. I have used Crashplan since it was a home account and then changed it to a small business account and currently have almost 19TB stored. I also use it to create a local storage backup so my 3-2-1 is set.
However, I just recently learned about them no longer backing up the Plex Media Server directory. From reading this thread, could I use the Nordlocker software to encrypt just that folder and then back it up via Crashplan?
Does that even make sense? Man’ I wish I wasn’t such a n00b on this stuff!!
As proof to the theory that needing a backup is not a matter of IF… but only WHEN you will need it…
My NAS has an issue that I have not been able to resolve yet (been trying to figure it out on and off for about 3 weeks now). I hope it won’t require me having to rebuild the RAID from scratch … but as I have a local 14 TB hard drive that has a current backup of all my data on my NAS, I can do it without the fear of losing any of my data (media library, highly customized meta data Plex server, etc…). Only losing a little time to restore it.
