Have a Backup Plan. Regardless of platform

[guitardom]

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?

200gb???? Do you not clean out bad takes and unused files???? 10 song album will avg around 80-90gb at the most for me at 24 bit.

[tonwurm]

I´ve used for years Retrospect 6 on my G5, which works fairly well by making backups to DVD. After going to a Mac Pro I tried the new version, since Retrospect 6 isn´t supported to run on an intel mac with snow leopard. So I tried the new version Retrospect 10, which I removed after 1 day full of bugs and trouble. It´s ridiculous what they made out this piece of software.

Does someone know an alternative to Retrospect, that also uses optical drives (DVD) for incremental backups ?

thanks in advance

[scrnplyr]

Originally Posted by guitardom

200gb???? Do you not clean out bad takes and unused files???? 10 song album will avg around 80-90gb at the most for me at 24 bit.

Could you explain the method you use for achieving this? I would be petrified that i would accidentally delete a good take or a comped clip.

Thanks

[jhonkaman]

Is it OK to save the clone to the same external drive that I'm using to record my pro tools sessions to? Or do I need another external drive just for clones? Also what is the difference between a disk clone and disk image? The Pro Tools Software Installation Guide recommended saving an image of the system drive but it seems like most users here create disk clones. Can someone explain why?

[Darryl Ramm]

A clone and an image backup are referring to the same thing.

Having a clone saved on an audio drive is fine and many of us here will do that. But the danger there is that copy is always online and with the computer. You can accidentally delete it, or if the computer gets zapped or catches fire or stolen,... Well where is your recovery image? So a good pan will also involve offsite backups (clones or other types) e.g. put in a persobal deposit box, or just taken home from the studio and/or having backups in an onsite fireproof/waterproof safe. Any plan starts its working out what oh are trying to protect from. Admin finger accidents? bad software updates? disk failure? total computer failure? fire? water? total building failure? theft? malicious employee tampering/destruction? etc.

And once you think you have a plan and backups go test trying to restore them. That usually needs a few spare drives but well worth that cost. Be very very careful not to damage things when doing this test, take the other drives offline etc. or recover to a separate computer if you have that luxury. I have seen more than a few companies IT system recoveries fail when needed... never pretty.

[jhonkaman]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

A clone and an image backup are referring to the same thing.

Having a clone saved on an audio drive is fine and many of us here will do that. But the danger there is that copy is always online and with the computer. You can accidentally delete it, or if the computer gets zapped or catches fire or stolen,... Well where is your recovery image? So a good pan will also involve offsite backups (clones or other types) e.g. put in a persobal deposit box, or just taken home from the studio and/or having backups in an onsite fireproof/waterproof safe. Any plan starts its working out what oh are trying to protect from. Admin finger accidents? bad software updates? disk failure? total computer failure? fire? water? total building failure? theft? malicious employee tampering/destruction? etc.

And once you think you have a plan and backups go test trying to restore them. That usually needs a few spare drives but well worth that cost. Be very very careful not to damage things when doing this test, take the other drives offline etc. or recover to a separate computer if you have that luxury. I have seen more than a few companies IT system recoveries fail when needed... never pretty.

Thanks for your response. So just to clarify, if I were going to save these backups to a separate drive, then I would only connect this drive to my computer when I am creating a backup, and disconnect it and store it when I am not creating a backup? If so, then would I need to create backups often, or would I only need to create one backup? And would this drive need to have any special requirements like the audio drive I'm using? I know AVID has certain specifications for audio drives, but can the drive for backups be any kind of hard drive? Thanks again. I'm a beginner at this, so I appreciate the help.

[Marco Bernardo]

Sony Optical Disc Archive standalone drive unit, does anyone tried the Sony Optical Disc Archive?

This have some limits, only archive 60.000 files and the data transfer with verifications can only record at 5.5Mbs without goes to 10mbs, but giving you access to your content for 50+ years, for reading speed is USB3.0.

We have 10TB to make backups and archive is there better solutions than this?

Each Project is about 1.3TB. What I've done was delete all fade files from our Save Session's copy in... and zip without compression each episode (using automator and script). Now I only have 4.000 files instead of 129.000 files for each project.

The IT team says that Hard Drives are not reliable solution for archiving.

I gave them the two 2TB HDDs solution for each project, one HDD master and another HDD clone of the master, if one fails we have the other to make another clone. Faster and inexpensive solution. They say is a no go solution.

Regards,

Marco

[sunburst79]

Originally Posted by Marco Bernardo

Sony Optical Disc Archive standalone drive unit, does anyone tried the Sony Optical Disc Archive?

This have some limits, only archive 60.000 files and the data transfer with verifications can only record at 5.5Mbs without goes to 10mbs, but giving you access to your content for 50+ years, for reading speed is USB3.0.

We have 10TB to make backups and archive is there better solutions than this?

Each Project is about 1.3TB. What I've done was delete all fade files from our Save Session's copy in... and zip without compression each episode (using automator and script). Now I only have 4.000 files instead of 129.000 files for each project.

The IT team says that Hard Drives are not reliable solution for archiving.

I gave them the two 2TB HDDs solution for each project, one HDD master and another HDD clone of the master, if one fails we have the other to make another clone. Faster and inexpensive solution. They say is a no go solution.

Regards,

Marco

I'm no IT Pro or backup expert but do know that you want the archives duplicated on different types of media. EG HDD's, Optical Media or good old Streaming Tape. For reasons I'm not sure of Streaming Tape is still a popular choice in the professional world. I would ask the IT guys what they want to see.

HDD's live a lot longer if they are powered up every 6 months or so. Or so I've heard.

At the semi pro level I would probably recommend something like a always on RAID file server and optical backups plus a set stored off site.

BlueRay disk may be a better option for you than other optical media. I would try to avoid anything in a proprietary format if at all possible.

Tchau

[Marco Bernardo]

Originally Posted by sunburst79

I would try to avoid anything in a proprietary format if at all possible.

I can agree more! I've told them a bunch of times, but it seems that it has more behind the curtains with this choosing.

Thank you.

Regards,

[sunburst79]

I can't really remark on the Sony optical solution. It looks like it might be a good fit but you really would need to talk to some familiar with enterprise level backup systems in order to assess the long term viability of that solution.

The story of Mezzo backup is a familiar one for Pro Tools users in regards to proprietary solutions. It was popular and then the company folded leaving some folks stranded with backups they could not read.