mass data backup?

AEON

dipthong mong
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heya,

time to back all my shit up. it's long overdue.

basically at the moment i'm terrified of losing years worth of samples and projects. i'm looking for a cheap, quick and relatively easy way of making sure everything is saved and can't be lost if my PC fries itself.

i'm running XP (2.8ghz, 1mb ram, 120g hdd). i have about 50 gigs worth of stuff that needs to be saved. hopefully in september i will be buying a laptop just for gigging, so i've been thinking about getting an external. if i do go down that route i might need to play samples from it during live sets etc. so i'm guessing a firewire one with a high rpm is best?

another short-term option that was suggested to me was buying an internal hard drive and copying everything to it, then uninstalling it and keeping it somewhere safe. this is what i'm leaning towards at the moment as it will be cheaper, and i'll probably get plenty space on the laptop anyway (and will doubtless be loading live sets onto CD for gigs).

is there anything i should look out for or consider? i know very little about computing but could probably figure out IDE installation (friends will certainly be able to help!)...

thanks a bazillion

Worried of East Midlands
 
Spindle of DVD's and Nero backup :Wink3:
 
i'd love to do the DVD route but i only have a CD burner... buying a
DVD burner + the blank DVDs will probably work out just as expensive to be honest!
 
Or just hijack a mates PC and plug your drive in :Wink3:

Otherwise, find someone with a 60gb ipod....make them empty it out, then you can make a folder on there to store the tunes. It works like a removable storage anyway, done it many times....taking stuff to and from buddies when we visit.
 
i think usb 2 and firewire 400 is about the same. 5200 rpm should be ok, but 7200 rpm is good and firewire 800 is becoming more widely available, but you might not have it on your old comp.

my recco is try lacie or maxtor, you can find them on amazon
 
Once you've got your stuff backed up (and for the amount of data you have I'd suggest a dedicated HDD - only make sure you power it up every couple of years, otherwise the bearings seize up...) you really want to put a bit of thought into how you want to handle backups in future. There is an old adage - well, as old as it can be given the youth of the computing industry - that states "Data does not truly exist unless it is recorded in two places at once"; one day most likely your project drive WILL fuck up, so to avoid losing everything on it it makes sense to have a regular backup plan. Personally I don't have a plan as such, but I have the next best thing - a relatively small, fast HD (40GB) where I store all my current projects. With a small HD you're forced to back up and delete old projects regularly if you want to continue using it!
 
Good advice Colin. If you are using anything that is putting the backup in a format different than a regular file structure (i.e. compression, or a backup program with it's own format), you should do a test restore to a temporary folder. A backup could get corrupted & you might not even know it until you attempt a restore, trust me on this one.

If you can, it's also a good idea to keep a backup copy off-site, like at a friends or relatives house. This will protect in case of fire, theft, etc. It won't protect you from your brother stealing your songs though, hehe.

External hard drives have become so inexpensive, I think they are the best way to go! Incidentally, I use Symantec Ghost, which can clone entire partitions & drives in one go. Depending on how your setup is, this could save hours in reloading & reconfiguring windows & all your programs in case of a serious problem/failure. I have a partition for windows & my apps, and a partition for all my projects, samples, etc. I keep running Ghost copies of both. If windows dies on me, I can have it back up & running on a new hard drive in literally 15 minutes or less.
 
dukas said:
you could get a combo fire/burglery safe for the backups
My mom (or is it pronounced mum :ibiggrin: ) bought me a fire chest once. It was only rated to protect CD's & paper for like 30 minutes, so if you do buy one, make sure you read the rating info...
 
thanks again guys.

lots to think about. i reckon i'll wait a week till i got plenty monies then buy a branded combo external. given what people have said about forcing yourself to backup backups, it might be best not to plump for the most storage i can afford - so i think 160g will suffice :Smile3:

cheers people. psy-forum has the all the brainz.
 
this may be more a curiosity, but who knows it can turn into an utility

KGB Archiver is the compression tool with unbelievable high compression rate. It surpasses even such efficient compression tool like 7zip and UHARC in terms of the abilities. Unfortunately although its powerful compression rate, it has high hardware requirements (I recommend processor with 1,5GHz clock and 256MB of RAM as an essential minimum). One of the advantages of KGB Archiver is also AES-256 encryption which is used to encrypt the archives. This is one of the strongest encryptions known for human.
test2.jpg
http://kgbarchiver.sourceforge.net/
 
i'm now 11% through 120,419 files to be copied... hurrah! :Smile3:

went for a 160gb philips which has an 8mb cache and was small and tough - £70 from pcworld.

now to tackle the thorny issue of the backupbackup... :Smile3:
 
I think it will make more sense to ghost both your data and your systems drive so you can always restore your hole systems as it is. This way you get all plugins and applications on your backup too. Just a suggestion?
 
^do you mean stick everything onto the hdd?

if so, that's what i did - copied all of c: drive to the external. i *think* that means i should have apps, files, etc. all in one place?
 
Yes but you won't easily be able to restore your C: drive from a normal set of copied files if your computer goes tits up... what do you do if Windows refuses to boot?

This is the only Norton product I will let in my house, let alone on my music PC.
 
came across Ghost the other day actually - browsing NUsystems laptops.

i don't know what i'll do if windows refuses to boot, i'm guessing it will involve tears and whisky... :isad:

i used a (fully functional) demo of Nero BackitUp, which came with the drive... have i done wrong?
 
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