Pi music - storage and access

[Tim]

. . . I have been predicting the demise of microsoft for several years, no one believed me then, but falling profits are starting to sway opinion. I don't know if the source was acurate but a TV show about 12 months ago claimed Apple was making more profit on one model of the iPhone than the whole of the Microsoft organisation combined. Bill gates does of course own forty odd percent of Apple, so he isnt that concerned, source for this was the same show.

Your thinking is flawed and shows a lack of understanding about the two companies and their core business model. Apple predominantly make designer lifestyle products, Microsoft are predominantly a software company. It's not just all about profit, it's about market share of product and the worlds business industry runs on Microsoft software as well as most of the home market, if you did a little research into both companies your view might change? If Apple start making enterprise business software that made inroads into the business sector, then maybe Microsoft would be under serious threat? But Apple don't and aren't likely too either.

If people stopped buying the iPhone (very unlikely, but a more possible scenario) their profits would plummet as fast as they grew and all they would have to fall back on would be iTunes and a very small computer hardware/software product line. The iTunes business model is not based on rock solid foundations either, many musicians don't like it, as it does virtually nothing to support or nurture current talent or introduce new talent like an A&R department, it's purely an income generator for Apple, but at the moment they are forced to accept it. OS X isn't and never has been a market leader, Windows O/S and it's derivatives is and is likely to remain so for some considerable time. There is a place for both companies, they overlap but their core business models differ.

Have a look at Netmarketshare, their stats are current up to March 2015

I just want a simple piece if software to replicate what I do manually, dump unaltered files on to a second removable drive

Try Allway Sync or Microsoft SyncToy

As for the OP - to rely purely on a NAS as a backup system is asking for trouble, Network Attached Storage is not a foolproof backup system and neither is RAID. A SAN (Storage Area Network) might be considered more of a backup system as it has more effective disaster recovery, but even then data is normally backed up to tape for archiving should the SAN itself suffer a catastrophic failure. I have to agree with the 'simple' approaches suggested by Gazjam and Juha or get the best of both world's a simple NAS for convenience and multiple user access, but you will need to have that data backed up and a collection of HDD with duplicated data. I have three complete data sets. My working data set, a local backup and an off-site backup, which is swapped with the local one every few weeks. These are just bare HDD as I can swap them out of my workstation without the need for any USB connections. I also retire hard drives regularly, rather than wait for them to fail.

I use Allway Sync for backups and Acronis True Image for disk imaging as I also keep full disk image backups, should my workstation drives suffer a failure. I just swap them over and I have a working computer again in minutes.

[Qwin]

Sorry but I disagree about Microsoft.

I have worked in a fair few blue chip organisations and am aware of what Microsoft do.

I have family in the USA, Microsofts biggest market sector and they like a lot of small businesses owners over there have dropped ALL microsoft products, the rot is setting in.

They don't have the grip over the market they used to and I see this decline continueing to a point where large corporations will jump ship, and it will start in the States.
The majority of Web servers world wide run Linux as their OS due to the ease of remote system admin, I read a figure of 90% banded about in the press which may be true. At present there are a lot of domestic users world wide that do not use Microsoft products, this does have an influence on other markets.

MS have made several attempts to get into the hardware market and it aint working out for them.

Yeh profits can be missleading, Ford made a loss producing cars for decades, their profits being made up from their spare parts buisness, when this dropped off it was their finance business that kept them afloat. A friend who worked at Ford used to joke, that you can see by the condition of the offices where the money was, manufacture was old and almost shabby, finance was the jewel in the crown, no expense spared, budgets and expense accounts to match.

This is all getting away from my point though, that I do not trust third parties with my data, no matter how big the Name, I want the last word on its longevity.

[NRG]

SyncToy is good as is FileSyncroniser for the Mac. You get a one for one copy of your files in a system mountable format. I use a combination of TimeMachine and FileSyncroniser on my Macs, seems to work well enough.....

[Tim]

I guess only time will tell for Microsoft, they do have a lot riding on Windows 10. Interesting times for sure, but technology developments always are. I do however agree about not trusting third parties with long term data storage, I always prefer to be in total control of that and don't have anything stored 'in the cloud'. I just don't want my data out there, nor do I currently need it to be.

Mike (mikmas) are you any closer to where you want to be regarding music storage/access for your Pi? I used to use a NAS, but have reverted back to hard drives. My music server has a 2.5" 2TB HDD with all my music there, but it's a small footprint PC, not a Pi.