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Post by Omicron9 on Jan 14, 2019 9:55:26 GMT -6
Greetings.
After consolidating four older USB hubs into one new USB hub, I began to wonder about my external backup hard drives. As in, what's a good number? I currently have two. How many are you using, and why?
TIA, -09
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Post by Blackdawg on Jan 14, 2019 9:59:18 GMT -6
If you don't have 3 copies of something. You don't own it.
Preferable not in the same building/area too.
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ericn
Temp
Balance Engineer
Posts: 15,014
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Post by ericn on Jan 14, 2019 10:06:09 GMT -6
Yep, back up your back up, at least one off site cloud and one on site. After google fiber was down I once again realized you need to have a combination because stuff happens.
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Post by Omicron9 on Jan 14, 2019 10:25:51 GMT -6
Neglected to mention that I also burn everything to DVDs. Some things get backed up to Dropbox as well. Thanks for the replies thus far; keep them coming, please.
-09
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Post by jeremygillespie on Jan 14, 2019 11:01:05 GMT -6
Neglected to mention that I also burn everything to DVDs. Some things get backed up to Dropbox as well. Thanks for the replies thus far; keep them coming, please. -09 Writable DVD’s aren’t a long term storage option. I’d get away from that as quickly as you can.
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Post by Omicron9 on Jan 14, 2019 11:14:20 GMT -6
Neglected to mention that I also burn everything to DVDs. Some things get backed up to Dropbox as well. Thanks for the replies thus far; keep them coming, please. -09 Writable DVD’s aren’t a long term storage option. I’d get away from that as quickly as you can. Hence the external HDs and cloud backup as well. Dumping to DVD is an old habit, and still not a bad idea. I've never had a backup DVD fail. Just my experience.
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Post by drbill on Jan 14, 2019 14:20:39 GMT -6
For short term "I hope my drive doesn't crater before I finish this project" backups, I back up to one drive that's always mounted and ready to back up to. All current projects that I've worked on that day get backed up at end of day - or sometimes even mid-day.
When stuff is done, I back up to two other drives that I keep on site, in storage.
For catastrophic purposes - like a fire or robbery, etc., I try to keep one backup off site as well. But since it's off-site, I don't get that one backed up too often.
I also back up my boot drive and sample library drives. Not as often though.....
I gave up on optical media quite a while ago. I've found hard drives much more reliable than CD/DVDR media.
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Post by svart on Jan 14, 2019 14:49:27 GMT -6
All of them.
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Post by svart on Jan 14, 2019 15:04:28 GMT -6
But seriously, I'd say two drives. It's increasingly hard to tell when things are going to fail these days. I've had hard drives fail within days, or after 10 years. Sometimes they blink out in an instant and never turn back on, sometimes they start having errors and die slowly..
DVD's aren't the worst option. Back when CD-R and DVD-R were the new thing, there was a crusade by certain folks (HDD manufacturers most often) who simply poo-poo'd using any writable discs due to their weaknesses, but there was a lot of testing by various institutions and individuals that came up with certain criteria for excellent writable media archive solutions.. Namely the type of dye being used and the exposure to certain external forces like sunlight. There are absolutely "archive quality" writable disc media that are guaranteed to outlive you that have come from decades now of knowledge.
Most of the time it's as simple as using a higher quality disc, keeping it out of sunlight and hot places and it'll likely outlive your HDD's..
But today I still use multiple HDD's as my backup choices.
namely I use a 1TB WD black drive and a 2TB WD green. I have a 2TB WD blue for random stuff as well. My machines use Intel and Samsung SSD's as well as older Seagate and WD black drives. Haven't had any issues in 15+ years thankfully.
I mainly stopped doing DVD's because my session files were too big and spanning discs and burning took way too long.
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Post by Blackdawg on Jan 14, 2019 15:08:43 GMT -6
The other problem with writeable disks is keeping an optical reader around. They are not common anymore. Have all but been phased out in the consumer computer world. Its like keeping an old DAT machine around to read your DAT tapes.
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Post by Ward on Jan 14, 2019 15:14:38 GMT -6
7
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Post by Vincent R. on Jan 14, 2019 16:49:08 GMT -6
Neglected to mention that I also burn everything to DVDs. Some things get backed up to Dropbox as well. Thanks for the replies thus far; keep them coming, please. -09 Writable DVD’s aren’t a long term storage option. I’d get away from that as quickly as you can. I learned that the hard way. I have one main back up drive and all of my current work is backed up on it with my older stuff, but also in the cloud.
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Post by WKG on Jan 15, 2019 8:24:18 GMT -6
I've got 5 drives total for a variety of stuff. I'll do two backups for most things and also dump current projects on to a USB thumb drive drive if they fit. I probably should also do cloud though, at least for critical ones.
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