How to backup PT sessions

[senghor]

Hi,

How to backup correctly PT sessions ie. from a sdd to hdd? Are You using a proper program to do that?

I have just copy/paste my sessions and I know one day I will have corrupt files.

Thanks.

[Philthy]

20 years I've been doing it like you describe on Mac... I just drag across at the end of each day. No corruption yet. I've had drives die but that's unavoidable... I keep minimum 2 copies until a project is complete.

[Darryl Ramm]

How you do it is one thing.

You also need to think about practice recovering sessions... ideally test on a different computer so that things like content files not included in the session folder are detected.

There are many options, you can drag and drop folders, or write a script that zips them up, adds a date to the zip file name, etc. simple scripts can be great... as long as you test periodically. And what happens when the target drive is full? Or the same name file exists on the drive, or there is some error.. same for commercial backup software... know where the error log is and check it periodically.

And then just backing up to one HDD may not be enough, how many separate HDD copies? where are they kept? How many off-site? What about copies to cloud storage as well.

And that's Pro Tools sessions? What happens when the boot drive fails or is corrupted? How do you recover the boot drive?

Also how do you save finished projects, the exported/bounced files or stems, make sure they are backed up as well.

The right approach is not always to just make new backups over old, you may need to roll back in time, in which case things like zipped folders with a date in the name are handy.

[danyg]

i use the software CCC. Set and forget...

[thin ice]

I run Time Machine at the end of each working day and also a weekly copy & paste backup of sessions.

The more important thing is to use "save copy in" as a backup when you are done and keep three copies, hopefully one off site. Just copy & paste leaves you open to not gathering any files that may be in the wrong directory. This can happen when someone sends you a session to mix.

[The Weed]

Zip to OneDrive, copy/paste, image my Audio Drive Nightly with Macrium Reflect and, when necessary, copy to my Storage Drive and burn a data DVD.

[Southsidemusic]

Originally Posted by danyg

i use the software CCC. Set and forget...

+100

[Ben Jenssen]

Originally Posted by danyg

i use the software CCC. Set and forget...

+me
But Carbon Copy Cloner is mac only, sadly.
And the OP is on windows.

[cwsand]

I backup to cloud storage, manually backup to external hard drives, burn sessions to BluRay and use Time Machine. You can never have too many backups!

[lesbrunn]

Originally Posted by Ben Jenssen

+me
But Carbon Copy Cloner is mac only, sadly.
And the OP is on windows.

The free version of Paragon hard disk Manager is reliable. I've used it for years without problems.