Backing up music data

Antimon · Posted: Sat Nov 26, 2005 4:13 pm Post subject: Backing up music data

I store my new music data (Cubase files, patches etc) on CD-Rs every now and then in case my computer should melt down, but they say that CDs don't last very long - maybe 10 years. So, does anyone here have a better (but affordable) solution for backing up data? What do the pros in the big studios use? Any spectacular entire-album-lost catastrophy stories?

Actually, I watched a short documentary on Khonnor on swedish TV a while ago, where they interviewed him in his home town, and visited his parent's place where he used to make music. While they were filming he was checking out his computer, discovering that it had been swept clean, erasing "two albums worth" of his music. That sent a shiver down my spine.

blue hell · Posted: Sat Nov 26, 2005 4:40 pm Post subject:

Idealy on tape I guess, but that's quite expensive.

At home I back up on hard disks, I've got this old PC with two large disks (well, once they were). I back up the other computer on one of its disks, but data only, not the OS. Where data is music, pictures, downloaded software installs, programs I wrote, email etc.

And then occasionally I copy the one disk to the other.

And less frequent I buy new larger disks.

As long as harddisk prices (ber bit) keep falling this will work. Drawback is that when I reorganize a data folder I have some work on the backup as well.

paul e. · Posted: Sat Nov 26, 2005 10:49 pm Post subject:

a back up system is ultra, mega important and should be considered a vital investment

right now i am using a firewire drive [160gb] which was surprisingly cheap

mind you, what is even more harrowing than data back up is, i will have to keep my old OS9 Mac with cubase 5.1 around, forever, if i ever want to open up those files and alter them again..even if it is the year 2033

so i guess we will all need whole rooms dedicated to obsolete legacy systems just to archive the material properly