Topic: Hard Copies of your Digital Masters (Storage)

[purple-nation]

The only thing I don’t like about flash drive recorders (like the Edirol, Zoom, Sony) is that after the show you don’t have a “hard copy” Master like the old days when you would have a Cassette, Mini Disc or DAT that you could hold in your hand and say “this is IT” !!  So, I have kind of made my own Hard Copies.  I like it, and it feels “safe & secure” ... if you know what I mean.



What I use is :

AVERY 8163 Label
SUPER JEWEL BOX Case
SONYDVD-R Media

I put the Ticket Stub in the Case.  I have all my Masters done like this (even the ones that I recorded on Cassette, Nini Disc or DAT).  I like it.  On the DVD itself is the mastered, transferred and tracked FLAC Files, Pictures of the show (if available), Text File, MD5 checksums, and the untouched WAV files.

Does anyone else have a "neat" what of storing their Masters?  I like discussion like this !

[Gordon]

dvd-r doesn't last forever.  redundancy is key.  I stopped even burning to dvd.  multiple hard drives is all I do now.  I listen via my server (hard drives) so no need for an actual copy.

[twatts (pants are so over-rated...)]

Bit perfect digital has taken some of the unique-ness out of "Masters", but I do hear what you are saying...  there is a nice feeling when you hold the physical media... 

Terry

[JackoRoses]

dvd-r doesn't last forever.  redundancy is key.  I stopped even burning to dvd.  multiple hard drives is all I do now.  I listen via my server (hard drives) so no need for an actual copy.

I have more confidence in a DVD lasting longer than any spinning platter HDD.
If it really matters there are medical grade dvd discs with 100 years lifetime and in decent storage I'd bet they would last longer.
Just need to keep a spare dvd drive with your masters since the technology will be dead and they will be using something new by than :p
Albeit by that point there won't be SATA/PATA drive connections and USB will be gone as well.
Redundancy is key though, as of now I keep both HDD and dvd media for mine. (and archive.org for the bands that allow it)

[runonce]

I have already had many untouched DVDs become unreadable...

[scb]

I have more confidence in a DVD lasting longer than any spinning platter HDD.

I have many dvdr discs that I burned and put away that are unreadable.  They were *never* used and just sat in a closet for a few years and are useless.

I don't trust dvdr media at all

[vanark]

I share everything I record.  That is the redundancy I need.

Like Gordon, I use multiple hard drive copies.  I spin them up only when I am backing up to them.  But, if I lose the master, it is all good - the show is in circulation.

[page]

I have more confidence in a DVD lasting longer than any spinning platter HDD.

I have many dvdr discs that I burned and put away that are unreadable.  They were *never* used and just sat in a closet for a few years and are useless.

I don't trust dvdr media at all

I'm with Gordon et al on this one, I've got a rotation of drives that I backup in triplicate.

Where as even my Verbatum CDRs from mid-98 or so have developed some rot in a handful of instances (I'm actually up to about mid-99 as the last safe point where I don't have any CDR rot). I'm going through periodically and trying to copy all of the stuff off to save it now. My VHS tapes lasted longer than that...

[bhadella]

I have 2 HDD copies (on-site and off-site) of the masters and flacs and a DVD copy of masters (just cause I still have DVDs that need to be used).

[JackoRoses]

I have more confidence in a DVD lasting longer than any spinning platter HDD.

I have many dvdr discs that I burned and put away that are unreadable.  They were *never* used and just sat in a closet for a few years and are useless.

I don't trust dvdr media at all

I hear what you guys are saying, I just can't agree completely about the reliability rap you give DVDR media.
I guess I just have been the exceptional case; as I have cds that are 16 years old that are still readable. ( I probably still have a working HDD that old too so...)
coincidentally they are mostly verbatims. Now if only my cd/dvd drives would last that long. (well my 4x plextor still is rocking but it can't read dvd's  )

[Gordon]

I have more confidence in a DVD lasting longer than any spinning platter HDD.

I don't expect hard drives to last that long either.  that's why I have multiple copies and can easily add new drives every few years to be the "main backup".  then the old ones are backups of backups.  plus it's easier and more convenient to access the shows via hard drive than dvd.  not to mention much faster to copy/move files.

I actually have all my masters on three drives.  one that is in my server for listening and then two backups in a fire proof safe.  and as rory pointed out circulating everything is another way to know you will never loose anything.  it would be a much bigger pain in the ass to get everything back that way though.

[twatts (pants are so over-rated...)]

circulating everything is another way to know you will never loose anything.  it would be a much bigger pain in the ass to get everything back that way though.

Indeed...  I lost one of my Stereolab masters and now I'm unable to find a Seeder...  Oh well... 

Terry

[George]

I have 3 copies of my masters across three hard drives.  Consistency in copying everything is key.  Once I get home from a show, I copy the wavs off the sd card to my D drive, then E drive then external drive once I finish mastering it for playback.

[Brian Skalinder]

I have DVD-R copies of a lot of my recordings, but stopped burning to optical media a couple years ago and don't expect them to last.  My current setup is:

• Internal HDDs, onsite.  Primary storage.
• Internal HDDs_Bkp, onsite.  Mirror of HDDs, nightly.  Protects against HDDs failure.
• External HDD, onsite (but offline).  Unscheduled / ad hoc updates.  Protects against simultaneous failure of HDDs and HDDs_Bkp (e.g. power surge trashing my entire PC).
• External HDD, offsite.  Updated quarterly.  Protects against localized catastrophic event (e.g. house burns down).
• Shared copies with friends / family / fellow fans and music lovers, obviously offsite.  Protects against damn near any conceivable event.  If an event occurred that rendered even this option inadequate and unavailable, I'd have far bigger concerns!

