Local spare backup drive for weekly, Cheap and saved me 3 times
Online for archives. Free and easy, crazy not to use.
Clone SSD drive for disaster recovery (monthly). Spare, so not really expensive

As mentioned, a thumb drive would do. Having no backup solution is no excuse these days.

 

Thank you for the extensive tutorial Metaller.
This forum is a better place because of calm tech wizards like you.

 

I was reading a similar thread https://audiosex.pro/threads/please-always-make-a-backup-of-your-music-work.38619/ and one guest observed that if the "server is physically located in the US, the federal government has the power to seize the hardware that contains you data. 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 hard drives and you are going to have a hard time getting it back." That is a big one to consider. I found these articles that shed some light on this issue.
https://www.newamerica.org/oti/blog...ent-and-indefinite-retention-of-digital-data/

EDIT: The federal government can seize electronic data stored abroad by serving a warrant on a U.S.-based company

https://www.americanbar.org/groups/...stored-abroad-now-subject-to-federal-seizure/

 

Last edited: Jan 20, 2019

Why should I trust you? Oh, let me guess you're a certified industry head that has a CATALOG of stuff we would NEVER know you're fingerprints have been all over, right???

I'm just guessing here...but please, feel free to bore the fuck out of me if you wish.

 

regarding the "corruption of files", just for the sake of arguing something I think sure, they (the cloud) monitor the health of what was uploaded, if they are fresh then there shouldn't be any problem but if your files are "old" backups and not checked and have somehow become corrupted when they go up, they will be perfectly mirrored but still corrupted for your specific use, many times corruption often only shows in the corresponding program (i think).

but other than that, I think its a great, specially if one manages to keep ones backup at a reasonable size, which one should.

i make backups inside my computer maybe once every week, and to an external drive once a month.

one way also is to have two types of backups, close and near in time, a sort of fast-lane and a slow-lane.
that way if you happen to encounter a backup that is corrupted you will have a second chance to save at least the main core of your work.

also, I only make proper backups for crucial things.
there is a lot of "stuff" that is loosely backed up, if it goes, it goes.
its all not life and death.

 

Last edited: Jan 29, 2019

I couldn't, respectfully, disagree more my friend.
We used to have these things called multitrack tapes, which we stored along with logs of equipment, fx and settings used, date of recording, personnel involved, costs, location, etc... that's probably the equivalent of what we roll all up together nowadays and think of as a 'project' or 'project files'.
So, these tapes and stuff were organized into 'libraries' and stored so you can have access to them later for remixes, rereleases and to research the whys and wherefores of how stuff became the finished article.
As we all know, there are many books, articles and academic papers on the history and process of recording that rely on, in great part, access to these items.
Sure, these libraries had/have their difficulties:
fire, theft, deterioration through ageing such as print through and sticky shed syndrome etc. but most folk agree it's really rather good to have a library of what has been created. You never know what you might need it for.
Same goes for photographic, document and film collections.
To paraphrase the actor laurence Olivier:
it's called 'archiving dear boy'.
It's fine to junk your stuff if you believe it's of no worth to you or the world or your offspring, but me, i like to bore my kids and (soon to be) grandkids with our old stuff all the time.
And then there's the question of evidence required for proof of ownership or authorship in possible disputes, sometimes many years after the sessions occurred (most recent well known I can recall is the geldof/fingers don't like mondays thing), but that's an even wider and thornier subject that i wouldn't wish on anybody.
Anyways, however you choose to do it, 'archive and rearchive...'
My preferred digital method relies on HDs and burnable media stored in different places, preferably separate buildings.
We'll probably all manage to lose something we didn't want to at some point, I know i have.
But the cloud? it's for the birds. Aha, d'ya see what i did there?
good luck everybody.

 

Last edited: Jan 28, 2019

"The Cloud = "Other People's Computers"
Just back up your own data, preferably to multiple places. I can still pull archives off of most CDRs I burned 20 years ago. If you are concerned about corruption, save stuff in segmented rar archives with lots of par files.

 

If the files are healthy before uploading they will remain healthy in the cloud as well.
Nowadays, lots of memory protection schemes exist, such as voting, CRC, parity bits, EDAC, etc. I am sure google is high tech enough to use these algorithms.
A simple one you can do it yourself: when it is uploaded to Drive, you can share the link with another account of yourself and add it to that account's Drive, which means now you have 2 copies of that file in the cloud.

A good example of when someone doesn't even understand what a secure cloud storage such as Google drive is.
If you are paranoid: Even big companies with highly sensitive data (Army, Aerospace, Engineering,...) use the cloud. No one cares about 5 music projects when you can access more valuable stuff on the cloud.

 

Last edited: Jan 28, 2019

What exactly don't I understand? I said that "the cloud" is only a euphemism/buzzword for "other peoples computers". I.e. servers not unlike mine, located remotely, administered by other people. Don't presume that I am unaware of things such as distributed encrypted file systems and load balancing, simply because they weren't relevant to my comment.

I never said that I was paranoid. I just said that it is merely other people's computers. But since you mention it, you don't understand how economy of scale affects risk. Google is going to assume that they have a lot more to lose by compromising the data of a nation state or multinational corporation than they do when it comes to me and my data. The fact that something is "safe enough" for others with radically different circumstances than your own in no way implies that their benefit/risk analyses will work for you.

If my data didn't have anything more sensitive than art, I could take some assurance in that. But in any case, it is still easier, cheaper, and more reliable for me to do my own backups.

 

Giggity.

 

This is my prideful local "cloud storage". Doing backups at 200MBs.



Well, perhaps more a "puddle storage" since it's so earthly...

But seriously, one of my best purchases. Especially if you can connect with eSATA.

Edited: if your computer has a fast USB port also rocks, mine is from the SATA2/USB2 era...

 

Last edited: Feb 1, 2019

I use a local cloud (I'm from Portugal) named MEOCLOUD. The servers are located in the country and they do daily backups, so I think this is more secure than having hdd's around the house...

 

I just saw a video on YT of a guy who set up his own little Apple-Server. Prices are on a all-time low for server racks and harddrives. So i thought about building my own server (it takes up to 700 W and warms your flat nicely) , Imagine having your own VST/Kontakt/Omnisphere Server ,
what you guys think ?

 

It's cool, for music you can do it with any regular PC with Reaper's ReaMote or Vienna Ensemble Pro.
I sometimes use my laptop for that with Reaper.

I don't know how the prices are for explicitly using an old rack-style server. Given Apple's policy I guess it makes more sense for Macs than for PCs.

 

Last edited: Jan 29, 2019

That why i have somes hdd, where i back up same thing when there are modified, with syncback se, i know my hdd, will not die at the same time so all my stuff are protected, and i know where are my stuff, with cloud who can access it instead of me, in fact i don't know, cloud storage provider can say what they want but i'm not confident with them

 

I don't use cloud storage for music but I think is safe and a good complement to local storage.
But then if you use warez stuff... that's where I have my doubts. Not cloud storage fault.

 

I just watched the whole video and it's not what I thought. I thought it was meant to be an slave machine to help the regular one with the video processing but the guy uses it as a single desktop machine.
Still interesting as an experiment, but definitely something that only makes sense for mac computers because of the prices and the closed ecosystem.

 

I use both legit and C'K, it's just because i don't know where my stuff are really stored, with my personnal backup system i know where, at home =), and i agree with you to store on cloud with warez, i think this is not a good thing

 

When it comes to valuable stuff, I avoid google like the plague. They are too intrusive. It is better if you get a RAID config and some external storage with a backup protocol. Or encrypt everything you upload to google into rars.

 

I have three backup drives. Redundancy is king.