Topic: Archiving: Do You Save Your Raw Master File, Just the FLACs, or Both?

[stevetoney]

I've only ever found 2 bad discs in my collection out of several hundred (one of which was a cheap DVD9 I'd expect to go bad, and was only bad in the 2-unreadable-tracks sense).

I'm starting to find that my masters aren't all recoverable from DVD. 

I've tossed more tha  a few discs since this project began but was able to read one disk so no other losses yet.

That's really one of the important messages I think needs to get out to people.  Everyone is probably gonna have varying success in archive to DVDR and CDR, but I just don't see DVDR and CDR being a long term solution...

One thing I've convinced myself is that my CDR and DVDR are never gonna have the shelf life of...say...an analog Maxell XLII from back in the day. 

[kindms]

I do the following:

1) record show
2) copy show to DAW
3) 24/48 raw file (dead air removed) flac'd
3) 24/48 mastered > Flac'd
4) 16/44.1 derivative of #3 > Flac'd
5) all 3 versions burned to DVD ( I used to do a DVD-A copy as well but stopped that recently)
6) DVD media stored in dbl disc thin DVD cases
7) once all is complete I then move the 24/48 mastered file to my masters folder for playback.

I worry about my HDD's tho. I need to come up with a good solution for redundant back up. The amount of time to copy everything again including my silverback collection is not anything I want to do again.

[midside]

I have a CD/DVD duplication business and go through thousands of discs a year.  The media, while some is much better than others, is made cheaply.  Sometimes I can go through 500 or more discs without a reject but other times they can have up to a 7-8% failure rate...and that is when they are new.  As someone who uses this media frequently and for a long time, I would not trust it for archiving.  Also, using so many discs is a PITA IMO.  At the same time, there are so many ways a HDD can go bad, and they do, frequently.  As they say, and as I believe, there are 2 kinds of hard drives, ones that have gone bad and ones that will go bad.  If you use hard drives and you NEED your data and you do not subscribe to this way of thinking, then you are setting yourself up for disaster.  Because of these issues with both forms of media, I have opted to use hard drives for their convenience, but in a double, 2 location, RAID5 system as I explained in an earlier post.  But, I know I need to add LTO (tape) backup to safeguard against file corruption or accidental deletion.
On another note, I really think it is overkill or save 24 bit and 16 bit versions of masters along with flac in 24 and 16 and final version and final flac, etc....
Just use a program that does non-destructive editing like samplitude.  Then, you only need to save the original master files.  But, I also save a few other versions sometimes for convenience like a CD image file for duplication for instance or mp3 for portability, etc.

[gmm6797]

midside: any brands of DVDs you use more often with less failures?  Any info you can give, even if only personal experience, would be good to know

[midside]

Short answer = Taiyo Yuden

Do not buy name brand or 'branded' media unless you know what it is.  You see, there are only a handful of quality disc manufacturers and companies buy what is available for a cheap price (for the most part) then put their name on it.  So, frequently, you have no real way to know what disc they are using and how the quality of that batch is.  You are much better off buying 'unbranded' discs straight from a supplier.  I highly recommend Taiyo Yuden for their consistency and quality.  Be careful of TY discs on ebay, there are LOTS of fakes out there.  Buy them from a reputable distributor.

[Lil Kim Jong-Il]

Media is important yes but the health of your drive makes a difference too.  The discs I'm losing were some of the ones I burned on my old drive just before it finally couldn't verify more than 50% of the time I tried to burn a disc.  Even TYs will fail if the burner is ailing.

[yousef]

For what it's worth, my solution is to have three hard drives each of which have 24bit unedited original recordings for archive purposes and 16 bit tracked out FLACs (that may or may not have had eq etc applied) for ease of making 'listening' copies. There are also copies of my info files, md5s, FLAC fingerprints etc on each drive.

As soon as one drive fails, I'll be copying everything across to a new one - short of a house fire or some sort of catastrophic buffoonery on my part, I can't imagine wiping out three hard drives at once, so I think I'm relatively safe.

And in the event of a house fire, my collection of unedited 24bit files will probably be some considerable way down my list of priorities.

I don't really see a place for dvd-r media in terms of cost, space considerations or reliability.

One thing I've convinced myself is that my CDR and DVDR are never gonna have the shelf life of...say...an analog Maxell XLII from back in the day.

