Backing Up to Cloud

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FileUnderT
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Backing Up to Cloud

Post by FileUnderT »

I bought two 2TB drives and each one has a wonderful collection of material, paired, of all that I dearly love by The Beatles and solo. I would also like to access the material on my iPad so wanted to know what is the most reliable platform that I can upload all of my material. The drive tells me I have 1.25TB of free space, so I guess it is 75gb in total.
sam004
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Re: Backing Up to Cloud

Post by sam004 »

FileUnderT wrote: Sun Jan 30, 2022 2:57 pm I bought two 2TB drives and each one has a wonderful collection of material, paired, of all that I dearly love by The Beatles and solo. I would also like to access the material on my iPad so wanted to know what is the most reliable platform that I can upload all of my material. The drive tells me I have 1.25TB of free space, so I guess it is 75gb in total.
Do you want to access these from anywhere or only at home ?
Is the iPad wifi or cellular ?
Your computer PC or MAC ?

I am working on a similar project.
I am trying to create a shared folder on my mac mini and make a file server out of it.
I could then connect to the files with my iPad.

Here is are solutions I use.

I have a 2TB NAS drive, [Western Digital My Cloud]
I can access this drive from my iPad directly through the Files app and playback FLAC files through the VLC app on the ipad.
This only works at home.
If I wanted to I could setup the NAS drives to be accessed over the internet, when I am away from home and wanted to access content.


I have another setup that allows me to use either a USB external HD or a thumb drive and connect directly to my iPad.

In order for this to work you need a USB to lighting adapter from Apple, and an externally powered USB hub.

- Power up the hub
- connect your USB device(s) to the hub
- Connect adapter to hub and plug into iPad.
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InnerLight
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Re: Backing Up to Cloud

Post by InnerLight »

I would probably say if you have a PC or device that can run all day to which the drive is attached then run Plex Media server. There are other media servers of course but it is about the easiest and most reliable. You could try Subsonic next.

And if you don't have a device/PC running all day you could consider getting a device that has Plex built in like some of the routers these days. Netgear Nighthawk X10 for example. Your router is going to be running all day anyway.

Attach your device, set up the server, make any firewall adjustments necessary, play from anywhere. Plex app on your phone or iPad, PlexAmp app as a CarPlay app in the car. Plex is finicky (and wrong, IMO) about how it wants you to organize things and name things but you can just ignore that and access things "By Folder" and use your own structure. It isn't perfect but it's the most bang for the least effort, IMO.

edit: note that some of these things cost money, like I think you have to have a Plex Pass to use clients like the app.

Also note there are apps that let you play from cloud services like Google Drive but getting 750GB-2TB of space without a subscription seems unrealistic. You'd need a whole lot of free accounts probably. My Beatles drive is considerably bigger than 2TB. The easiest backup is just another drive of the same size and occasionally run some sync software from drive 1 to drive 2. That's what I do. I'm not backing this stuff up to the cloud.

And if it's really about playing on a phone or iPad more than its about backing up then I also recommend the app FLACbox. Transfer FLACs (and other formats) to your phone over Wifi, take the phone with you, listen. No conversion. And it's a Carplay app.
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Re: Backing Up to Cloud

Post by sam004 »

Great input Innerlight.
I'm curious to hear how others listen to or access digital audio files.

I'm not sure if he wants to backup files to the cloud or listen to music through his iPad or both, perhaps.

For cloud Storage -
for iPad users, there is are few options

To back up his full HD, 2 TB There is an icloud plan for $10 USD /mo from my location.
or 200 GB for $2.99/ mo
or 50 GB for $0.99 / mo

If you don't mind the recurring charge I think this is a simple solution.

Or you could consider many of the other cloud storage solutions
Some of the popular or common ones are -

MS One Drive
Google Drive
mega.nz

Or you could host your own cloud storage from home with Western Digital My Cloud.
No recurring Monthly fees there, just the onetime cost of the drive.

Which would then also allow you to play music at home too.
All of your devices, phone, ipad PC could all access it.
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InnerLight
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Re: Backing Up to Cloud

Post by InnerLight »

Admittedly I haven't tried the WD Cloud stuff. But I currently have 20 drives attached to this PC so it's not a solution that really scales for me. I'm not replacing all the drives with cloud drives.
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