BACK UPS?? CD? DVD? HD? Do you trust it?

MR NINE

Member
Jan 25, 2004
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Portugal
www.putfile.com
Hey guys!

Just been reading a lot about the best (or worst!) way for backing up our work!
It's interesting (and horrible!!!) to know that there are some people talking about their adventures about the backup medium they use and some of them (a lot of them!!) ending up with a useless CD or DVD or HD (!!!)

..." guess what!? next day I try to open it and there was nothing!... it even didn't open! and crashed my computer!!!..."...


Anyone had that kind of nightmare before?
I usually backup my work to DVD and to a HD, but... is it trustfull?

Let me know your opinions and "nightmares"!!!
:err:
 
MR NINE said:
Hey guys!

Just been reading a lot about the best (or worst!) way for backing up our work!
It's interesting (and horrible!!!) to know that there are some people talking about their adventures about the backup medium they use and some of them (a lot of them!!) ending up with a useless CD or DVD or HD (!!!)

..." guess what!? next day I try to open it and there was nothing!... it even didn't open! and crashed my computer!!!..."...


Anyone had that kind of nightmare before?
I usually backup my work to DVD and to a HD, but... is it trustfull?

Let me know your opinions and "nightmares"!!!
:err:

there is no trustworthy backup. everything fails. even if you tattoo the binary on your ass, one day you'll get too fat to bend over and look at it.

backing up to two mediums is your best bet. that's been my strategy for some time. whenever I've spent more than 5 mins working on a track, I copy it to another internal hard drive, and on a regular basis I also burn DVDs. the best thing you can do is backup to diff mediums on a very* consistent basis, as you've been doing.

also if you're ever trying new pluggins or known buggy ones, save, exit, backup, re-open, then try the plugin out. I've had files corrupted because some crappy vst shit crashed my DAW and corrupted the working file. plugs are whores sometimes. dirty ones.
 
plugs are whores sometimes. dirty ones.

LOL!!! It's so true.

At the old studio, I had the luxury of having about 30 optical hard drives about 200gb a peice. Rediculous? Yes. Practical? No. Fucking cool? Yes. The point of this system was not only to supply access to all 30 drives to all three suites in the building, but also to backup everything religiously about three times to three different things. Quickly-the owner has a room about the size of a two car garage with a ton of shelves a la library style to house all of the DVD backups he has since he's moved to that location. Now, the way we did it was, there were three drives dedicated to each suite. All 30 were accessible from any suite for extracting anything to work on, etc., but to startup a session we had to use one of the 3 drives assigned to that suite. The other drives were for drive dumping. At the end of the day, every session that was completed gets dumped on to one of the other 21 drives. Then, from Friday to Sunday one of us would be in the editing room (small edit suite with a 002 and a Mac G5) just making DVD backups of everything to put in the library. All of the backups were DVD. Rarely did we ever have to pull one up and mess with a session, but the few times it did in the two years I worked there I had no problems with the backups. Also the drives never had a problem, but these were really nice drives and really nice setups...so.

~006
 
optical reminds me of a horror story. a few years back I had a philips CD writer. well one day it.. *ehem*. ate a CDR. this one a 5.25" drive mounted drive mind you, and it ATE THE FUCKING CDR.

anyway I kind of couldn't get the disc out so I sent it back to philips since it was under warranty and i didn't want to break the "warranty" tab to take it apart. the drive comes back and seems fine. well I'm an asshole and never run "verify" on my burns because it seems like a waste of time. two years later I find out that the burner was writing bad data about 2/3 the way through EACH DISK. so 1/3 of everything I'd written with that drive was lost.

this is how I learned the different mediums concept. the hard way.
 
The trick is to never cheap out in the CD-R/W / DVD±R/W disc side. Do not use those 18571837501-million-CD/DVDs-in-one-spindle discs, they suck beyond Jenna Jameson.

Always use good quality discs and chances are they'll last very long*, unlike cheap discs.

* = unless you leave them out in the sun/dust/humid cellar/microwave, and you don't keep them in their box.
 
Carrier Flux said:
there is no trustworthy backup. everything fails.

You'll get at least 50 years outta this -

456.bmp
 
There is a fairly new digital tape storage solution.

The Guys in the post production studio where I work sometimes just got one for backing up the server.

apparently they are very reliable, each tape stores 200 Gig (uncompressed) and 400 (Compressed). Also, the IT guy told me that the error rate is very little.

I'm planning to buy one of these drives. The go for around £1000, but seems to me like the best option.

At the moment I back up to DVD and HD. I trust none.
 
Andy Sneap said:
50 years, mmm, more like 15, don't forget to set that oven to a slow steady cooking temp.

Maybe a little salt and pepper to taste as well.... :loco:
 
thornspawn: if I worked with you you'd have to hire a janitor to wipe my spooge off that thing every morning. I don't think I could resist fornicating with such an amazing piece of machinery.

I'M GOING TO FUCK YOUR SAN UNTIL IT BLEEDS!
 
Thornspawn, that has to be one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. You're one lucky employee :).

~006
 
Actually there are 2 of these :D

On the other hand, if you saw what software was being run on the servers you'd laugh your ass of. I personally have seen nothing like this since DOS :lol:
 
Haha.... my Buds went into a pretty BIG studio. Tracked to 2" dumped it into Pro Tools and their session back ups were on ..... imation CD-R's!!!!:Smokin: Very brave!
 
Kenny Lee said:
their session back ups were on ..... imation CD-R's!!!!:Smokin: Very brave!

That's how it was done for quite some time. Definitely a lot safer and easier to bring a hard drive now. I have some super el cheapo CD-R's that have been stored in a case for a few years, and won't read at all now.

At least your friends had the 2" still.
 
I always do DVD and HD backups (for the band) and keep a DVD backup with me.

I always have this worry during the tracking. I'm doing a couple of bands now, always worried about getting to my studio to track guitars and finding out that my DAW went crazy and the drum files are gone. I usually back them up on temporary DVDs, but sometimes I just don't have the time, trusting on luck.

Do you have the habit of backing up during the tracking, or you do so only after the work is finished?
 
LynchpiN said:
Do you have the habit of backing up during the tracking, or you do so only after the work is finished?

I backup after the session normally.