How often do you back-up?

[Psyko/Acoustics]

Seriously, I want to hear what we have to say about this crucial task that some ignore at their peril.

Having made my mistakes I back up all the time. How 'bout y'all?

[Kris]

After every session to another hard drive.

Once every couple of weeks to DVD.

[Jules]

On sessions - after a batch of overdubs - we use PT's "Save Session Copy in" function to place the WHOLE song + the new overdub(s) onto a seperate drive. We use the few minutes time to have ear breaks or a cup of tea, ciggarette etc.....

For my own home mac - not NEARLY enough!

[HudHudson]

A few years ago an artist I'd cowritten some tunes with was doing sessions with a well-regarded local engineer, and after all the tracking was complete on the record a typical summer storm came through and lightning struck his studio, wiping out his hard drives, which hadn't been backed up. He had to pay every single musician to come back in and retrack the record (plus eat the additional studio + engineering time); most of the vibe from the original sessions was lost and several songs never made it to the record. I've backed up after every single session ever since.

[henryrobinett]

I have another FW drive (2) connected to both of my computers and do incremental back ups of my OS, apps, docs and audio every day. After every session that's important I also do DVD back ups. After every major point I do DVD back ups.

[axtrak]

After every Session with Retrospect to external Firewiredrives. After completion of a project 2 Sets of DVD via Toast

[bunnerabb]

I lost two months work, this winter on an album I'm tracking.

I back up like a mother****er, now. On EVERYthing. At least every project, sometimes every session.

[shikawkee]

After every damn session.
To at least two other drives/mediums.

[jumpnyc]

We're a music/post house dealing with a project with a terabyte of data. We backup nightly onto a raid 0 stripped system for safety.

[cgarges]

Originally Posted by shikawkee

After every damn session.
To at least two other drives/mediums.

That's me, too. I know a bunch of people around here who have lost work due to whatever sort of malfunctions. I do not want to be that guy.

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

[bpatural]

I've never lost more than 2 hours of work because I backup sometimes 2-3 times a day. Whenever there's a break, I just use the software to clone the drive. Usually takes less than 5 min. Just figure on always buying a pair of drives when you need one. Anyway, they're so cheap these days.
-brian

[Albert]

I back up important folders every day, at least once a day. There's an automated backup first thing in the morning when the computer turns itself on, and then I'll usually do backups when I feel it appropriate throughout the day.

Projects get backed up as I work on them. Often several times a day.

The boot drive gets cloned every week at the least, usually more often. Basically every time I install a new program or plugin.

I have a second internal drive that is dedicated to being a clone of the boot drive. In addition, I have an external firewire drive that I use solely as a backup drive.

[Zwinter]

I would back up every night onto another hard drive. At the end of the session backups were done to tape. Just make sure you know which drive is your working drive and which drive is your backup drive. Otherwise you can do a day’s work only to backup your backup drive to your work drive.

[Psyko/Acoustics]

Glad to see my paranoia is not isolated!




Anyone with any confessions? Been caught more than once?

[drmmrboy]

Originally Posted by Psyko/Acoustics

Seriously, I want to hear what we have to say about this crucial task that some ignore to their peril.

Having made my mistakes I back up all the time. How 'bout y'all?

Every day here, sometimes during breaks if I can. EZ Recovery saved my ass once, and if I need to use it again, it'll be too soon.

Just last week I had a friend lose files from each song of a bands session. He didn't have a back up system in his room. I say "didn't" because they do now..

Thumbs up thumbsup
(back up thumbs) thumbsup

[chadd]

I use Retrospect to do nightly archives and weekly duplicates of all drives, but I'll often run the archive script at the end of a session just for safety. The backups are on two external Firewire drives: one is kept offsite in a secret undisclosed location, then swapped with the other one once a week. If the place burns down or is burgled, I won't lose more than a week's worth of work.

[henryrobinett]

I had a new, a year ago, Dual 2.7 drive go down within a month of purchase. I had a bass player spill coffee on my powerbook, killing it. I had a new (refurb) powerbook 1.67 arrive with a dying drive that completely died within a week. I have 6 dead external ATA drives.

