Session Archiving

[Rudy Michael]

Hello,
I'm trying to find a good software for backing up fairly large protools sessions to dvd. Most of the sessions I'm dealing with average somewhere in the 15 to 25 GB area. Currently I'm just splitting up the audio files folder and sending them to toast to be burnt to several different DVDs. What I'm looking for however is something that can take my entire session and split it up for me within the program. Any ideas? How is everyone else dealing with backups on large sessions.

Thanks,
Rudy

[Rail Jon Rogut]

We use Mezzo or Retrospect.

Rail

[Tweakhead]

Apple's own program "Backup" spans mutiple disks automatically. It is free if you have a .mac account.

[slangification]

External Firewire drives with Retrospect is really a much better solution.

[Eric Bazilian]

Mezzo is great....I used it for years until Firewire drives became cheaper and easier. Thing is, though...if your sessions are between 15 and 25 gigs, unless you're doing 128 tracks at 192k, they're way too big. You need to slim them down once they're final. Have you deleted unused playlists, compacted or duplicated all the audio you're actually using and removed what you're not (I'm still nervous about deleting the unused files for a variety of reasons), then done a "Save Session Copy In"?

As an example...if you've got a five minute session with one hundred tracks that all have continuous audio from start to finish even at 192k, you're looking at something like 10 gigs. Fact is, if you've got that many tracks, a lot of them are probably backing vocals or loops that are relatively small and maybe repeated, so 5 gigs is probably more like it.

Then again, if you feel you need to keep all the unused bits and pieces as insurance, Mezzo is a great way to go.

Me, I'm a big fan of Delete (or Remove) Unused, Compact (or Consolidate then Remove Unused), and Save Session Copy In to a couple of Firewire drives.

[Doug Rider]

I've used Retrospect on Mac and PC for both Archiving and Backup over the last ten years. For what it's worth.

1. Archiving - When you need to recall a session that's 5 years old, use tape - getting data from an old Firewire hard drive could prove very frustrating. Tape scales well, you could archive terabytes of data (I've one client up to 38 terrabytes). I've used data DATs, Exabyte DLT and VXAs, and AIT-1, AIT-2 and AIT-3. So far, AIT-3 has been the most reliable and fastest. Use two catalog sets (run one on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and the other on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday) in case you have a problem with an older tape.

2. Backup - Backup to external large capacity Firewire hard drives if you only need complete restore capabilities in case of a hard drive crash and you don't care if your data only goes back a few months.

I usually use both. I archive all drives (except startup drives) to tape and backup all startup drives to FW hard drives. The reason I don't just put everything on tape is when you have to completely restore a startup drive, it takes very little time with a FW drive. Completely restoring a data drive requires time (usually lots of tape shuffling and baby sitting.) It also keeps your catalog files smaller (easier searching).

The whole idea of archiving and backing up can be overwhelming. What do you do when you have a session on an older tape format and your original tape hardware no longer works? I've also seen Record companies accept FW hard drives as acceptable masters from producers and artists and then they store them improperly on a shelf in some back room. I wish them luck in retrieving anything in about five years.

[c-tone]

I've had very bad results using tape backup when restoring. I like using firewire drives, because you can test ProTools session copies by just playing them off the backup drive ususally. I also don't like having to mess with the Retrospect backup sets, which are very difficult to navigate through to look for only certain files.

I am now looking for a simple file backup software, since after upgrading to OSX, I need a replacement for Copy Agent. I loved how easy it was to just copy only the new files that have been added since the last backup without having to do multiple drag and drops in the Finder. This is just for my nightly backups of the day's work. I tried Backup, but it just makes one document that is impossible to test, and if I need to give the backup drive to someone else to work on, this won't do.

Any suggestions for software that will do this easily? I know this is not as safe as "save session copy in", but I only use one drive at a time, and this is just for nightly incremental backups to FireWire drives.

[Rail Jon Rogut]

Try iMSafe

Rail

[Unheardof]

For a cheap (free!) solution, we use Carbon Copy Cloner with PSync to backup our session drive to another duplicate firewire drive, which gets backed up to tape regularly. We've used Mezzo and Retrospect under OSX and both have their downfalls. Mezzo is very slow under OSX and very prone to crashes and catalog corruption. Retrospect works well, but doesn't store catalogs on AIT, so you have to keep a separate current copy of your catalog, which is a royal pain.

With regards to tape backups in general, in our experience they tend to be flakey and slow, not to mention proprietary. To me, it only makes sense to archive to a universally-readable medium. At this point in time, almost every computer can read a FW or FW/USB drive and most can read DVD, and obviously CD. To me, it makes sense to back up in some kind of natively-readable file format to more than one of these as a final backup medium.

What do you guys think?

[Tweakhead]

Backing up and archiving are two entirely different subjects as far as I am concerned.

Backing up is a short-term safety copy in case something goes wrong with a main drive, or if someone does something stupid.
Firewire drives are just fine, and are fast and effective for this kind of thing.

Archiving is a long-term storage medium that cannot easily be damaged. AIT has been determined to be the most reliable format by many computer data archiving experts. Do a search on Google to confirm my opinion.

A firewire drive is not a reliable archive in my book. All it takes is for one careless person outside of your control to unplug the device without unmounting it and the drive directory is hosed. Sure there are recovery apps out there but it is hit and miss at best.

An archive should be a read-only, or difficult-to-erase medium.