HardDrive Damage on Home Media Server?

[MicroApple]

I have a home media server now for my Apple TV, it a old Windows XP Desktop, with iTunes loaded on it, with handbrake and several other tools. I now use it for my Apple TV 2. iTunes Media Library is stored on an external Western Digital 2TB desktop edition. I believe it's set to turn off (stop spinning) after 20 minutes of use. And it automatically spins back up when my AppleTV 2 requests to use it through the Computers menu. I'm just wondering if this is a good setup. Alot of my iTunes content is stored on that drive and I'm afraid I'll lose it. I just want to know if this setup is ideal to ensure atleast a 1 year lifespan of the drive (I plan to replace it every year). I don't want to lose my files. As for backing up, I don't have another 2TB drive to back up to, and it's too time consuming to transfer that much data on a regular basis and it seems like transferring that much data would hurt the lifespan of both drives as they are intensely used in the transferring process. By the way the drive is USB 2.0.
Thanks.

 

[Kurgan]

I would suggest an incemental backup setup. Then you don't need to rewrite all the data. If you want to use external drives you can set up this locally or remote with a program like powerfolder. Personally I have 2 Qnap NAS and they have this functionality built in.

 

[sailon]

I just want to know if this setup is ideal to ensure atleast a 1 year lifespan of the drive (I plan to replace it every year). I don't want to lose my files. As for backing up, I don't have another 2TB drive to back up to, and it's too time consuming to transfer that much data on a regular basis...

There's a contradiction in what you are saying. On the one hand, you plan to replace a drive yearly. On the other, you don't want to lose files.

My suggestion is to purchase another drive now (instead of one year later) and (like the other poster suggested) setup an incremental backup scheme. If the primary fails, you can press your secondary into service. And, you'll likely buy drives less often.

 

[GoCubsGo]

I also suggest the purchase of another drive now. I think of my two 1.5 TB drives that I copied to two other 1.5 TB drives for redundancy. Sure, it took a while but in the end, I know I have another set of drives with my data on it should I need to recover it.

I think it is silly to say you don't want to take the time to back up the 2 TB drive now, but that you're willing to do it once a year? If the 2TB is basically full then why not create that backup now? Is the drive full?

I can see if you have another drive that you don't want to back up incrementally and the data on that drive changes often as you add movies, but to me this sounds like it isn't quite the case. If that is the case then I suggest a second drive for incremental backups of the drive that has data constantly changing.

 

[MicroApple]

The incremental backup thing sounds good, but how would I manage it. Software? How would I keep track of which files have been transferred and which haven't. I have Norton Ghost, but I don't know if that's useful or not.

 

[Kurgan]

If you want sync of all files
https://www.powerfolder.com/shop/products/PowerFolder-Pro-Gold.html

or if you only need itunes library sync
http://supersync.com/purchase.php

You don't need to keep track of what files you transferred. The software will do it automatically

 

[Cliff3]

The incremental backup thing sounds good, but how would I manage it. Software? How would I keep track of which files have been transferred and which haven't. I have Norton Ghost, but I don't know if that's useful or not.

Download robocopy and use that to maintain mirror copies of your data. It's free. For example, the following command line is what I run to backup my iTunes library on my Windows Home Server box to an external drive: robocopy d:\shares\public e:\ /mir /zb - this causes the target drive to mirror the source (/mir) and be restartable in the case of failure (/zb).

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...69-57FF-4AE7-96EE-B18C4790CFFD&displaylang=en

The initial copy of my 1+ TB library ran for quite a while, but my weekly incremental backups complete in a few minutes. The target drive is NTFS format and can be read by one of my Macs if need be.