I'm fortunate to never have lost any data. Lucky because when most of these disaters happened I wasn't nearly as anal at backing up as I am now. In most cases it took awhile to recover. Now I have mirror drives of each setup so in the event that a drive goes down it should take no more than minutes to be back up and running, unless it's a fire or flood.

[mtstudios@charter]

Every time I record something new.

www.bluethumbproductions.com

[Cojo]

When I work on a project I save quite often but I don't backup until I'm done... and that is to the same HD, to another HD I probably make backups half a year or something!

I'm trying to get better... this thread got me thinking!

/Cojo

[Ethan Winer]

> I want to hear what we have to say about this crucial task that some ignore to their peril. <

"At their peril" is the right words. Every time I'm about to turn off my computer I ask myself what would happen if tomorrow the hard drive won't power up. Then I back up. So yes, it's every day.

I also rotate / alternate my backups among four drives. This way if I save something and it gets corrupted but I don't know it then, I won't overwrite my only good backup.

Also, one of my backup "rotations" is to a portable Firewire drive. Once a month or so I exchange it with an identical drive I store at my partner's house. So even if my house burns down or is burglarized, I won't lose everything.

--Ethan

[allencollins]

I depends.

when I eat sicilian style pizza
the cheese kinda backs me up a bit.
Also other foods high in dairy tend to back me up.

So "How often do I back up?" Id say after every session

[Matt Hepworth]

Every day is not often enough, IMO. I do a backup to another drive of the session folder every break, or after any good amount of progress. Simply, DATA can dissapear - you should backup whenever possible.

Since there was not an option for "more than once a day" I checked "other".

[Psyko/Acoustics]

Originally Posted by Ethan Winer

> I want to hear what we have to say about this crucial task that some ignore to their peril. <

"At their peril" is the right words.

--Ethan

Thanks for the grammar check. The CDN high school system let me down (ZERO grammar lessons, seriously... I took every english class they offered!) and I've never followed up with proper texts. Can you please explain why "at" is more appropriate than "to" to improve me a little?

[Kenny Gioia]

As soon as I close the Pro Tools file, I mount one firewire drive and copy the session to it.

Then I dismount that firewire drive and mount another FW drive and copy the session to that drive as well.

Then I dismount that drive and get back to work.

I don't backup to DVD as often as I should.

I only have a DVD drive on my Pro Tools computer so it prevents me from doing other work.

[T_R_S]

Automated daily back ups your never have it think about it.
It just does it!

---------------
Everything is easier on a Mac!

[Albert]

Originally Posted by Cojo

When I work on a project I save quite often but I don't backup until I'm done... and that is to the same HD, to another HD I probably make backups half a year or something!

I'm trying to get better... this thread got me thinking!

/Cojo

Cojo, you are really playing with fire, I hope you keep thinking about this! It doesn't seem like it will happen to you until it does happen, and if you don't have backups you lose large portions of your work and life.

Backing up to the same drive where the original files live is just about pointless. You should back up your projects and any important data as you go, to another drive.

A few months ago I had terrible backup habits. The reason I got it together was that I had a disastrous hard drive failure, and lost all sorts of irreplacable files. It took well over a month to get fully back up and running, and even then I haven't gotten all my data back.

Now, I could get back up and running in minutes using my cloned boot drive, and every project I'm working on is backed up. So I'd have to lose two drives to be destroyed there.

But that has actually happened to me before. I lost the main in progress project drive *and* it's backup in one fell swoop! Was able to recover the data from those drives, although the data munching took forever.

Now, I'm all about backing up!

[primalsteve]

Every couple hours...Steve

[Bruce Keen]

I just create a script for each project with synchronize pro.
It's child play and it will verify also.
run it at shutdown. Takes 10mn each day at the most.
backup to firewire.
Beware if your FW enclosure chip isn't an Oxford your HD is as good as dead.
I've lost 4 drives in 3 months with Prolific chips because of this.

Cheers

[Seamus TM]

After every session.
Something does not exist unless it lives in at least 2 places.

Seamus

[Jason Poulin]

After each song/session

on my F drive, than on the G just in case.


And at the end of the night, a third time on an external drive.





yea 3 times but I can sleep very well at night.



Jason