How do you BackUp your Shows

[kd_special]

Just curious how other back up their shows.

Are CDs/DVDs safer than a harddrive? perhaps blue ray discs.

We have multiple shows mixed monthly. I just finished a 40 episode series and am about to start the 80 episode season 2. Usually I have the assistants back up each mix and mix outs as I finish them. About 2 to 3 dvd-Rs per show not including video just audio.

If I switch to Blu Rays we could fit video and more shows per disc but discs aren't that cheep and the time it takes is really the problem.

Am I just better to get a 2 T drive and back up the whole thing to that. DOes that have the same life span as a DVD or BlueRay disc? Its cheeper and faster. plus I get to have all my shows in one spot for later reference.

Is there a tape system or a different system that others use?

thanks in advance
kd

[garnoil]

I back up to firewire drives, but my films are huge,and I can not spend hours burning disks. For tv work (I just did 13 eps) I also back up to firewire but in the end, it is always the director/producer/network responsibility. I only keep back up for a couple for months after I deliver the material to the clients. Clients pay for the their firewire drives for back ups then can if they want, make more back ups on Blue Rays or tapes or whatever they want after that on their own.

[rhumphries]

I use SuperDuper to backup anything new on my audio drive every evening. It backs up to a 1TB drive. When that gets full I pop it in the closet and start doing the same thing to a new drive.

It's worked pretty well for me. I've gone back to old drives and pulled projects off of them after a couple years with no problem. I don't know how they will do in the very long run. If I'm really concerned about a particular project I'll back it up to more than one drive, but I don't make any promises to keep clients material stored indefinitely-- that's just a hassle that I don't want to be involved in. YMMV.

-Richard

[dopplah]

I have two large hard drives with the same information on them. However I "sync" them manually-- there's probably an easier automated way to make what changes on one drive change on the other.

That way everything is in the same bucket so you don't have to jockey discs.

Shawn

[jeremiahmoore]

I do a mix of short-form and long-form projects. Everything gets archived, and always the same way:

I run a unix script using the "rsync" command, which pushes changes from my projects drive to a "hot backup" drive. I run it manually at lunch and end-of-day.

Every few weeks the "hot backup" gets sync'd to a "B" drive which is stored offsite (at home) and brought in for the purpose.

When archiving a project, I use Project Workspace to manually check for straggler files outside the session folder and consolidate everything using "copy and relink". Then I sync it to the two archive drives and wipe it.

This system has significant flaws (mainly: easy to propagate an error, and to manually delete things by accident) but it works for me and my little one-person operation here.

-jeremiah

[rhumphries]

Originally Posted by jeremiahmoore

...
When archiving a project, I use Project Workspace to manually check for straggler files outside the session folder and consolidate everything using "copy and relink". ...

I seem to forget this step more often than not. It drives me crazy! Is it too much to ask that protools have a useful "consolidate session" feature?

-R

[nucelar]

For projects: Save copy in... (Include all files) -> to an external SATA drive. I have one of those docks where you can stick a bare hard drive in. I print a list of the contents and store them in a fire resistant rack drawer.
PD: last week I received a film from 2006 on DVDs and many files were corrupted /unreadable.

[RecRoom]

I think it depends on the client. I once worked on a sitcom where all the stems were backed up to 2 inch 24 track analog.

[Pythagor]

Retrospect and tapes. tried with hard drives and ended with surface errors after 2 years. never had problems with tapes - 15 years of backups without headache

[Vedat]

Used to do Retrospect and DDS3 tapes. Gave that up cause the tapes started to give errors due to worn heads.

Made an automator script that looks at 4 suites' drive backup folders, rsyncs them to a central RAID1, and then this gets cloned every week to another drive that goes off site.
So effectively, we have 4 copies of each recent job, and 3 copies in the long run.