Times when even after ‘zipping’/‘stuffing’/compressing etc.
the work just will not fit onto a single DVD.
Do you then use…
1-External HDD/SSD drives?
2-Thumb/flash drives?
3-CD/DVD spanning?
4-Cloud storage?
5-Do you store copies off-site at all?
6-A combination of the above?
I mainly have been using external HDD’s
but starting to use thumb/flash drives way more these days.
My buddy and I meet once a week and exchange external
hard drives (and to hang out away from the wives) so we both have
a form of off-site back-up
I quit using DVD’s for backup when some of my favorite stuff became (more or less) lost because parts of the disc can no longer be read, even when using some pricey recovery software. Now I use on-line fee-based backup, and I sleep peacefully
It’s gonna take you a good while to upload big projects though, unless you have a fibreglass connection.
But I personally really like cloud storage as well. Not used it for Cubase projects yet because of their large filesize (and I don’t want to pay for storage ) but I use it all the time for pretty much every other project or document I’ve got
It’s great because it’s also really easy to sync up between multiple devices.
Just yesterday for example I was doing an ANSYS project (structural mechanical analysis ) where I would write a report on my desktop and run the analysis on my laptop. Saving screenshots on my laptop in my dropbox folder makes them instantly available on my desktop to include in the report. Never worked faster!
External Hard drives only. Like others I’ve had the experience of trying load a project backed up to dvd just to find a disk read error. Dvd’s are the worst way to go. As far as cloud I’ve never used but my current experience of dismantling a studio as part of a move has made me revisit a lot of older stuff. Recently tested an Atari 520 ST to list as well as a Fostex 8 channel. Point is I have a hard time believing that Atari era projects (circa 1982) backed up to a cloud would still be there 30 years later. However my floppies still load and projects are still here… Even reel to reel era (circa late 90’s) backups would likely be lost with some polite explanation from the server company. This attitude may just be a result of what I’m going thru now but everyday I encounter software that was so vital back in the day that came from companies that just went bye,bye. I have no faith that cloud systems wont do the same in 20 years. The only real long term backup is what you have in your possession.
Haven’t thought about your proposal Mr. M but thinking back, I’ve had that similar experience of not readable. The longest backups I hold are on reel to reel from 1973 and 1968 and 1966. I must get them off of tapes and onto any digital media. They’re not so big so space on a 16gb flash drive should be much more than needed but this is something that should almost be a button assigned in Cubase for backup to a source of your choosing as a default.
As I have gotten much more into my midi stuff and audio track combos, I would hate to lose this stuff. As you state, what happens 20 years from now. Our first office computer was an IBM XT 8086 with a 10 mb Corvus hard drive that was the size of an original VHS tape recorder. Had a mirror back up to VHS video tape. How would I restore those to the hard drive today? I threw that out in 1985…
The general consensus seems to be cloud or USB drives?
) but I use it all the time for pretty much every other project or document I’ve got