Automatic Back Up of ProTools Sessions

[KennyA]

I am currently backing up my 3 Mix24 systems with Retrospect. I had to recently retore a drive from the backup and the Session files were not properly restored. Does anybody use an automatic backup server with their PT Systems? Our only other back up right now is copyin the sessions to DVD RAM everynight. Any suggestions?

[Rail Jon Rogut]

What do you mean they "weren't properly restored"? Ive been using Retrosepct for years and have never had a single problem (which wasn't media related).

Rail

[KennyA]

After the restoration was complete from the tape library, all the sesson files were 0k in size. I have never had any problems restoring any machines before this(I have had to restore my graphics workstations and server drives many times already over the past 4 years of running the server) I have tried restoring the files multiple times and get the same problem. All the audio files and fade files are restored, but sessions aren't. I am using Retrospect 5.1 under OSX with an ADIC Scalar 100 tape Library w/AIT2 drives. they are backing up 2 Mix24/Mac 9600 systems and a Mix24/MacG4 system.

[Rail Jon Rogut]

Have you tried restoring with retrospect under OS 9?

Rail

[tvent]

You may want to increase the hard drive size for BIG stuff, but has anyone thought of using one of those new digidelivery servers as a simple backup medium.

It sounds like it should work - simple drag and drop, then it takes care of all files associated with the session, and the low-end version is cheaper than a tape drive and definitely cheaper than a tape drive and software.

Now, it wouldn't work as a long term solution because your backup would on a hard drive and hard drives are mechanical objects subject to failure - but it would definitely fit the bill during the sesssion and for short-term space saving on your workstation - AND if you had the wide-area network bandwidth you could even place one off-site to protect against catastrophic natural disasters like fire, tornado, earthquake, theft etc.

I wonder if you could link up a couple of them at different sites to have yourself 3 copies?

Oh, and Digi - if folks start buying these things for this reason can I get some commission? Or at least 3 Accel card upgrades from HD?

[JC925602]

Retrospect have the option to restore older files of an incremental backup. So if one of the backup session is corrupted, you can retreive the session of the day before.

JC

[KennyA]

I ran the OS9 version of Retrospect and sucessfully recovered a session. Thanks for all the suggestions!!!

[shoo]

Digidelivery no longer exists I think? Great idea - I wish it was easier and cheaper to do something like this.

I'm currently trying to create a SAN for Pro Tools that has a loading station of audio files and then a ROM burning station and of course the nightly automatic backup to tape. The handy thing being is the Raid in the SAN so if drives fail, another picks up and we can fly between projects instantly with an aim to have multiple users on a project at any given time thus creating automatic backup of the session and then just keep adding drives to increase if you want to keep something live. MMMMM terabytes lol
You can get this off the shelf but is expensive, there is a way to do this cheaply without servers and loads of machines and becoming an IT dept.!!!

Who else is doing this? How are you connecting your existing servers?