Topic: Best way to backup HD data? How do y'all store your tapeless masters?

[BC]

What up all-

I have all my masters FLAC'ed and stored on a HD in my desktop and burned to disc too. But these days I have been worrying about losing the HD and want to back it up, since if the HD goes I do not want to have to sit around and load all the discs back into the HD, which would be a major PITA. (I see the discs as a last-resort kind of thing).

So...

I have been thinking about getting a 250GB external USB/FW HD and just manually copying my archive stuff to both drives.

There are even some external HD's I have seen that offer "one-click" backup where you press some button on the HD and it will do some kind of auto backup of the data on your computer. This seems like it could be a good feature since if I lose track over time of exactly which files I have backed up this would allow backup of my whole archive drive without necessitating me to clear the duplicate drive and copy everything back over, since I would think the software would do a check to see what files were different or missing. Anyone used an external HD that has a feature like this?

I guess another option would be a RAID setup but I know very little about this, physically what I would need to get it set up, what happens in this case if one of the drives does go bad, how to implement it, etc... Can anyone shed some light on this or offer any good links/informational sites?

So I'm curious, what do y'all do to back up the important stuff you have stored on your hard drives???

Thanks for any input-
Ben

[Ray76]

What up all-

I have all my masters FLAC'ed and stored on a HD in my desktop and burned to disc too. But these days I have been worrying about losing the HD and want to back it up, since if the HD goes I do not want to have to sit around and load all the discs back into the HD, which would be a major PITA. (I see the discs as a last-resort kind of thing).

So...

I have been thinking about getting a 250GB external USB/FW HD and just manually copying my archive stuff to both drives.

There are even some external HD's I have seen that offer "one-click" backup where you press some button on the HD and it will do some kind of auto backup of the data on your computer. This seems like it could be a good feature since if I lose track over time of exactly which files I have backed up this would allow backup of my whole archive drive without necessitating me to clear the duplicate drive and copy everything back over, since I would think the software would do a check to see what files were different or missing. Anyone used an external HD that has a feature like this?

I guess another option would be a RAID setup but I know very little about this, physically what I would need to get it set up, what happens in this case if one of the drives does go bad, how to implement it, etc... Can anyone shed some light on this or offer any good links/informational sites?

So I'm curious, what do y'all do to back up the important stuff you have stored on your hard drives???

Thanks for any input-
Ben

the absolute best backup prog. for windows..easy gui, very intuitive.
http://www.symantec.com/sabu/ghost/ghost_personal/

http://www.tech-forums.net/computer/topic/30081.html)setting up a RAID array)

http://www.acnc.com/raid.html this describes all the RAID arrays and lists pros and cons of each.

For DATA that was already stored, id reccomend ghost...

Its what i use.



 
 
 
 
 




 
 
 

[Ray76]

is there a way to save my firefox favorites? 
im going to wipe out my hd, and want to keep my favs for when i re-install everything

backup your profile folder located in C:\Documents and Settings\%user%\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles

[Ray76]

is there a way to save my firefox favorites? 
im going to wipe out my hd, and want to keep my favs for when i re-install everything

backup your profile folder located in C:\Documents and Settings\%user%\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles

& then how do i update the newly installed firefox?

it should recognize your profile, since its already in the firefox folder.

[BC]

the absolute best backup prog. for windows..easy gui, very intuitive.
http://www.symantec.com/sabu/ghost/ghost_personal/

http://www.tech-forums.net/computer/topic/30081.html)setting up a RAID array)

http://www.acnc.com/raid.html this describes all the RAID arrays and lists pros and cons of each.

For DATA that was already stored, id reccomend ghost...

Its what i use.

Thanks for the links, will check em' out.  +t

[Ray76]

the absolute best backup prog. for windows..easy gui, very intuitive.
http://www.symantec.com/sabu/ghost/ghost_personal/

http://www.tech-forums.net/computer/topic/30081.html)setting up a RAID array)

http://www.acnc.com/raid.html this describes all the RAID arrays and lists pros and cons of each.

For DATA that was already stored, id reccomend ghost...

Its what i use.

Thanks for the links, will check em' out.  +t

no problem bud +T backatcha

[ford prefect]

I guess another option would be a RAID setup but I know very little about this, physically what I would need to get it set up, what happens in this case if one of the drives does go bad, how to implement it, etc... Can anyone shed some light on this or offer any good links/informational sites?

I think it's worth looking into if you don't mind playing around with your computer.

For the most part, RAID 1 [mirroring] is the cheapest and easiest way to manage this (although maybe not the easiest to set up initially).  Once a pair of hard drives have been set up to use this you don't need to hit a button or do anything manual at all - files copied to the volume will automatically go to both hard drives immediately.  I know of 2 ways to handle this:

- hardware RAID - your motherboard and system BIOS are used to set up the volume.  When you turn on your computer, the OS will only see 1 hard drive.  Not all computers have the capability to do this, check your documentation for RAID support on your motherboard.

- software RAID - you use software to manage the RAID volume, your OS sees 2 hard drives, the software manages them as a mirrored volume.

