+1
After my HDD failure, I sat down and redownloaded, resaved and customized everything in two days flat, and after that the collection was better than before. *yes*

Of course that was with 100Mbps connection and it concerned about 170GB sample libraries, not project files and user-generated content

For those who would like to backup on optical media, here are some of my recommendations:

Use Liteon burner if possible
When purchasing empty blu-rays, always choose HTL, even though they are 3 times more expensive
For DVD backup, use Taiyo Yuden (That's) DVD-R
Burn at low speed, 1x-4x
Always check the media after burning it for PIE/PIF errors, possibly for jitter. If PIF maximum is higher than 4, burn the disc again. Liteon, Plextor and some Samsung burners are equipped with Mediatek chipset which is compatible with KProbe (freeware)
Store the media in room temperature (21°C / 70°F) and maximum 50% relative humidity either separately in jewel cases (recommended) on in spindle.
Seal the media case to prevent oxidation.
For jewel cases, use blank paper as 'booklet' to protect the media from excessive light.
Every year open the case and check for media errors. If there is high number of PIE (more than 200), burn that media again. PIEs are recoverable errors.

 

Thank you very much man! I really appreciate it!

 

Have a read Andy these are just 2 of 72,200 results

blu ray

cd/dvd

and when you read you will come across them both saying 10-15 years. but its about 3 years
and blu rays have Ten layers not two

The deterioration on the reflective layer is the glue failing but what do I know I only worked in the AV industry for seven years


GREETZ Pilzy Bro

 

The 10-15 years is estimate. Sure crappy media won't last even 3 years, but how is it possible that TYG01 burned in 2007 is still fully readable today? (The error count is servo failure)

That's right, my bad, don't have much experience with blu-rays.

For reference purposes, this is 2009 MCC004 Verbatim DVD-R today (quite a difference, though still readable):

 

Time and light will tell Andy

 

True.

BTW
Tapes are still best for backup, not very affordable, but great. That's why I haven't listed them.
Although miniDVs can store up to 17GB of data at $3 per cassette.

 

yes your right there Andy.

Ive got one for you get a piece of plan white paper,pen & pencil now write something with the pen on paper and do the same with pencil
I guarantee whats is written in pen will fade first

 

I guess the conclusion is - carbon (graphite) rules!

Sorry for offtopic.

 

I feel for you,I've lost so many songs and projects from equipment failure,some from hard drives others from keyboards or drum machines with internal memory,hundreds of projects,some were those only happen once inspired moments too.I have a usb hd that has 10 yrs worth of stuff on it,it got dropped once and now doesn't read,just clicks.And even worse the internal drive I used for backup died shortly after.Had to start from square one.Took about a year to build up a nice lil arsenal again.But lost alot of stuff that cannot be found online anymore,some of the stuff was from way back from various p2p apps,lol. Oddly enough out of all the work and data I've lost,I miss the music I lost more than anything.I had a few live mixes of certain Dj's that were so good and have completely disappeared from the net.The one thing I can say though is that a person can grow from a data loss.It's hard to see in that moment because it seems so catastrophic.But at least from my experience it seems that starting off fresh sometimes can expand upon what you were already doing.Like if you lost all of the sounds you were using and can't find them anymore,you get new stuff,synths,samples,fx,etc,lets say some is a lil better or worse than what you were using,but new ideas and techniques come about from it,and you're using different sounds and that can spark new inspiration.Also even though the data is lost,you still have all you've learned up to this point in your head,that's the most important data of all.You know what's funny is alot of times when I've went thru a bad data loss I imagine a parallel universe where the data is still readable but your memory is wiped so you have no idea what to do with it.
That would be so much worse.Anyway best of luck

 

Thank you very much mate! Your similar experience makes me feel better and incrasing my morale...

Anyway guys, yall made me getting out of this catastrophic feeling that I faced the whole day. Yes... I will start over, reorganizing myself and doing what I love. I'm really thankful for your support. This forum seems like a really great refugee.

 

" I saw that just can't be fixed, I sent it to a specialized company that recover the files, but on the diagnostic they told me that they've found the ex-harddrive empty (I guess the formatation succeeded when I tried to do it) "

They charged you 800$ for telling they couldn't recover anything?
I'm startin' a business right now on this.
Just get HDDs, do nothing. Say it's fuckd beyond any repair. Get money.

It's like you bring a crashed to repair... the guy tell you he can't repair it, but still charge you as if he had repaired

Don't they have a success or refund policy? or at least check if they could do something first and charge you for the diagnosis (idk a few 10s...)?

Formatted hard drive usually don't delete anything except the partition table, just don't write anything, and try to run a recovery software... since wav is a popular format, it should be able to find some stuff (minus filenames), for the other files... you won't go very far.


Everyone learn to backup (the hard way usually). important stuff = 2HDDs (+cloud if you can)
professionnal stuffs = RAID NAS + one more HDD + cloud if you can
(RAID mean you have several harddrive (at least two or three) being seen as one, if one burn, you don't lose any data, since every single bit is copied onto atleast another drive in the pool)
a copy to a single external harddrive says : "fuck it". You don't want to work with someone saying "fuck it"
The limits are thin between the professional and a bedroom engineer or producer. Reliability and resilience is one of the main one.

 

For future reference guys:


1) Have a backup of EVERY DRIVE. There is really no excuse for this except lack of money...if so, you better not have pair or Jordan sneakers or other useless expenses.

2) Copying between partitions of the same physical drive is an intense tasks that wears on the motor and magnetic head significantly. Especially with the system drive, this is a big NO-NO.

3) These days, everyone should have the knowledge required to pass an A+ certification for computer hardware and networking. While you're getting your software, grab a few ebooks help minimize the incidents through education.


Cheers to all.

 

Yeah man, here's one more who can feel your pain.
Exactly the same thing happened to me a few years back when my main drive ended with that click of death. Lost lots of stuff and felt devastated.
But there's not much more to do except bite the darn bullet and learn our lesson. I know some guys say that unless you have at least 3 copies of your data in separate places you really don't have a backup.
So now I keep 3 copies of everything that would feel like death to lose. For semi-important stuff I still ride a bit loco with just one backup. I don't have the stamina to secure everything and I figure if the universe wanna kill both those drives at the same time it's supposed to happen. Maybe it's just good practice to lose everything now and then since we're gonna lose it all in the end no matter what

 

there r some good recovery softwares around,they re not perfect but better than nothing,but if u want to save a lot of money and the problem is hardware u can try to buy another hard drive that is exactly the same as the bronken on,disassmble it and replace the disk with the one of the broken drive,it s not the easiest thing to do but it s doable

 

I know,it's so bad day for you,I've ran through like you.God bless n help you.

 

You misunderstood I guess.

He's talking about two drives, and recovery of the second would cost him 800 bucks.

 

I keep minimal backups, but I do monitor my HD health regularly. There's crystaldiskinfo (free), ActiveSMART, etc

EDIT: tencent iirc offers 10TB of cloud storage, if you have unlimited internets. Backblaze is another online backup solution (paid)

RAID can be a bit finicky to setup & maintain I herd. There's also Drobo/NAS solutions.

 

this is so.... [no words at all]

I do a full backup once a week... a mirror of the projects is done everyday. I also keep windows and programs separated in case of a win-crash...

Maybe the NSA can help you out with some copies of your system...;)

 

i think some good tutorials on backing up data RAID and cloud storage are in order

 

I found Backblaze as a good cloud backup recommendation on the internet, what do you think guys? Should I give it a try?