[SonasRec]

Kind of ironic, I started a thread about backups a few days ago.

This morning I arrived at the studio a few minutes before a client arrived, to be greeted by a blank monitor & a dead mac pro. After a few hours of attempted startups, I found I had a fried startup disk. I had done a clone of the startup disk using superduper about 8 weeks ago, older version of pro tools & logic but it got me going again. Not good for the nerves.

Moral of the story folks.......back up often.

[PaulBrewer]

Been there , 2 mixes into a project .... Had to Redo the whole Heap !
The session heads redid it for me for petrol money.

My soul is still scarred....

Had a client lose a whole children's choir project recently.

25 pairs of pissed off parents !

[Neurojazz]

Don't know if you're into this sort of thing, but if you run a raid array in a certain way (+1) i think - that you have a running backup live with no performance loss in case of hard drive failure.

[turbot]

At least for PCs, there is a great utility called HD Sentinel which provides real time insight about harddrive health, and an early warning for when harddrives are going kaput.

Also, ICY-DOCK have a relatively inexpensive USB3 Hard Drive enclosure (£60stg online), that allows you to put two harddrives in Raid 1 - so everything is mirrored. Using one of these you can get a 2tb Raid 1 array for < €300.

[shayleon]

Great tips. Installed the Sentinel. Can you provide a link to the usb3 thingimabob you are talking about?

All the best.

S

[woodsdenis]

Originally Posted by SonasRec

Kind of ironic, I started a thread about backups a few days ago.

This morning I arrived at the studio a few minutes before a client arrived, to be greeted by a blank monitor & a dead mac pro. After a few hours of attempted startups, I found I had a fried startup disk. I had done a clone of the startup disk using superduper about 8 weeks ago, older version of pro tools & logic but it got me going again. Not good for the nerves.

Moral of the story folks.......back up often.

Back up on 2 separate drives and keep one of site. I had my BU drive fail. I dithered a bit but went and got another and backed up everything. 2 days later trusty old g5 went to visit Steve Jobs. Thank f***. HDs will always fail at some time. I usually replace an Audio drive every 2 years. Western Digital Caviar Blacks have been great for me. Carbon Copy Cloner for backups on a Mac. I do a BU every day.

[SonasRec]

Any good source for caviar blacks in Ireland? Thanks

[woodsdenis]

Originally Posted by SonasRec

Any good source for caviar blacks in Ireland? Thanks

Dabs.ie

[Anima]

Online backup is the way to go I'd say. I know audio files can be quite large but most people would have decent broadband now anyways. Plus you can access the files from anywhere.

Having a RAID array is no use if your house burns down. Also it can be slower depending on the array type. It's usually faster for reading but writing is usually slower which might not suite audio applications.

No harm having both options I guess. Raid 1 array would be relatively cheap and easy to setup.

[woodsdenis]

Originally Posted by Anima

Online backup is the way to go I'd say. I know audio files can be quite large but most people would have decent broadband now anyways. Plus you can access the files from anywhere.

Having a RAID array is no use if your house burns down. Also it can be slower depending on the array type. It's usually faster for reading but writing is usually slower which might not suite audio applications.

No harm having both options I guess. Raid 1 array would be relatively cheap and easy to setup.

Raid doesn't work with Protools also how much is hundred oh GB storage going to cost in the cloud ?

[studiorat]

Thinking of putting a Drobo for backing up.

Is anyone using Timemachine for their back ups BTW?

[the_syco]

Originally Posted by SonasRec

I found I had a fried startup disk.

How fúcked is it? Mates harddrive went awhile back, and with it a 8 hour recording session (was about 80GB's of data). Was able to get it back (and some older sessions) using recovery tools.

Moral of the story; put a new harddrive into your mac, get a harddrive caddy, and run recovery software on it. Most of the time, only a small portion of the drive is FUBAR, and you'd be able to get back the newest data off it.

As for backups, look into a tape backup. Tapes are still used today, as they have been shown to be reliable over long periods of time, and are relatively good value for money. A backup harddrive could still fail.

[ARGINITE]

Originally Posted by woodsdenis

Raid doesn't work with Protools also how much is hundred oh GB storage going to cost in the cloud ?

Crash Plan Pro is what we use at work for many hundreds of GBs.

[madtheory]

Originally Posted by studiorat

Is anyone using Timemachine for their back ups BTW?

Yes, it has saved my ass several times. It needs a lot of space to work well, and it's not really suited to archiving sessions. I'm about to do that on an entirely separate 2TB drive so I'll have that plus the Time Machine drive. Then save some more money and get another 2TB offsite...

[bradlente]

2 1TB externals have gone on the blink for me in the last few days,A lovely bit of extra ****ing stress to have to deal with.

I'm pretty sure 1 was my own doing as I booted it up on a low voltage and its clicking like a madhouse now.

Fortunately I haven't lost anything too important,So I suppose its a good time to learn this lesson.

Still pissed at the fact I'll have to buy new ones to replace these now,Even if they can be repaired I can't trust them,Which sucks as I only started using 1 in February that cost close enough to 200 dollars,The others a seagate I got on sale 18 months ago and neither have had anywhere near heavy usage.

Makes me worry about my power supplies,Systems etc. as well as having to shell out an extra couple of hundred quid now to make sure I've everything that needs to be backed up backed up.

I may pick up that HD sentinel software,Sounds ideal.