Best way to back up a hard drive

[Tweakhead]

There are two different subjects: Backups and Archives.

I look upon a Backup as a safety copy of a work in progress. This should be a readily available fast medium, such as a hard drive.
An Archive is a long-term reliable storage medium that is not easily erasable. A hard-drive can be hosed by any idiot unplugging it without unmounting it first, and is therefore not a good choice. Remember that once it is out of your hands, you don't know who will be handling your priceless masters.

First of all remember the golden rule:
If it is not backed up twice, it is not backed up.

If your original drive fails or gets wiped, there is only one copy. If that fails, you are finished.

My personal methods are the following. A finished project gets archived via Retropect to AIT twice. Two independent copies stored in separate locations, together with storage sets saved in multiple locations (internet and CD). Retrospect is simple for finding archived projects, as you can browse your archives on a laptop or any computer.

Also, a much overlooked piece of software for backing up is Apple's own "Backup" program (free with a .mac account). This software automatically spans mutiple CDs or DVDs and the information is not in a proprietary format. You can drag and drop the files back to your drive at any time.

[Glenn75]

Wow lots of great information. Thanks guys, I'm not sure I know how to do what I need to do yet but I guess I will try to pick the best options. I am a little skeptikal about backing things up online but I do have a dot mac account, maybe I should try out Apple's "Backup" program. I am just about finished with my second hard drive and I need get this done now. Any more advice?

[KingFish]

Anyone know, officially, what is the projected lifespan of DVD shelf life ?

I've got data CD's I've burned from around 1998, of bakup, kept in a temperature controled, humidity controled environment (the shelf of the piano room) since 98.

Some of the media, the silver / label back data surface, is flaking off, I've already lost some archival data, it's lucky none of those records made history

the "Tape bakup" solution seems cumbersome, time consuming and does anyone "really" know if the life span of data on a tape bakup drive, will out live the data on DVD's by decades ?

It's pretty scarey, we've got reel to reel's from the 50's that we have to bake, before we give them a spin, to transfer the recordings, we've got "real world" experience with this, and don't have to rely on "projected theories", we know exactly what to expect about the lifespan of recorded audio on 1/4inch 2 track reel to reel for 50 years, because we were putting music to this medium 50 years ago.

We've only been burning CD's of our multi-track data, (most of us) for just under a decade.
I remember whe it first came possible, people in general saying "These things will last forever" and never degrade.

Well we all learned the hard way, about Cheap CDR's verses better made CDR's, mind you, i have a pile of memorex CD's that the data is starting to "Bubble" or "seperate" from the plastic that were kept in a more "Damp" environment (basement)

I just wonder how our archives are gonna hold up 25 years from now.

[Spiritwalkerpro]

Kingfish, you are wondering how our archives are gonna hold up in the future? I'd say we are looking at losing many priceless audio recordings in the future. As an example, not all audio of archival nature was recorded on high quality tape, on machines that run at higher speeds. Finding and maintaining machines that will play back this audio is becoming a major problem for archives. Now add to that the eventual degradation of CDR quality in manufacturing in the future and it starts to look quite scary.

[Shawn B]

I recall reading a Roger Nichols EQ magazine article about backing up to granite slabs in hexadecimal format. Very funny. It sure would last a long time. Maybe someone can find it here Roger Nichols' EQ Articles.

[Tweakhead]

I recall reading a Roger Nichols EQ magazine article about backing up to granite slabs in hexadecimal format.

Last time I tried Stonehenge wouldn't play back.

[Noiz2]

I don't know about this "drive wont spin up" business. I cant see any mechanical reason that it would be true unless the lubricant in the bearings went dry and that would likely happen sooner if it were in use. Also the last couple of films (of a larger studio scale) that I worked on the studios wanted the archives on HD. I think the drives are likely to last as longer than than the life of there interface. In other words 10 years from now you may not be able to mount them because either there isnt an interface for them anymore or the format wont be supported - like MFM and RLL PC drives.

[JC925602]

Long term archive is a big problem.

You need a system with 3 different sites, on 3 different country. A way to sync them, a system that make sure that the same archive tape is not in a machine on more than one site. The data on the tape need good error correction. All the tape have to be check for integrity once a year. If it take more than a year to check all of the tapes, you need to update the system to a more efficient one.

That is the Sony method as described by a Sony engineer in a conference a couple of years ago. He was in charge of archiving and restoring the old archives.

Also the data itself have to be readable in a distant future, so you need to keep the ProTools sessions, plus bounce each track independently, ... the guidelines are at:

Guidelines for Pro Tools Session Interchange


JC

[SmokinBaldMonkey]

All Hard drives will lose their ability to spin if...

Umm...well...I have six Maxtor / IBM / Seagate 40GB drives I bought in 2000. I removed and stored them in mid-2002. I pulled them last week and they all worked perfectly.

Maybe it's the drive quality?

I know that back then, the standard warranty was stamped right on the drive case, and it was five years for many of them...

[A1]

Hard Disk, CD and DVD formats/platforms will change constantly so there is no “best” way to archive.
Currently the safest way would be to archive both on DVD and Hard Drives.
Within the last 15 years many of the RtoR multi track reels I had were all transferred to ADATs than to Hard Disk recording systems and were saved on about 60 SyQuest cartridges later were all transferred to Jazz drives then to CDs now all are on DVDs and FW drives don’t know what will be next… it is a never ending task.