no matter how good or expensive your harddrive is.. you have to have at least 1 backup of your work ALWAYS, how much hours and days and money you have spent in music ? at least 1 tb harddrive for a backup is Nothing today,, like 30 usa dollars.. you could download anything from the web again.. but you cannot repeat what you have done and work for so many hours and days and even years. so..

 

AMEN!

 

i make 3 disc backups on different ext hdd, and back up all my music production software, sample packs, midi packs and vst plugins, kontakt libs ect also on 3 different drives, they are only plugged in while i make the back ups then are off power, so you also should backup all the time, every week i back up, so having 3 disc image backups if 1 fail you have others to use.

 

Schofield's Second Law of Computing - Data doesn't really exist unless you have at least two copies of it.

I have learnt this the hard way...

 

I must say after 20 plus years of recording bands an Data loss i have a small spare room devoted to backups of all my data... its more like a small library of HD's... also i have all the tools an know how to repair HD's... i too learned this the hard way lol

 

I think everyone learns this the extremely hard way (sometimes more than once)~ In the 90's I went down in flames on two different commercial jobs (probably two years apart)... but with external storage so reasonable now this should be a higher priority than new plugs

 

And in (ideally) two locations! Thumb drives are cheap af...

 

Usually, the data on your storage is waay more valuable than the HW itself. My "close relative" is a professional composer. The data he produces (a score) takes space of a word doc. The amount of work put in (the whole orchestra, 20-30 minutes of music..) is tremendous. There are also video/audio recordings of the various performers that take a bit more space, but nothing an old USB couldn't handle.

Now, we live in different cities. So he brought a separate HDD to my place.. like he said: somebody can rob my studio, or there can be a flood. I don't care about HDDs.. months of work - that's another story ...aaaand @famouslut was faster, again.

Two more (please correct, if I'm wrong - we can make a synopsis at the end)

I consider a HDD "dead" after 4-5 years (still keep the data on, but..)*

Isn't a HDD "on the shelf" (not spinning now and then) prone to failure after some time?

SSD (flash memory) is AFAIK not more reliable than the ol' drives (?)

*..in fact, It should be cosidered dead the day you buy it, LOL

 

Last edited: May 10, 2018

This was learned by me the hard way. Now I run a mirror which actually improves read speeds. I also backup frequently to an external HDD which is normally not at the same location.

 

Another thing to keep in mind is to keep a "physical" backup stored in a different location. Reasons for it: Theft, fire, natural disasters may lead to losing all your data if kept in only one place.

Edit: @digitaldragon just told you the same thing while I was typing

 

Cloud storage is the way to go I guess... Longer lasting than the hdd on your shelf...

 

Bluray burning is an option too.

 

LOL--- Cloud storage..... to upload any projectfiles is the biggest mistake anyone can do....

you loose your copyrights to the cloud provider, is like whatsup etc, to much interfere and data steeling.
so why uploading anything to any type of clouds, if you loose rights?

... what about USB sticks, you can have your win7 and all your software you need on it, also the backup of project files..... simple if i crash ALL my hardware i have, i can install the stick just with 1 start files, it installs all i need.


for me: i got a clean win7 with all the music tools i need, made 1 clone to ssd of it. simple to store, so for my worst case, i got all my tools around.... i do not need any tools that provides hardware codes, so cloning to a new laptop etc, will be no problem.


how is it about bad internet, and back project files.

 

One of many things to be aware of with cloud storage is that if your server is physically located in the US, the federal government has the power to seize the hardware that contains you data. Yes! Even if you are not the target of an investigation. Let us say, you are using company X and one of its users is involved in illegal activities, based on that investigation the federal government will impound all the harddrives and you are going to have a hard time getting it back.

 

You are totally wrong on that one. EULA's impose certain limitations as to what customers can do with their deployments but not as to ownership. For the sake of argument, let us say that the cloud storage gives submits an EULA that specifically states that they own your uploads. Are you going to sign it?

 

Last edited by a moderator: May 10, 2018

Thanks @TonyG for elaborating on that...

@loCurnus ... You are giving them the right to host and distribute your content but only as it pertains to serving you and any associates who you may wish to share your content with...

Your IP stays with you solely...

Needless to say ... a cloud backup should only be a backup of a backup... The company could go under, face a tech meltdown, be taken over by Facebook, etc.

 

I'm thinking about investing in a NAS for this exact purpose, anyone here have any suggestions on an easy to setup NAS?

 

@Kinghtsurfer
There is still (mostly) psychological barrier regarding cloud storage..

"Cloud storage can be used as natural disaster proof backup, as normally there are 2 or 3 different backup servers located in different places around the globe." (source: wiki.. and common sense)

Yes, this should be your 2nd backup, files encrypted ..and you should know, who are you dealing with. All the rest is like in the real world - you, your brother, sister, cousin (who you barely know),.. and that perv that stores his stuff on your comp, coz you got trojaned, get under investigation - you are fcked up pretty much the same way..

Edit: as the internet speeds increase (if you are lucky), feasible solution IMO..

 

Last edited: May 10, 2018

Those are good points and should be covered by the ELAU. One more thing to consider is that the location of a server is determinative in a jurisdictional inquiry. Therefore, any legal issues are going to heard by a court within that jurisdiction, unless otherwise specified by and agreed to in ELAU.

 

I bought 4 of them https://www.pccomponentes.com/sharkoon-sata-quickport-intern-1-bay

two such suitcases https://www.amazon.de/LOGILINK-HDD-protection-cabinet-HDDs/dp/B00I2ERHUM

and 8 HDD 2TB hard drives for backup, and I make backup copies once a month