Topic: Anyone fool enough to accept this challenge?

[Walstib62]

Since you will HAVE TO have a computer, just copy your raw files to DVD, or better yet an external hard drive, or better yet 2 drives, as previously mentioned. Drives are inexpensive. Storage capacity is really no longer an issue.

[stevetoney]

As far as storage to medium, seems like there are a variety of preferences.  Some like storing to DVDs, but I'm not doing that anymore and I personally advise against it because I'm having fairly high DVD failure rates after only five years of storage...on the order of 1 out of 30 to 50 DVDs are unreadable.  That's unacceptable to me.

I have moved to hard drive storage with redundant back-up drives.  I'm up to I think six 1TB drives, but you can start with any size drive, as long as you back-up your data onto a separate drive.  The idea here is to save your master recording onto a drive and back it up onto another drive and store that drive in a separate place...at work or at a relative's house.  This protects your master recordings against both natural disasters and hard drive disasters.  Update your back up drive every so often so that you have frequent back-ups. 

So many people complain that they don't trust hard drives with their data...and they use that as a reason why they prefer the physical media of DVD or CDR.  I just think that's silly, short sighted thinking.  All drives fail...but as I've said DVDs and CDRs fail too.  The key to long-term data retention is BACKING IT UP, so that when your medio does fail (did I mention that it will eventially fail?) you're safe.  The other key is that, as soon as you do have a drive failure, restore your redundancy ASAP by going out and buying another drive to replace the drive that failed. 

Using this method of data management, you should never risk losing your master recordings.

[acidjack]

There is also online storage - several ways to back up that way.  Your own FTP site, cloud storage services, not to mention the LMA, which is a great backup at least for your final product, as long as it's an LMA-approved band).

I'm personally less concerned about backing up my raw masters as the finished files.  Most of it's only really valuable to me anyway, and if one of my masters happens to take on historical significance... well, the finished files may just have to do... Not that I don't generally save the raw files, but I'm more concerned with saving "the recording" than the various components that make it up.

[newplanet7]

Seeding is a great way to back your shit up.
Usually only takes a quick ISO on a forum to be re-united if you lose a recording.

[ScoobieKW]

The key to long-term data retention is BACKING IT UP, so that when your medio does fail (did I mention that it will eventially fail?) you're safe.  The other key is that, as soon as you do have a drive failure, restore your redundancy ASAP by going out and buying another drive to replace the drive that failed. 

Using this method of data management, you should never risk losing your master recordings.

Test your backups. If you can't recover after a failure they are less than useless.

[stevetoney]

^  That's a good point.  I shuffle my drives after a full backup. I imagine this helps but probably isn't fool proof.

[jbou]

I shuffle my drives after a full backup.

Can you elaborate on this - Do you mean you actually switch which drive you are running off of after a backup? What program do you use?

[stevetoney]

What I do is simple really.  ok, so I'll have a 1tb drive thats my backup.  I'll copy all of the files from the active drive to the backup.  At that point both drives have identical content so I swap and that's when i start using the drive that used to be my backup as my active drive.  This way my drives get reasonably equal usage.  the reason I started doing this actually had nothing to do with periodically checking the integrity of the backup...but was more that I was worried thtthat the backup might become less reliable if only used once in awhile.

What software?  I don't use anything...just copy paste from one drive to another.  Since i'm just backing up my music, I just add as I go.  So updates amounts to copying my latest masters over so they exist on both drives.

[ellaguru]

i use a program for the pc called 'free file sync' which can do comparisons, back up, etc, on a schedule so you dont have to.

[stevetoney]

i use a program for the pc called 'free file sync' which can do comparisons, back up, etc, on a schedule so you dont have to.

Handy.  That's got to be easier and more reliable than doing what I do. 

Can it somehow verify that a file is corrupt?  In other words, if you have two files on two drives, one good and one bad, how does it select which is the good one?  Asked another way, could it possibly eliminate the good file in favor of the bad one when doing the comparison?

[Brian Skalinder]

Handy.  That's got to be easier and more reliable than doing what I do. 

Can it somehow verify that a file is corrupt?  In other words, if you have two files on two drives, one good and one bad, how does it select which is the good one?  Asked another way, could it possibly eliminate the good file in favor of the bad one when doing the comparison?

I use FFS, too (and recently updated the reasonable redundancy without RAID thread).  There are two configuration options for comparing files:  file size and date, or binary.  The former is faster and less rigorous, the latter more rigorous but slower.  You may configure FFS to perform different actions when it finds a file comparison conflict:  overwrite left with right, overwrite right with left, or leave the conflict unresolved (requiring manual resolution).  FFS doesn't know which file is "good" and which is "bad" -- it just knows there's a difference between the two files -- so either you trust your source data, or manually tell it which file to keep.

[capnhook]

i use a program for the pc called 'free file sync' which can do comparisons, back up, etc, on a schedule so you dont have to.

Great tip, guys.....I will give it a whirl.  Thanks

Kevin

[F.O.Bean]

As far as storage to medium, seems like there are a variety of preferences.  Some like storing to DVDs, but I'm not doing that anymore and I personally advise against it because I'm having fairly high DVD failure rates after only five years of storage...on the order of 1 out of 30 to 50 DVDs are unreadable.  That's unacceptable to me.

I have moved to hard drive storage with redundant back-up drives.  I'm up to I think six 1TB drives, but you can start with any size drive, as long as you back-up your data onto a separate drive.  The idea here is to save your master recording onto a drive and back it up onto another drive and store that drive in a separate place...at work or at a relative's house.  This protects your master recordings against both natural disasters and hard drive disasters.  Update your back up drive every so often so that you have frequent back-ups. 

So many people complain that they don't trust hard drives with their data...and they use that as a reason why they prefer the physical media of DVD or CDR.  I just think that's silly, short sighted thinking.  All drives fail...but as I've said DVDs and CDRs fail too.  The key to long-term data retention is BACKING IT UP, so that when your medio does fail (did I mention that it will eventially fail?) you're safe.  The other key is that, as soon as you do have a drive failure, restore your redundancy ASAP by going out and buying another drive to replace the drive that failed. 

Using this method of data management, you should never risk losing your master recordings.

I sorta agree with you but I have and ALWAYS WILL backup to High-Quality Verbatim DVDR's. They are worth the extra lil $$ and I have extremely great failure rates with them!

And thanks for the FFS idea. I just use an internal HDD and an external HDD of the same size, and my EXHDD auto 'syncs' w/ my internal so I NEVER have to do anything. The EXHDD just updates itself whenever I delete/add/etc more shows to my INHDD

[Songcatcher]

Again,thanks to everyone who has commented on this thread. You are most informative and a valuable source of information. I'm starting to think I'll be able to do this eventually.

The Tascam arrived the other day,but aside from charging the battery I haven't had a chance to use it. I did read all 17 pages of Tonedeaf's amazing review, and I hope Tascam is giving him a kickback for his promotional efforts. One question I saw raised there but not answered that I am curious about.  Can anyone who's used one of these (DR100MKII) recommend a brand of SD card that's reliable and compatible?

Also,as I am new to the computer-related recording,can anyone mention a little about the care and feeding of SD cards? I see they have exposed contacts. Are they succeptable to loss of data or damage if those contacts accidentally get shorted? Is static electricity lethal to the cards? What is reasonable care - can I carry one around in my pocket with no concern or is that foolish?

Thanks for the contInuing education!

[heath]

I've got 5 working wire recorders here at the studio.  I've been contemplating bringing one to the Thunderbird and telling Swampy to give me a board patch.