Backups for HTPC

[k3rm1t_51]

I have a HTPC in my living room with an 8TB drive that stores all of my media files. Kodi runs on the HTPC and serves as the library for the rest of the machines in the house. When I upgraded my drives I had to redownload everything, which took awhile. I'm looking for a good backup software that can backup the media files to the cloud (OneDrive) or an external drive. I only have a 1TB OneDrive account so it would be great if the backup software could compress the files on backup. 

[Kilrah]

External HDDfor sure, media files won't compress more than they already are.

 

As for software, depends on what OS you're running.

[Boomwebsearch]

8 minutes ago, k3rm1t_51 said:

I have a HTPC in my living room with an 8TB drive that stores all of my media files. Kodi runs on the HTPC and serves as the library for the rest of the machines in the house. When I upgraded my drives I had to redownload everything, which took awhile. I'm looking for a good backup software that can backup the media files to the cloud (OneDrive) or an external drive. I only have a 1TB OneDrive account so it would be great if the backup software could compress the files on backup. 

I would recommend Backblaze Personal Unlimited Backup:        https://www.backblaze.com/cloud-backup.html

 

I wouldn't recommend the HTPC storing the files and acting like a server as well, I would suggest moving the 8TB drive to a NAS with another 8TB or larger drive for RAID redundancy and installing an SSD in the HTPC.

[k3rm1t_51]

12 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

External HDDfor sure, media files won't compress more than they already are.

 

As for software, depends on what OS you're running.

Running Windows 10

[k3rm1t_51]

23 minutes ago, Boomwebsearch said:

I would recommend Backblaze Personal Unlimited Backup:        https://www.backblaze.com/cloud-backup.html

 

I wouldn't recommend the HTPC storing the files and acting like a server as well, I would suggest moving the 8TB drive to a NAS with another 8TB or larger drive for RAID redundancy and installing an SSD in the HTPC.

Why is that? I really only watch content on the HTPC, with the occasional show on the Xbox. Had a NAS before but it just seemed like an extra piece of hardware to manage that was unnecessary.

[Kilrah]

Makes no sense indeed as long as you back up your stuff, an external drive is better than a RAID (which is not a backup).

I commonly use FreeFileSync and SyncBack Free to back things up.

[Boomwebsearch]

19 minutes ago, k3rm1t_51 said:

Why is that? I really only watch content on the HTPC, with the occasional show on the Xbox. Had a NAS before but it just seemed like an extra piece of hardware to manage that was unnecessary.

15 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

Makes no sense indeed as long as you back up your stuff, an external drive is better than a RAID (which is not a backup).

 

Reduced load on the HTPC to allow more resources to be left for other tasks, once you get more data to be stored, managing a NAS will become a lot easier than the HTPC. Although, as long as you have a decent processor and sufficient RAM in the HTPC, you should be fine. If you had to choose between having a backup in the cloud or having a backup on another drive in the same location, I would choose having a backup in the cloud.

48 minutes ago, Boomwebsearch said:

I would recommend Backblaze Personal Unlimited Backup:        https://www.backblaze.com/cloud-backup.html

 

 

[Kilrah]

1 minute ago, Boomwebsearch said:

Reduced load on the HTPC to allow more resources to be left for other tasks,

Storing stuff doesn't take "resources" (well, other than storage) and he said the only thing he does is watch content...

[Boomwebsearch]

1 minute ago, Kilrah said:

Storing stuff doesn't take "resources" (well, other than storage) and he said the only thing he does is watch content...

 

1 hour ago, k3rm1t_51 said:

Kodi runs on the HTPC and serves as the library for the rest of the machines in the house

 

@Kilrah, the OP stated that the HTPC is used to serve data to other systems which takes up system resources besides storage including CPU and RAM resources.

[Kilrah]

Kodi doesn't reencode like Plex does. Just serves the data. 

His HTPC is basically his NAS. Makes no sense to put another NAS to serve to it.