Backups
 

Forgive if this is a yawn yawn question but I'm just canvassing opinions on what the best modern solutions are for backing up. Does anyone use a cloud based system to backup all their work?

I've been using Carbon Copy Cloner onto a separate hard drive but I had a bit of a scare where I thought I'd been working on the backup drive instead of the main one, and was convinced a I'd lost a whole heap of work when it backed up the "wrong way round", if you see what I mean. Still shaking a bit now. There's got to be a better way...

Re: Backups
 

There's never really had an issue with Time Machine for me. I've alway been able to pull anything I accidentally deleted from the backup.

I keep 2 Time Machine drives and plug one of them in at the end of each day. At the end of a project I make multiple backups and keep one drive at another house.

I expect there are online options, but keeping things simple works for me.

Re: Backups
 

Not a yawn question, in my opinion it's maybe the most important question you can ask. For me it's:

- Carbon Copy Cloner for daily backup of system drive, audio drive and sample drives, scheduled to run at 4AM. Backup drives are on a separate networked computer located elsewhere in the house in case the studio computer rack should catch fire or get damage from water or drunk clients. Carbon Copy Cloner mounts and unmounts network drives before and after backing up, so there is no risk of working from the wrong drive.

- Realtime backup to cloud using Backblaze with 1-year history plan in case of total disaster. It might put a bit extra tax on the system, I have never had any problems with it.

- Local Time Machine backup of system drive.

Still looking for an affordable cloud storage solution for archiving.

Stein Tore

Re: Backups
 

Remember nothing is backed up until it is backed up twice. CCC on local storage and then to some clould outside your house, should be enough peace of mind. Just remember, cloud is just a computer someone else owns so think twice who to trust.

Re: Backups
 

Here's one more approach..(on a Mac)

Everything is on the internal drive.
All sessions (since the beginning of time) are in a folder called "Songs" inside "Documents".

1) Tresorit backs all new and altered files in real-time (to the cloud) from the whole Documents folder. So this captures all session data (inc. audio) and other stuff like preferences and plug-in settings. If you don't like the idea of this, you can pause syncing during tracking. I've never had a problem with this, nor with Dropbox. (What I don't do is share sessions or collaborate). Tresorit has a simple scheduled bandwidth throttle which I set to limit speeds during the day, so my internet connection is never pinned by Tresorit.
2) Everything in the Documents folder gets backed up to an external SSD at the end of the day using CCC. (Scheduled job).
3) Everything on the whole internal disk gets backed up to a different external SSD once a month using CCC. (Scheduled job).
4) iDrive backs up the whole Documents folder (new and changed files) every night from 2am - 8am. If it hasn't finished, it stops at 8am and continues at 2am the following night.
5) The whole internal disk and all SSDs get copied to a massive (22TB) external spinning HDD which I take to someone else's house once every 6-12 months. I have two of these disks which I alternate (because I have to retrieve the disk from a remote location, copy everything and then return the disk.

I used to use Time Machine, and it has a lot going for it, but it's now impossible to copy all your TM backups onto another disk. TM won't do it, Finder won't do it, CCC won't do it, Superduper won't do it. So I gave up.

If you use ONLY scheduled jobs with CCC, then you can't make the mistake you thought you'd made of copying the copy over the original - you just need to be very careful when you set the scheduled job up, and then don't change it. The problem comes if you are trying to do the thing in a hurry in an ad-hoc way (yes, I've had the same moment of terror).

Dominic

Re: Backups
 

I've always used partitions to help make backup process nice and tidy:

Internal: MAX 256GB (named after my grandson Max)
Externals: Neptune 2TB and Jupiter 2TB

MAX contains only system/apps/essential files, some large folders are stored on Neptune so MAX is 50%+ free space even though it's very small.

Neptune has all video, photo, and studio projects ++
Jupiter has non-important music/movies ++

Neptune has an extra partition called CCC MAX.
Jupiter has one extra partition named CCC MAX 2 and one named CCC Neptune.

Attachment 17561

So, every night at 1am with carboncopycloner, MAX is copied both to CCC MAX and CCC MAX 2, and Neptune is copied to CCC Neptune. (Of course, I can initiate backup manually anytime.)

I also have copies of MAX, Neptune and Jupiter on a 2TB drive that is stored next door, and synced manually now and then.

I feel I'm well covered, and I have no problem knowing that I'm opening the correct files on the correct drive.

I haven't used Timemachine in many years, CCC does things very well for me.

I have accepted the new scheme of things when it comes to Apple's way with system/data on boot drive, I no longer have a bootable backup, and I'm not looking back.

Re: Backups
 

I've been using iDrive cloud backup in addition to TM, hard drive backups and DVD/BluRay backups - you can never have enough!

Re: Backups
 

No yawns here. Quite an important question, actually.

Each composer/engineer in our company backs up locally to their own drives, and then we keep copies of everything they do in the cloud.

Personally, I use TimeMachine to backup to local drives, then Google drive for one cloud copy, then Backblaze for another.

Re: Backups
 

- Audio: 4x SSD-970-EVO in Raid 0
- Video: 1x SSD-970-EVO

- Automatic backup with CCC every hour to a 10tb spinning drive
- Automatic backup of the 10tb spinning drive to Backblaze

Old projects kept in several 4tb spinning drives, LTO still to expensive for me… Looking for any long term archiving too…

Re: Backups
 

I forgot to mention - SSD isn't a very reliable long-term storage medium, unless you plug the disk in and let it "refresh" every six months or so. The charge in the cells fades away and suddenly the data gets corrupted.

I spent quite a long time researching this, and got nowhere. Well, I got to learn about SLC, MLC, TLC and QLC design and production, but I didn't get any definitive information about which kinds of SSD are most vulnerable to the problem, nor did I get to find out how long a "refresh" takes - I just plug the disk into my USB hub and mount the disk and leave it mounted for a couple of hours. I have no idea if it's necessary to read or re-write the data to refresh the charge state.
My main mitigation for this is have multiple other medium types (cloud and HDD) with the same data.

One more thing - all my backups are encrypted. And the encryption password is different for each one - my Tresorit password with MFA (multi-factor authentication) is different from my iDrive password (with email MFA), is different from my CCC encryption password. So make sure that if your primary data storage fails, you have a way to retrieve your encryption passwords. I thought the whole thing through once and realised that if my laptop and phone were stolen at the same time, I would never be able to get back into my 1Password vault (which is stored in Dropbox) and so I'd never be able to get into my email account, so I'd never be able to reset my Dropbox password, so I'd never get into my Dropbox account to get my password database, etc etc etc. I fixed this by changing my Dropbox password to something memorable rather than 26 characters of gobbledygook.

Dominic