I would recommend hardware RAID over software if you can swing it, as it's reputed to be much more reliable. If you go software RAID and something happens to your OS requiring a reformat, you probably lose the volume (which IMO defeats the purpose of using RAID in the first place...).

Another option is using RAID 5 - this is ideal if you have 3 or more hard drives at your disposal to set up your system.  You only lose the space of 1 hard drive for backup so you get more bang for your buck here.  For example, let's say you have 4x 100GB hard drives - when using this for RAID 5, you would have a single 300GB volume with the ability for a single failure point. In other words, 1 hard drive can fail and your data remains intact and available to you.  If a 2nd drive fails, you lose all of your data on all 4 drives - so it's best to replace the failed drive immediately.  It should be noted that all of the drives used for a RAID 5 configuration must be the same size and speed.   Oh, and as a side benefit, RAID 5 has a higher read rate than RAID 1.

If you need more info, try this:

RAID 1: http://www.acnc.com/04_01_01.html

RAID 5: http://www.acnc.com/04_01_05.html

[adubphoto]

I guess another option would be a RAID setup but I know very little about this, physically what I would need to get it set up, what happens in this case if one of the drives does go bad, how to implement it, etc... Can anyone shed some light on this or offer any good links/informational sites?

I think it's worth looking into if you don't mind playing around with your computer.

For the most part, RAID 1 [mirroring] is the cheapest and easiest way to manage this (although maybe not the easiest to set up initially).  Once a pair of hard drives have been set up to use this you don't need to hit a button or do anything manual at all - files copied to the volume will automatically go to both hard drives immediately.  I know of 2 ways to handle this:

- hardware RAID - your motherboard and system BIOS are used to set up the volume.  When you turn on your computer, the OS will only see 1 hard drive.  Not all computers have the capability to do this, check your documentation for RAID support on your motherboard.

- software RAID - you use software to manage the RAID volume, your OS sees 2 hard drives, the software manages them as a mirrored volume.

I would recommend hardware RAID over software if you can swing it, as it's reputed to be much more reliable. If you go software RAID and something happens to your OS requiring a reformat, you probably lose the volume (which IMO defeats the purpose of using RAID in the first place...).

Another option is using RAID 5 - this is ideal if you have 3 or more hard drives at your disposal to set up your system.  You only lose the space of 1 hard drive for backup so you get more bang for your buck here.  For example, let's say you have 4x 100GB hard drives - when using this for RAID 5, you would have a single 300GB volume with the ability for a single failure point. In other words, 1 hard drive can fail and your data remains intact and available to you.  If a 2nd drive fails, you lose all of your data on all 4 drives - so it's best to replace the failed drive immediately.  It should be noted that all of the drives used for a RAID 5 configuration must be the same size and speed.   Oh, and as a side benefit, RAID 5 has a higher read rate than RAID 1.

If you need more info, try this:

RAID 1: http://www.acnc.com/04_01_01.html

RAID 5: http://www.acnc.com/04_01_05.html

Nice avatar Ford! I love that album.

On subject, I just accidentaly deleted a bunch of wavs that I had archived for a band I work with. So after I shit my pants i aquired a data recover program. After a 12 hour scan of the partition, i'm able to recover the files. I will certainly be looking at some sort of redundancy once this is all over. Of course, raid will be of no use if I press delete by mistake. 

[ford prefect]

Nice avatar Ford! I love that album.

Thanks man!  Best Santana album out there, although I also really dig Caravanserai!  I've been looking for years for a place to buy a replica of either of these as a poster.  I'd like to frame them and put it up at home.  All I can find are originals for hundreds of dollars though.

On subject, I just accidentaly deleted a bunch of wavs that I had archived for a band I work with. So after I shit my pants i aquired a data recover program. After a 12 hour scan of the partition, i'm able to recover the files. I will certainly be looking at some sort of redundancy once this is all over. Of course, raid will be of no use if I press delete by mistake. 

Very true!  RAID does not protect you from PEBKAC!   

[heath]

raid or tape backup (lto)

[BC]

bump, anyone else? I am interested in hearing how people are storing their masters, particularly all the tape-less tapers out there (running JB3, laptop, 722/744, R4, etc...)

FWIW, I burn the raw WAV's to DVD as data (since I can usually fit a whole show, 24 & 16 bit versions on one disc with no compression I say why bother FLAC'ing.) Then I FLAC the 24 and 16 bit files and throw em' on my "archive" hard drive. So I have two versions, one on optical disc and one on HD. I personally don't really trust either medium to last a long time, which is why I am thinking so much about backup these days.

Take care,
Ben

[Ray76]

bump, anyone else? I am interested in hearing how people are storing their masters, particularly all the tape-less tapers out there (running JB3, laptop, 722/744, R4, etc...)

FWIW, I burn the raw WAV's to DVD as data (since I can usually fit a whole show, 24 & 16 bit versions on one disc with no compression I say why bother FLAC'ing.) Then I FLAC the 24 and 16 bit files and throw em' on my "archive" hard drive. So I have two versions, one on optical disc and one on HD. I personally don't really trust either medium to last a long time, which is why I am thinking so much about backup these days.

Take care,
Ben

Thats the same thing I do Ben. Have some plastic storage sleeves and some work boot boxes to store the sleeves in.