Hi all. I watched one of those 30 second quick tip videos this morning (from Chris Selim) about backing up projects. It made me realise that I’ve subconsciously been thinking “nah, there’s no point until I really need to”. And now I appreciate that it would be foolish to continue with that way of thinking!
So I’d be really grateful for some ideas on the following:
cheapest way to back up?
most time efficient way of backing up?
which folder(s) is/are the best to back up? I’m actually not sure which folders hold all the files I may use for a cubase project
It depends, how safe do you want your backups are. You can just back it up to other folder (if this part of disk become broken), or you can back it up to any Cloud service (Dropbox, for example, if your HDD becomes broken), or you can back it up to the Cloud and other HDD.
Use File > Back Up Project function in Cubase and choose the new folder.
If you use the builtin File > Back Up Project, you backup all, what relates to the project (and nothing more). You don’t have to take care, what should you copy, Cubase takes care about it.
Again, it depends, how much value do you have in your projects. When I’m scoring for a film, I back up twice a day. If I’m writing something just for fun, I back it up when it’s finished.
I think @Martin.Jirsak is mostly referring to backing up specific Projects & current work. Which is very important.
But there is the more general system-wide backups that a lot of folks kinda ignore, which can be risky. Every night starting at 8PM my System disk, personal folders & disks with Projects gets backed up to an external drive connected via USB. Then the PC shuts itself down. I don’t backup my Sample Libraries on a daily basis since they don’t change. But they do get backed up after additions & other changes occur.
The above scheme is great for protection against disk failure. But there is still a risk because the backups and source data are in the same physical place - so fire, storms and the like could still get stuff. This is where backing up specific items to the cloud is valuable.
It all happens automatically once you set it up. There are a bunch of Backup programs out there with a wide range of capabilities. However some of the most sophisticated ones make even simple things clunky to set up. I’ve been using the the free EaseUS Todo Backup for quite awhile now. It is very basic (although more advance features can be unlocked for a modest fee) and it turns out provides all the backup tools most of us actually need. Setup is super simple - basically set & go. It also can clone your system disk.