Topic: Backup options

[johnw]

So my external drive has died and I'm looking at: replacing it, getting or building a NAS server, looking at online storage.

I know this has been covered and I've read some of the threads, but I wanted to see what people are looking at these days.

EDIT: I didn't lose anything and already have everything backed up to dvds. I'm not trying to recover the external drive. It would be really easy to buy another external drive and just back up to that from my computer or dvds. I may go that route since it's pretty cheap and really easy, but I haven't read much about people's experiences with the various online storage providers and the last post I could find about a  NAS option was from January 2009. Responses like "The Netgear ReadyNAS Duo I bought last December was total crap, don't buy it" or "Mozy is way overpriced" would be useful to me. I'm very aware of options to back up data and have been employing these in some form since day 1.

As technology tends to change and storage becomes cheaper, I would think that it would be appropriate to update threads on those options, but perhaps not.

Mods please delete this thread.

[it-goes-to-eleven]

Nothing... absolutely nothing.. has changed...

[sparkey]

I archive flac files to DVD then track the whole shootin match in a spreadsheet.  I'll probably switch to blu-ray disks in the near future, but I prefer a hard copy to something on a hard drive.

[Fatah Ruark (aka MIKE B)]

Yes this has been covered, but IMO there is not such thing as too many backup threads. I get really frustrated when people post "My hard drive died and I don't have a backup, how do I recover my ENTIRE recording archive" threads.

Anyway...here is my backup strategy:

1. Raw masters / Finished Edits on a hard drive in my main computer, backed up automatically nightly to:
2. Hard drive on my backup/media server, manually backed up semi-monthly to:
3. External hard drive and stored at my brothers house.

That is the "3-2-1" backup strategy. 3 copies of everything, 2 on-site, 1 off-site.

I'm am thinking about adding a 4th copy that I will either store in my safe deposit box, or send to my parents house since my brother lives just a mile from me. If there was a flood, we might both get taken out.

It's also important to note to TEST your backups on a regular basis. A backup is not a backup if it is corrupt.

I use Microsoft SyncToy 2 to make my automatic backups. I manually copy files to my off-site backup.

[rastasean]

I like FR's attitude about it but perhaps a #4 can be added in too.

http://www.godaddy.com/Hosting/Legacy.aspx?ci=9009

For $12.75/month (for a year) totaling $153 you can have UNLIMITED amounts of space and just upload (via ftp) your shit when you want. I'm sure there's some automation that can be done on a nightly/weekly basis as well. It would be a hell of a way to share music as well...just provide the directory to people and they can download...you won't need bit torrent running.

For NAS, I think its a really cool thing but I also think we can all find an old computer, throw in a HDD, ubuntu server on it and copy stuff over to it automatically.


For those who burn masters/raws to CDs, do you do any compression or is a complete folder of songs divided by artist/band?

[johnw]

I like FR's attitude about it but perhaps a #4 can be added in too.

http://www.godaddy.com/Hosting/Legacy.aspx?ci=9009

For $12.75/month (for a year) totaling $153 you can have UNLIMITED amounts of space and just upload (via ftp) your shit when you want. I'm sure there's some automation that can be done on a nightly/weekly basis as well. It would be a hell of a way to share music as well...just provide the directory to people and they can download...you won't need bit torrent running.

For NAS, I think its a really cool thing but I also think we can all find an old computer, throw in a HDD, ubuntu server on it and copy stuff over to it automatically.


For those who burn masters/raws to CDs, do you do any compression or is a complete folder of songs divided by artist/band?

Thank you. The godaddy suggestion was really helpful.

[it-goes-to-eleven]

http://www.godaddy.com/Hosting/Legacy.aspx?ci=9009

For $12.75/month (for a year) totaling $153 you can have UNLIMITED amounts of space and just upload (via ftp) your shit when you want.

A lot of people don't seem to like the way godaddy does business. Google 'godaddy horror' and checkout nodaddy.com.  I'd avoid them.

A number of companies who have played in that space failed and left the users without their data.

[Fatah Ruark (aka MIKE B)]

If you want to do an online backup, I would suggest one of the automatic backup websites:

carbonite.com
mozy.com
backblaze.com

I tried backblaze and it seemed fine, but it was going to take 6 months to backup my data! (I have a lot). Super easy to use them. I think they are all about $5/month. Unlimited data.

I would like to fine an online solution where I could send them an external HD with all of my recordings, and then use the internet to make backups of new recordings.

[johnw]

Mozy was 50 cents a GB per month which seemed a little high. Thanks all for the insight, this is the info I was hoping to get.

EDIT: That was for Mozy pro. The home version is $5/mo and says unlimited space. That seems odd and I can't find any fine print. I'll look into that more closely.

[sparkey]

Keep in mind that if online backup businesses go under, buh-bye to all your recordings.  Ditto if they have server failure and don't back up their goodies, or if they encounter data corruption.

Mozy was 50 cents a GB per month which seemed a little high. Thanks all for the insight, this is the info I was hoping to get.

