Hey Guys,
Suppose I use the “Backup Session” function, and backup a 5 Gig session to a secondary drive.
I get back to recording on the original session, and then later come back with a file that is now 6 Gig, will the “Backup Session” function now write a new 6 Gig file, or does it only add the new 1 Gig additional data ?
Seems like writing an entirely new file each time I want to backup a session would be a huge waste of drive space.
Hope all are well
Thanks
JS.
You can’t Backup Project to a non-empty folder in any case. It would only write to a new empty folder. So you would do a B.P., and then delete the old folder. Recipe for disaster imo.
Cubase doesn’t do incremental backups, and in my view it shouldn’t. That kind of critical function should be done by dedicated software, not Cubase. Like Time Machine, or File History, or a dedicated backup program.
Hey, thanks for the reply.
So how do you do regular backups to a secondary drive ?
JS.
I just use Windows File Explorer’s File History, to an external drive, and I manually archive periodically to another external drive.
You’ll get more/better answers if you include you system info in your profile sig.
OK Thanks, I get it.
Just copy the file manually to another drive.
Sure would like to just update saved files instead of writing the whole thing over and over. That seems like such an outdated procedure.
I’m on a Mac
Then use Time Machine it works brilliantly
I use Time Machine on an external Firewire drive just for total system backups, maybe once a month.
I’m talking about daily session backups just in case of a drive failure.
Gotta be a better way, …right.
I frequently „save as“ for different reasons. Copying the whole thing to an external drive just copies the new files (on Windows, shouldn‘t be different on Mac).
Thanks for the feedback guys.
This looks like what I had in mind, it’s a Synchronize software, it will mirror folders to another drive, adding just the new data, it can do a lot more than that too.
Her’s a link if you might be interested, …it’s free too.
I think it is unfortunate that the command is named “Backup Project” because what it is really doing is creating an entirely new and separate Project based on the current Project. The name causes confusion because we generally use the term “backup” to mean the process of making copies of files as insurance against loosing those files. But Backup Project has nothing to do with that, although it sounds like it should.
I wonder if this is more sensibly named in the German version and using the word 'backup" was just a poor translation choice.
That’s a good point.
I wonder why current DAW software doesn’t have a file Synchronization function so we can keep our files up to date in a way that minimizes overwriting “Everything” … so we could just add the “new” files to the backup folder.
Thing is you don’t really need (or I’d claim even want) to be performing some quasi-backup to a different Project folder if you are also performing regular operating system level backups. All that does is create unnecessary work and cause confusion.
If you want to:
Protect against loss of work from a crash or similar - use Autosave in Cubase to generate a series of .bak files
Protect against Project corruption or accidental deletion - use a 3rd party utility to make OS level backups
Create a totally new & independent Project based on an existing Project - use Cubase command “Backup Project”
Off Topic (but not much)
I’m totally amazed that My Space completely lost so many years of files posted to their site because that implies they had no backups at all - not from yesterday, not last week or 2 years ago. If they did have backups at least some of the files could have been recovered, but they lost it all.
(raino posted while I was typing, so sorry for any redundancy)
Time Machine is designed for near-continuous incremental backups, it’s as robust a system as any out there. Why would you not use it? I used it for more than a decade, and have found nothing better for that for incremental backup. Plus, it can reinstall your entire system in the event of a meltdown, and you’ll be back to exactly where you were before that. Windows has File History, which is also great, but it does not work on the system level so Windows users have to find backup software for OS level stuff, or make daily disk images- which is what I do.
Syncing is a different animal, it’s not really a backup as much as a way to mirror folders. The reason It’s not a backup is that won’t save you from yourself when you inadvertently delete a file from folder A, because it will be deleted from Folder B.
If you want do syncing, you should check out Sycthing and its GUI, SyncTrayzor. Open source and donation ware, and flawless.
Autosave still saves the session on the same drive, as .bak, …that’s no help for what I’m trying to accomplish.
“Backup Project” still saves and rewrites the entire session even if you’ve only added a small file.
I use Time Machine for total system recall, in case of total failure.
Synchronizing and Mirroring folders is exactly what I’ve been looking for, it updates your existing backup folder after you’ve done some more work on that session.
I’m good to go !
I experimented with some folders in FreeFileSync, and it worked flawlessly.
When you “compare folders”, it will analyze, it sees the difference between the folders, and it will only add the “new data” to the existing backup folder.
…Bingo.
While your approach here will basically function, it exposes you to much more risk of data loss than if you were using Time Machine or another backup program on a daily basis. If you like the mirroring idea then by all means do that, like they say “it can’t hurt.” And it will reduce your risk of data loss a bit. But you should also be aware that this small reduction in risk is dwarfed by the large increases in risk caused by not doing regular daily backups.
Trust me on this. I used to do IT at a tech company everyone on earth knows. They paid me to design backup strategies - although thankfully I didn’t have to perform the backups.
But, …FileSync “is” a daily, hourly, or by the minute, backup program. Without backing up the entire system, which I do every few weeks.
How could I incur more risk or data loss, if I update and append the target folder with the new data on a regular basis, …and then if the target folder is checked, and it is identical to the work folder ? ? ?
Yes, I guess that’s true.
It’s more of just appending the target backup folder with only the “new” session data, so that the target folder would then mirror the work folder.
It looks to be a workable solution to keep both folders identical.
Until you have a file corruption, and then your sunk, since both instances of the folder will have it. But maybe you’re the type of learner who learns best from experience, so carry on! 