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[djwaudio]

I'm at the point where I need to rethink my data backup & archiving, since I'm doing so much DDP and there's often no physical copy being made of a master. 

What are your procedures for archiving your work? Do you also archive the client's mix data?

[John Scrip - MASSIVE Mastering]

I have terabytes of backup drives going back probably 10 years.  Just about every project I've worked on since '04 or '05.  Most of them with the original mixes, the project files (some are from Nuendo 1 & 2 before I went back to Samplitude), captured files, most of the DDPs and wav/cue data also. 

That said - I don't "guarantee" backup more than 60 days or something.  If those drives fail, there you go.  But I just keep adding drives as they keep getting bigger & better.  My oldest ones are probably only 100GB or so (which is still freaky, as my first dedicated audio machine had a total of 3.8GB across two drives).   

[djwaudio]

Are you making backups of your work drive, nightly etc.?

[John Scrip - MASSIVE Mastering]

On a different drive dedicated for that specific task. 

Maybe not nightly...   

[Thomas W. Bethel]

On the computer for 60 days

CD or DVD made and kept if client wants to pay $35.00 archiving fee.

Projects over 6 months not guaranteed without our archiving fee.

I still have a lot of old archives that I am not sure what to do with.

FWIW

[ArtSta]

At the end of the day - incremental backup of projects done this day (so the USB connected storage has all the projects up to date).
Projects to be finished next day- additional copy to USB stick.
Source files (the mixes) are of course included.

Art

[Twerk]

On OSX here and after every work day I run Carbon Copy Cloner - http://www.bombich.com to a 4TB backup drive. It's a complete copy of everything, including all the source mixes, recall sheets, application files, plug-in settings etc. I keep old projects of 3 years or more on mirrored HD's that sit in a closet. I've had clients come back and ask for masters or source mixes that were nearly a decade old, and it's *very* satisfying to me to be able to say "hey, no problem. here you go!." I don't think it's my responsibility, but I enjoy saving peoples asses from time to time. And it gives me a way to look back on stuff I did at any point to gain perspective on my own growth. Sorry, got a little tangential.

[John Scrip - MASSIVE Mastering]

I've had clients come back and ask for masters or source mixes that were nearly a decade old, and it's *very* satisfying to me to be able to say "hey, no problem. here you go!."

And that's why I just keep getting new drives. 

[KAyo]

I've got an Online/LAN Drive hub >> ON 24/7 with 6 2TB's sitting in it. All Comp's and all local drives are backed up 24/7. Mirror Folder is clever and knows when not to disturb or cause distruptions etc.. and it's the lightest kernell chewer ever! CPU usage is virtually invisible, to me.

We are all on a slippery slope here people. Get ready for some ongoing data minning chores as your careers grow and the data in tandem. I know, I am already facing it, as I have a few businesses etc.. There is a lot more on the horizon for us all. The ones that cringe and laze-up will be stung, the ones that slowly, but surely start preparing for the archives to come, will be safer on the days of need. hear hear!


Over and out..
KAyo

[Thomas W. Bethel]

I currently have over 32 terabytes of backup data for the video side of the company. All on external hard discs. We have them all cataloged and can access them fairly quickly but recently two of our external drives failed to work and one of them may have some data loss. The other one I had to take out of its external case and put it into another case and it worked fine. Turned out we had a bad controller card. That is the only thing that really scares me about using external drives, they can fail at anytime taking the data with them. Most of our video projects are really large in size and to archive them to DVDs would be time consuming and hard to do. Maybe if SSD comes down in price it would make sense to transfer all our HHD to SSDs. My mentor uses exabyte drives and backs up his whole 8 studio complex once a day. He has literally hundreds of exabyte cartridges sitting around. Backup and recovery is always an ongoing problem.

[ArtSta]

That is the only thing that really scares me about using external drives, they can fail at anytime taking the data with them.

Use the storage array instead of single disks. Storage can usually work in redundant configurations called raid (providing different level of protection for hdd failure) that allow rebuild data from rest of disks if one fails or just provide that data if disks are mirrored.

Art

[Jerry Tubb]

Pretty much keeping everything related to the sessions here on two backup HDDs, pre and post files w respective DAW sessions, PT HD & sB HD, and DDP, etc. Super Duper on OSX does a nice job of the daily backup process without having to inspect each folder. At the end of the day, and sometimes mid-session if it's a really big project. We've got archives running all the way back to our beginning in 1990 on DAT tape. Converted to CD-R somewhere in the mid 90s, then to DVD-R around Y2K, and more recently to HDD only to save time. Literally 1,000s of projects. Managing the lists of archives can take a little time, which isn't too bad if done in small regular increments. We even have a couple of generations of legacy systems with older DAW apps, OS8 & OS9, for accessing that ancient stuff. Sometimes it really pays off, cutting new masters in soundBlade generally sounds better than reviving a project in old Digidesign software, and we can add metadata. Helps with client reissues and retrospective compilations. Looking to the future, I think transferring older formats to new large capacity HDDs could be a refreshing thing, but time consuming, without any financial incentive. Guess I could rattle on for hours, but that's the gist of it. Best, JT