Hi Manus,
All I was trying to do with the various posts is to highlight to people that they cannot rely on a Single Point of Failure.

Similarly, I wanted to highlight that in many cases, NAS's are used to back up Local Hard Drives of Computers; in which case, the NAS is the Secondary or Backup to the "Main" files on the local computers; in many cases that is how NAS's came to the market, i.e. as Secondary Backup Devices.

However, due to their flexibility and the fact that Media Libraries are expanding exponentially, many people have started to use NAS's as their PRIMARY Storage Devices i.e. the ONLY Place where their Media Libraries are stored!

As such, it's necessary to have a Backup Plan in place; as who wants to Rip 4,000 CD's and 500 Movies again sick

A solution which works well for me (as well as my piece of mind) is as follows:

** Have a decent performing NAS at home with enough Drives and expansion for the next 18 months or so. Dedicate that NAS to Music, Movies and TV SHows only.

** Convince a good friend or relative that he should have the exact same NAS and Drives; also dedicated to Media.

** The Music Libraries can be kept in Separate Folders to distinguish between his music library and mine but generally the Movie and TV Show Libraries can be indentical.

** Use the NAS Tools to Sync the Libraries over the Internet or on a fortnightly / monthly visit to his house.

** He is now my "Offsite" Backup........and I am his.

I choose to insert another NAS (Number 2) at home for a number of the "seamless changeover" reasons outlined above; but some may consider that to be overkill.

The main thing is that the NAS files have to be Backed Up and the knock on implications of single points of failure need to be thought through especially as Libraries go beyond the capacity of USB Drives.

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