OT: Backup alternatives

[Mark Stebbeds]

Check these out.

http://www.wiebetech.com/products/ComboDock.php

http://www.wiebetech.com/products/miniDocks.php

http://www.wiebetech.com/products/firewiredrivedockplus.php

http://www.wiebetech.com/products/superdrivedockplus.php

[Bill Park]

I've been a big fan for years. Great answer for laptops... record to the drive, then put the drive on a caddy and pop it in your main machine back at the studio. Also means that you can fill drives, pop them off of the wiebetech, and put another one in place very quickly. I also have an Apricorn unit. I don't see them as 'backup' unless you just mean temporary backup, because I have not found hard drives to be a reliable backup medium for long term storage.

Bill

[Mark Stebbeds]

I've been a big fan for years. Great answer for laptops... record to the drive, then put the drive on a caddy and pop it in your main machine back at the studio. Also means that you can fill drives, pop them off of the wiebetech, and put another one in place very quickly. I also have an Apricorn unit. I don't see them as 'backup' unless you just mean temporary backup, because I have not found hard drives to be a reliable backup medium for long term storage.



I guess there are numerous uses. I see them as an alternative to FW drives in cases, or DVDs, for archiving. On a 250gb drive you can store as much as you can on 25 DVDs, or even 50 if the DVD is half full. I'm in the middle of backing up close to 100 songs to DVD and it's driving me nuts because it's so slow. What do see as a more reliable alternative for long term storage?

For temp backup I use either an internal back-up drive on my PC, or external FW on my Mac, but that could change. Using raw drives are certainly more cost efficient than FW cases.

I especially like the model that is powered off FW cable. NO WALWART.

Mark

[Bill Park]

I see them as an alternative to FW drives in cases, or DVDs, for archiving. On a 250gb drive you can store as much as you can on 25 DVDs, or even 50 if the DVD is half full. I'm in the middle of backing up close to 100 songs to DVD and it's driving me nuts because it's so slow. What do see as a more reliable alternative for long term storage?

For temp backup I use either an internal back-up drive on my PC, or external FW on my Mac, but that could change. Using raw drives are certainly more cost efficient than FW cases.

I especially like the model that is powered off FW cable. NO WALWART.

Mark

I've never seen an eraseable medium as acceptable for archiving digital data, and I've just had too many hard drives in stroage fail to spin up. I don't care how many DVDs it takes, though I'm completely on board with you about the time factor.

Like you, I have a third drive in my main machine for temp dumpoffs.


Bill

[Tree Leopard]

Thanks for the links, Mark. I'd seen similar tech maintenance products, but these look very nice, especially the combodock. As you say, any one of these would be great time saver.

Andre

PS: While we're on the subject of archiving - http://foldersize.sourceforge.net/ - this automates a registry tweak for Win and yes, it shows the actual size of your folders - amazing but true. To make this a global setting just follow the same procedure for locking down details view (http://sonictypewriter.blogspot.com/2006/03/its-all-in-details.html).

[Angie]

Andre,

Great link! I'll be installing it today. Now I'll know at a glance if a whole folder will fit on a CD for backup.

Bill,
I've stopped using DVDs for backup after reports of their questionable longevity. I went back to CDs. Takes more, but better safe than sorry right now.

Mark,
Very cool product. Little pricey when you consider I payed $60 for my firewire enclosure and added a removable tray. Still, it does look nice.

[Dave Labrecque]

Thanks for the links, Mark. I'd seen similar tech maintenance products, but these look very nice, especially the combodock. As you say, any one of these would be great time saver.

Andre

PS: While we're on the subject of archiving - http://foldersize.sourceforge.net/ - this automates a registry tweak for Win and yes, it shows the actual size of your folders - amazing but true. To make this a global setting just follow the same procedure for locking down details view (http://sonictypewriter.blogspot.com/2005/12/mayor-in-city-of-clowns.html).

Tree,

The second link doesn't appear to go where you intended, FYI.

Thanks for the other one, though!

Dave

[Mark Stebbeds]

Mark,
Very cool product. Little pricey when you consider I payed $60 for my firewire enclosure and added a removable tray. Still, it does look nice.