EDIT: That was for Mozy pro. The home version is $5/mo and says unlimited space. That seems odd and I can't find any fine print. I'll look into that more closely.

[deadhoarse]

Yes this has been covered, but IMO there is not such thing as too many backup threads. I get really frustrated when people post "My hard drive died and I don't have a backup, how do I recover my ENTIRE recording archive" threads.

Anyway...here is my backup strategy:

1. Raw masters / Finished Edits on a hard drive in my main computer, backed up automatically nightly to:
2. Hard drive on my backup/media server, manually backed up semi-monthly to:
3. External hard drive and stored at my brothers house.

That is the "3-2-1" backup strategy. 3 copies of everything, 2 on-site, 1 off-site.

I'm am thinking about adding a 4th copy that I will either store in my safe deposit box, or send to my parents house since my brother lives just a mile from me. If there was a flood, we might both get taken out.

It's also important to note to TEST your backups on a regular basis. A backup is not a backup if it is corrupt.

I use Microsoft SyncToy 2 to make my automatic backups. I manually copy files to my off-site backup.

Oh, if you aren't already doing so, upgrade to SyncToy 2.1. SyncToy 2 has been known to cause data corruption issues when backing up to drives over a network.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=c26efa36-98e0-4ee9-a7c5-98d0592d8c52&displaylang=en

My strategy is similar to yours, except only 1 drive is on all the time. If the drives aren't spinning I figure there's less of a chance of them failing (I hope...)

-2TB drive in my main PC. Audio masters stored here...original recordings and edited copies. FLAC is streamed throughout the house from this drive.

-Offline 2TB drive #1. Plugged in and synchronized with a Robocopy script whenever I make an addition to the main drive.

-Offline 2TB drive #2. Also synchronized with a Robocopy script. Stored at a remote location. Backup drives 1 and 2 are swapped regularly, to keep the drive at the remote location up to date. I'll just bring the synchronized backup drive to that location and bring the un-synchronized drive home.

The backup drives are bare drives, plugged into the Thermaltake BlacX for quick synchronizing. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153071&cm_re=thermaltake_blacx-_-17-153-071-_-Product

These are decent cases for storing bare drives:
http://www.wiebetech.com/products/cases.php

edit: robocopy...
robocopy E:\ H:\ /MIR /XD "System Volume Information" /LOG+:D:\logs\e_backup.txt /NP /TEE

another edit: I use disk monitoring software called Hard Disk Sentinel. It sits in the system tray and does periodic diagnostics on all hard drives, tells you power on time, estimated lifespan, etc. You can set it up to alert you in different ways (email, popup, etc) if it detects any issues with the drives.

[phanophish]

Mozy was 50 cents a GB per month which seemed a little high. Thanks all for the insight, this is the info I was hoping to get.

EDIT: That was for Mozy pro. The home version is $5/mo and says unlimited space. That seems odd and I can't find any fine print. I'll look into that more closely.

I run Mozy Home and like it.  I currently only back up my photographs and some personal documents using Mozy, but that is about 500GB.  My only complaint is the initial backup can take weeks depending on your upstream bandwidth. After that it just does it's business in the background.  You do also have to remember to be aware that if you manually delete things Mozy will drop them off their system after 30 days.

[Fried Chicken Boy]

For those who burn masters/raws to CDs, do you do any compression or is a complete folder of songs divided by artist/band?

Personally, I don't use compression other than FLAC for tracked versions.  I burn at least 2 backups of my masters to DVD's along with whatever else I can fit on a particular disc (mixed-down/tracked versions, notes, etc.) with MD5 checksums that cover everything.  I test the checksums a couple times a year and burn another copy of the master if one doesn't pass the test.  So far (knock on wood ), no fails and no corruptions.  Lately I've started to keep masters on an external drive, too (I put them together myself with quality drives and hardware), but in the past 10+ years I've had as many harddrives crash on me as discs that have become unreadable.  The online storage looks promising but I'd be concerned about their servers going down and taking your files with them.  IMHO, nothing's fail-safe but having multiple copies hedges your bets.

[Shadow_7]

HDDs are cheap.  $100 for 1TB+.

docking station $50.
1TB HDD $100.  (x's however many you need.)

No need for flac, just keep the raw DSD / PCM / WAV / .  Or maybe I'm just the data packrat of the bunch.  4x external drives right now.  3x 500GB, 1x 1TB.  One 500GB is questionable IMO, but I've been re-distributing those contents as interest / need demands.  I might pop for a raid array at some point.  But thumbing through several drives isn't so bad.  As long as you have a fair ideal of what is on what.  And at some point run through and nit pick what you actually need/want to keep, versuses keeping everything that you've ever emailed and such.  Although with larger and larger and cheaper and cheaper drives, it's hard to justify taking out the trash. 

I tend not to backup to optical media.  Not long term enough and not high enough capacity.  Immune to magnetism, but not immune to UV light.  plusses and minuses either way.  It really depends on how long you want something, what environments you subject it to, what locations you store it at, how often you check to make sure it's still viable.