Have a Backup Plan. Regardless of platform

[albee1952]

Originally Posted by gtomassetti

…unless it was something so profoundly bad that the only way to get it off of the planet was to completely trash it "by accident!"

(There are a few recordings I've heard where I wish that had happened!)

Well, there was that time the SUCK knob got stuck on 10.......... BTW, Ensoniq is alive in my studio too as I use a Mirage as my organ midi keyboard(playing organ parts on a weighted keyboard is no fun and the Mirage bed feels better than almost any sub-$500 controller). Cost me $50

[gtomassetti]

Originally Posted by albee1952

Well, there was that time the SUCK knob got stuck on 10.......... BTW, Ensoniq is alive in my studio too as I use a Mirage as my organ midi keyboard(playing organ parts on a weighted keyboard is no fun and the Mirage bed feels better than almost any sub-$500 controller). Cost me $50

That old SUCK knob… Not too much you can do about that.

Ensoniq was excellent hardware, no question about it. I also like that, because it was made in PA, the manuals weren't translated from the Japanese like with Roland, Yamaha, Korg, Kawai, etc.

Sometimes it was laughable: "For results which can be the most pleasant, please to not insert disk whilst drive are engaged. Power is not to be off or on until unit initially set up."

The best one of all, and I swear I am not making this up, was when Roland was making Fender Rhodes. The suitcase Rhodes had 4 legs that screwed into the bottom of the unit, as I'm sure you remember.

Well, the Roland manual translated the word "screw" as a familiar English term involving the sex act: "To attach legs, please f$#% them into holes in bottom of case."



Now THAT was a classic…

[solidwalnut]

My plan:

• Clone of system drive (dual xp/win7 boot)
  • Re-cloned quarterly
  • Acronis system image also saved to internal backup drive
• Copy of audio drive PT folders to internal backup drive
• Re-format audio drives
• Copy current audio drive PT folders from internal backup to clean audio drives
  • Archive PT folders remain on backup drive
  • Copy and re-format done quarterly
• Copy of both current and archive PT folders to external drive

[scrnplyr]

My spine tingles and my head throbs as I read these horror stories of lost data. Flashback to the early 2000s ...I'm hired to edit down 40 hours of HD video to an hour - a collegiate instructional video with a lot of VOs and music. I was using 2 external HDs to save the work - one was raw footage the other was the daily backup - and things were going great. I was putting in 8 hours a day to meet the deadline and things were humming along. It looked and sounded quite good if I do say so myself - and if all goes well I would get a lot of work from this client.

My workstation at the time consisted of a small table with a PC/2 video and 2 audio monitors and the square shaped xHDs plugged into an extended multi-plug near the front of the desk - for the life of me I can't figure out why they didn't rack mount those suckers. Anyway, I must have gotten up and down from that table a thousand times without a problem and then one day the power plug got tangled in my sleeve and both xHDs came tumbling to the floor. The crashing sound was my soul wrenching in pain. Not only were both HDs rendered useless I had no one to blame but myself. Oh the humanity.

After going through the 12 stages of grief and 2/5s of rum I soon learned a boat load about broken xHDs and how expensive it is to try and capture data from a fractured ceramic drive. Needless to say I had to redo hundreds of hours of editing to meet the deadline. Now I back up video to no less than 6 xHDs that are all neatly stacked away from the workstation.

I'm using Time Machine, but I'd like to get more info on Cloning the HD. I'm slightly confused about partitions. How does a partition help if it's on the HD that crashes? Does only the active partition crash leaving the other partitions operable?

To sum up backing up PT audio it sounds like a 3 pronged attack might be:

1. clone your current OS set up (where does the clone reside?)
2. back up all sessions to at least 2 other HDs - and maybe a 3rd to be kept at a separate location
3. Use timemachine to keep a running back up as well as manually saving your current session

BTW, this was the kind of thread that really helped me improve my DAW. Is there a way to keep this kind of stuff floating at the top of the threads so people coming in can find it. I can tell you that it takes a bit of dumpster diving to sort thru all the stuff and find the gems.

cheers

[solidwalnut]

Originally Posted by scrnplyr

...I'm using Time Machine, but I'd like to get more info on Cloning the HD. I'm slightly confused about partitions. How does a partition help if it's on the HD that crashes? Does only the active partition crash leaving the other partitions operable?