For anyone considering setting up redundant HDDs, it's easy to do.  No need for RAID (in fact, for most consumer use I recommend against it).  Here's an old, but still relevant, thread:  Reasonable Redundancy without RAID.

[ilduclo]

upload them to LMA or a blog for others to enjoy. As J Hudson, Seedsman, says "preservation through dissemination"



http://www.jlhudsonseeds.net/

[terabyte23]

As others have said, redundancy is the key.  My setup (sorta similar to Brian's):

1) Masters stored on HDD onsite.
2) Sync nightly (via rsync) to a backup server, also onsite.
3) External drives stored offsite, brought home every couple of weeks and rsync'd, then returned offsite.
4) Many processed masters distributed via torrents or the LMA.

All systems in 1-3 have identical disk capacity.

But I totally understand the satisfaction of holding the finished master in your hand.  I might do something similar to the OP if I ever find the time, at least for some key shows :-)

[trustthex]

So, no one's using "commercial" tape backup (DLT, LTO, etc)?  I've got a raid setup and distributed storage at the house; but platters rattle.   

[drewloo]

There is a newer kind of DVD out called M-DISC that seems like it might be great for archiving if/once the 25gb blu-ray variety comes out.  It uses a rock/mineral substrate to store data instead of the dye that is used in most dvds.  It needs a burner w/ a special laser to burn the disc but can be read by most dvd drives.  Certified by the DoD to last 100's of years. 

The problem is that currently a 4.7gb disc costs about $3 so it's not really cost competitive w/ hard drives right now.  Also some people feel that dvd players won't be around in the not-too-far-off future so the discs will be useless sooner rather than later.  That may be true but for super important data/shows these discs might be the ticket for some folks.

[robeti]

I have two HDD (storeage + backup) stored at the same place. Not very safe. I should be storing one somewhere else.

[morst]

I stopped adding plastic to my archives a couple years ago, now I've just begun to bring them back online to hard drives.

Using this guide and the free software - http://www.videohelp.com/dvdmedia
you can tell who manufactured your media. At-Risk (low grade) media should be the highest priority to re-rip...

So far, all the Apple-branded discs from 2003-2004 are fine, but I know I've had Sonys fail that were only a couple years old. My habit was to burn two copies on two different brands, so we'll see how that worked out...

[noahbickart]

One other, minor thing: I always format my micro sd card at the show, so there is a failsafe "backup" (its really the "master") of the most recent show, unless my deck is actually recording one.

[Chimney Top]

I've lost alot of data lately.  Has anyone used Solid State Drives for backup?  SSD's are about $1,000/TB right now, $100+ for 120GB.  But when it costs $1,000 to recover data from a 1TB hard drive... HD's are cheap now, but they fail frequently.  Even when sitting on a shelf...

[dabbler]

It's still cheaper to double/triple up on HDDs than rely on SSD (which may still fail) for long-term storage.  I split my HDD purchases over time to get different batches/manufacturers to minimize the chance of hitting a bad batch/model.

[OldNeumanntapr]

I remember a DAT trader that I traded with years ago used to say 'Parallel backups - trade with as many people as you can, to ensure that your recordings will survive.'

In the early 90s, when Marantz came out with a pro CD recorder (for like $8-10,000) I thought that was going to be the future answer to my long-term archival needs. I bought an HHb CDR 800 in '98 for $1,800 (man how prices have come down) that is thankfully still running. Now that I am finally almost done transferring all my DAT recordings to CD, I'm realizing that CDRs don't last as long as the DATs will. Sigh.

I've been pondering the question of archival storage for a long time now. I don't have anything on my hard drive, except for 160 gigs of Apple Lossless files for my iPod Classic, which is used basically as an external drive for my Alpine car stereo.

I played around a little with XACT and tried FLACing some of my discs to try and get the hang of it, but it seems like it would take forever to do all of my shows.

Is there a preference to storing recordings as FLAC, opposed to AIFF files (on a larger hard drive?) Other than the size of the file, is there a reason that I should be storing them as FLAC? My computer is upstairs, and my stereo - DAT recorders - CD recorder is downstairs, so I can't really feasibly incorporate them all together.

Computers have always had kind of a high learning curve for me. That's why I'm much more comfortable with tape recorders. I still use DAT to master shows with.

It just scares me to read these posts about people losing a lot of their recordings because of optical disc failure as time goes by...

[dabbler]

Is there a preference to storing recordings as FLAC, opposed to AIFF files (on a larger hard drive?) Other than the size of the file, is there a reason that I should be storing them as FLAC?

FLAC has built-in checksumming, so it's easier to report/detect corrupt files than using external checksums.

Also, smaller file size means slightly less hard drive wear on playback.

Regardless of storage medium (CDR, DAT, HDD, SSD, SD), data can get corrupted.
It's always good to keep redundant copies around and periodically test them.
Some/most(?) FLAC playback software will report corrupted FLACs on playing.

[shownomarcy]

I have the edited shows on my pc (Flac) - iternal HDD but
its copied to external HDD too also with all master (Wav) files.
Same with videos. Because its more than 2 TB (full hd vids...) Im about to buy an other 2 TB and have everything doubled.

It's quite bad that we should be paranoid. This is a bit weird because what's more important than data???
Im a new boy, so I missed to record on tape. I just transferred some MC to Flac.
The only good point of digital tech and not having a "master tape" is that there are no x generation copies, no need to search lower gens.