Dunno if you're just playing devil's advocate there but the way I see it is that even though an analogue source can be left in a box for years and still be playable/listenable (though far from original condition), the price of being able to have an absolutely perfect digital clone of a recording decades down the line is that we have to take greater care of our 'masters'. It's a trade off but one I'm more than happy to enter into.

[Lil Kim Jong-Il]

For what it's worth, my solution is to have three hard drives

<snip>
 short of a house fire or some sort of catastrophic buffoonery on my part, I can't imagine wiping out three hard drives at once

If you have three hard drives, put one at a buddy's house.  That will provide you with a local back-up for immediate access and the security of an off-site backup for the catastrophic case. 

[Craig T]

Duplicate hard drives (2: one at home, one at my office) - FLAC only, post-processing/tracking/etc.

[yousef]

If you have three hard drives, put one at a buddy's house.  That will provide you with a local back-up for immediate access and the security of an off-site backup for the catastrophic case.

You're absolutely right and it's something I've been intending to do for months.

Perhaps what is stopping me is the belief that in leaving the drive elsewhere, I am accepting that my house is going to burn down.

[mdogbucket]

I know when I batch process the 24/48 files to 16/44 that the 16/44 will have header errors and sometimes have sbe's even using cd wave.  flacing fixes all of this.  and I have no need for the wave files so they get deleted.  I save and listen to the flac files only.  so by flacing and getting rid of the wavs you are saving a lot of space.

Forgive me but what are "header errors" and "sbe's"?

I save masters as 24 bit/96k wav files and then save edited tracks as 16bit/44.1 wavs for burning CDs.

I have never understood a reason for saving a flac version when 1tb hard drives are available for under $100 unless.... the flac conversion process cleans things up in some way?

[lpmaskman]

I archive the raw wav and the mastered flac also to a removable HDD.

[kindms]

I know when I batch process the 24/48 files to 16/44 that the 16/44 will have header errors and sometimes have sbe's even using cd wave.  flacing fixes all of this.  and I have no need for the wave files so they get deleted.  I save and listen to the flac files only.  so by flacing and getting rid of the wavs you are saving a lot of space.

Forgive me but what are "header errors" and "sbe's"?

I save masters as 24 bit/96k wav files and then save edited tracks as 16bit/44.1 wavs for burning CDs.

I have never understood a reason for saving a flac version when 1tb hard drives are available for under $100 unless.... the flac conversion process cleans things up in some way?

sbe's = sector boundary errors and only potentially effect 16/44.1 wavs. I am surprised that the above poster has issues with sbe's if they are using CD WAV Editor. My understanding was that tracking in cd wav editor prevents SBE's.

Header errors could be alot of things but I think he is referring to a conversion where the header doesn't "record" the correct bit depth / sampling rate. It is easy enough to correct but can be timely if you have a lot of them to correct

If you stay in the 24 bit realm then you generally will not encounter a lot of these issues.

I archive in FLAC as it adds a checksum to the file. This way if it is altered corrupted etc. When you convert back to wav, it would alert you to a problem etc. with a raw wav file you have no quick easy way to determine if there was a problem copying & pasting or moving files around etc. Your wav file may playback fine for the most part but errors can be introduced and you wouldn't have a way to no this quickly etc. More or less a peace of mind thing IMHO

Also of course it saves space on the HDD and smaller files transfer faster etc etc

[yawnfactory]

hard drive and multiple dvd copies of both the raw and completed show. a little overkill, but losing a master that has not been shared would be bad news.

[Fried Chicken Boy]

Short answer = Taiyo Yuden

Qft.  If you're serious about using burnable media for archival purposes, TY is the only way to go.  That being said, there's no method/medium for storage that's fail-safe.  I've personally had just as many harddrives fail on me as CD's and DVD's that have become unreadable.  Difference being that when a HD fails, you have the potential to lose a lot more than just a few recordings; the size of a CD/DVD limits the amount of information you can put on and possibly lose on one disc.  I've gotten in the habit of burning two copies of my original masters to DVD's with accompanying MD5 checksums and then verifying the checksums periodically.  If one set of the masters fail (hasn't happened yet, knock on wood), I have the backup and can burn another.  Not a perfect solution but helps me sleep at night.