The reason for dividing up drives into separate partitions is only for better seek time management.

Originally Posted by scrnplyr

To sum up backing up PT audio it sounds like a 3 pronged attack might be:



1. clone your current OS set up (where does the clone reside?)...

The clone of the OS is actually on a separate harddrive.

And the only reason I would copy sessions to another internal drive is for temp storage and bring them back after defrag. The say the best method of defrag is to actually wipe the drive and start over.

[scrnplyr]

Ok, I can do that.

On a side note today, I asked 2 young video editors about their back up system since I was thinking about this thread and they laughed.

"We should probably get one" was their response. I don't know if youth is wasted on the young, but repeating mistakes that have already been made appears inevitable. All I could say was..."you'll learn the hard way"

[guitardom]

Originally Posted by scrnplyr

My spine tingles and my head throbs as I read these horror stories of lost data. Flashback to the early 2000s ...I'm hired to edit down 40 hours of HD video to an hour - a collegiate instructional video with a lot of VOs and music. I was using 2 external HDs to save the work - one was raw footage the other was the daily backup - and things were going great. I was putting in 8 hours a day to meet the deadline and things were humming along. It looked and sounded quite good if I do say so myself - and if all goes well I would get a lot of work from this client.

My workstation at the time consisted of a small table with a PC/2 video and 2 audio monitors and the square shaped xHDs plugged into an extended multi-plug near the front of the desk - for the life of me I can't figure out why they didn't rack mount those suckers. Anyway, I must have gotten up and down from that table a thousand times without a problem and then one day the power plug got tangled in my sleeve and both xHDs came tumbling to the floor. The crashing sound was my soul wrenching in pain. Not only were both HDs rendered useless I had no one to blame but myself. Oh the humanity.

After going through the 12 stages of grief and 2/5s of rum I soon learned a boat load about broken xHDs and how expensive it is to try and capture data from a fractured ceramic drive. Needless to say I had to redo hundreds of hours of editing to meet the deadline. Now I back up video to no less than 6 xHDs that are all neatly stacked away from the workstation.

I'm using Time Machine, but I'd like to get more info on Cloning the HD. I'm slightly confused about partitions. How does a partition help if it's on the HD that crashes? Does only the active partition crash leaving the other partitions operable?

To sum up backing up PT audio it sounds like a 3 pronged attack might be:

1. clone your current OS set up (where does the clone reside?)
2. back up all sessions to at least 2 other HDs - and maybe a 3rd to be kept at a separate location
3. Use timemachine to keep a running back up as well as manually saving your current session

BTW, this was the kind of thread that really helped me improve my DAW. Is there a way to keep this kind of stuff floating at the top of the threads so people coming in can find it. I can tell you that it takes a bit of dumpster diving to sort thru all the stuff and find the gems.

cheers

1. Clones should be seperate drives plugged in just for this purpose. I do not keep any at my workstation, they go to safe and grab them as I need them and then put them back.

2. All session backup drives also go directly to the safe. Pulled out to do the daily backups or what's needed. If its just editing or something I might put the session file on a flash drive temporarily since there is no new audio. Also agree w the 2 drives, I just don't leave them out.

3. I do not use any monitoring software. I think of that as resources being wasted. I honestly don't care about my C: drive that much as I can have a new one in, in about a minute. I have a removable bay system for my C: drives and have a couple ready to go at any time.

[belolab]

I have 2 current bups on site, and one regular update offsite, but am curious about gobbler. I can't see how it is viable with an album folder hitting 200gb on most 10 track records (at 44.1khz!!!). Or do you just use it for current tracks etc?

[Craig F]

Originally Posted by scrnplyr

Ok, I can do that.

On a side note today, I asked 2 young video editors about their back up system since I was thinking about this thread and they laughed.

"We should probably get one" was their response. I don't know if youth is wasted on the young, but repeating mistakes that have already been made appears inevitable. All I could say was..."you'll learn the hard way"

some mistakes must be made by everyone once to truly learn

[solidwalnut]

Originally Posted by belolab

I have 2 current bups on site, and one regular update offsite, but am curious about gobbler. I can't see how it is viable with an album folder hitting 200gb on most 10 track records (at 44.1khz!!!). Or do you just use it for current tracks etc?

They can handle it. They are more about xfer than storage, but they have plenty of storage as well.