backups

[mikegee]

whats peoples opinions here about backing up your songs?

i'm thinking i'll backup my songs on a spare computer, but i guess multiple backups couldnt hurt; more better. i can also burn dvds and cds. are there any other backup options out there that people r using?

[Nubus]

Originally Posted by mikegee

whats peoples opinions here about backing up your songs?

i'm thinking i'll backup my songs on a spare computer, but i guess multiple backups couldnt hurt; more better. i can also burn dvds and cds. are there any other backup options out there that people r using?

I burn DVDs and it sucks, I hate it. Gotta do it though.

A friend of mine has stacks of firewire drives on a shelf, that's his backups. Once they fill up he just goes out and buys a new one.

There's a program he uses which you can use to back up your store bought media. You use your scanner to scan in the bar code on your CD, DVD whatever. Then it goes online and finds the spine and track list and all pertinent info and puts them into your very own virtual library. yay!

[warmowski]

I am constantly amazed that there are not easy ways to back up files off-site, what with bandwidth and storage costs plummeting over the years.

The point there being, it's of course essential to back up your work. If you aren't doing that, you totally deserve what you get when disaster strikes.

But some disasters happen not just to a hard drive. Some disasters happen to houses or apartment buildings.

Having yr backups reduced to a molten pile of DVDs is not the way to learn this.

Over the years I have piled up accounts and resources at various ISPs and I stick must-not-lose stuff there. But really, when it comes to media and general backup, I have like 60GB of rolling stuff I keep around and there's no real easy way to stick it all at an ISP account.

I have been thinking about buying a server and a co-location account with healthy disk quota and using that as a private offsite backup server.

Costly, though.

Why in the world isnt there a .com doing this? We have YouTube with terabyte after terabyte of storage and not charging a dime for it and they get bought for a billion plus, yet nobody has put together what it takes to put a service that provides an enormously needed benefit - offiste backup.

Is crazy!

-r

[Nubus]

Originally Posted by warmowski

But some disasters happen not just to a hard drive. Some disasters happen to houses or apartment buildings.

Having yr backups reduced to a molten pile of DVDs is not the way to learn this.

Hmmm...
Safe deposit box!

[mikegee]

Originally Posted by Nubus

Hmmm...
Safe deposit box!

a safe deposit box, thats actually a great idea. i think multiple backups in numerous locations is best. that way you always have more than one backup in more than 1 location.

also, yea, websites dedicated to mass storage is another great idea. it seems like a lot of email options allow mega storage, maybe we could email ourselves our own backups and store them in our email inboxes?? haha it sounds wacky, but it may just actually work. whatcha think?

[warmowski]

Originally Posted by mikegee

a safe deposit box, thats actually a great idea. i think multiple backups in numerous locations is best. that way you always have more than one backup in more than 1 location.

also, yea, websites dedicated to mass storage is another great idea. it seems like a lot of email options allow mega storage, maybe we could email ourselves our own backups and store them in our email inboxes?? haha it sounds wacky, but it may just actually work. whatcha think?

There is a point beyond which this won't work well for recordists looking to back up a bunch of 24-bit audio.

For very lightweight files such as text and whatnot, Gmail or other email services would provide dependable offsite storage. But for larger media files, I think it could prove disappointing. How many times has an attachment failed to move along with the email because it was too big? Same problem here: email servers don't make the best file transfer servers, software engineered as the are for a totally different purpose.

-r