I like the 'one adapter, many drives' approach. It's cheaper if you have many drives, about the same if you have a few.

One wall wart, or no walwarts with the more expensive model, intrigues me.

Mark

[Mark Stebbeds]

I've never seen an eraseable medium as acceptable for archiving digital data, and I've just had too many hard drives in stroage fail to spin up.

Interesting thought. The medium is too young to determine failure rate, or compatiblity of DVDs we write today with DVD readers of the future. I've been down the road of CDs being read in one machine, but not another.

The IDE format of hard drives has been around longer than both CD and DVD, albiet older versions are quite slow, and I seem to remember having to tweak a setting in the BIOS a few years back for different models.

On the other hand, I've had hard drives that went south during operation, and I assume this was always a physical or mechanical failure. Can they go south sitting on a shelf?

Mark

[Angie]

On the other hand, I've had hard drives that went south during operation, and I assume this was always a physical or mechanical failure. Can they go south sitting on a shelf?

Mark

Yes, they can. We were advised by a tech guy (at Sun, I believe) that Harddrives have a "shelf life" of about 2 years. They will last longer if you spin them up periodically.

[Mark Stebbeds]

We were advised by a tech guy (at Sun, I believe) that Harddrives have a "shelf life" of about 2 years. They will last longer if you spin them up periodically.

Good to know. I certainly have had my share of hard drive failures, but I'm not sure if they exceed the times I couldn't read a back-up CD. No failure to read a back-up DVD yet, but I haven't tried that too often after something was achived. The format is too new.

I have three "failure to verify" messages in just the last few days when burning DVD backups, even though I've probably made about 25. That's a pretty high percentage.

Anyone familiar with a technical opinion of the shelf life of a DVD, or the future of the format?

mark

[Dave Labrecque]

Good to know. I certainly have had my share of hard drive failures, but I'm not sure if they exceed the times I couldn't read a back-up CD. No failure to read a back-up DVD yet, but I haven't tried that too often after something was achived. The format is too new.

I have three "failure to verify" messages in just the last few days when burning DVD backups, even though I've probably made about 25. That's a pretty high percentage.

Anyone familiar with a technical opinion of the shelf life of a DVD, or the future of the format?

mark

FWIW, I've been using CD archiving since '97 and, starting about three years ago, DVD archiving. Though I have the occasional bad disk during writing, I have NEVER had a problem restoring an old session. And I do it fairly often. At 10¢ per GB, it works for me. :)

[Mark Stebbeds]

I have NEVER had a problem restoring an old session. And I do it fairly often. At 10¢ per GB, it works for me. :)

It's the future I am concerned with. I can't begin to tell you how much stuff I have archived on 3.5 and 5.25 floppy, 100mb zip drives, and a few 500mb Jaz drives. IDE drives were still the mainstay back then, and still survive.

FWIW, N.A.R.A.S. is still recommending SCSI or FW HDD, and are required by many major labels as delivery formats.

http://www.grammy.com/PDFs/Recording_Academy/Producers_And_Engineers/DeliveryRecs.pdf

Mark

[Angie]

This is a pretty interesting read.

http://www.rlg.org/en/page.php?Page_ID=20744&Printable=1&Article_ID=1764

[Mark Stebbeds]

This is a pretty interesting read.

http://www.rlg.org/en/page.php?Page_ID=20744&Printable=1&Article_ID=1764


Indeed. Thanks for the link.

Mark

[DominicPerry]

This is a pretty interesting read.

http://www.rlg.org/en/page.php?Page_ID=20744&Printable=1&Article_ID=1764

So for morons like me, can anyone summarise this article? Are CD's better than DVDs? Does anyone know which brands use the preferred dyes?

Dominic

[Mark Stebbeds]

So for morons like me, can anyone summarise this article? Are CD's better than DVDs? Does anyone know which brands use the preferred dyes?


The article seems to be inconclusive as to the LE of DVDs.

Don't know who has the better dyes.

mark

[Ian Alexander]

I bought some DVD-Rs today. The guy at Mediasupply.com told me the there was some testing done on CDRs about 12 years ago, but nothing definitive on DVDs yet. The MAM-A CDRs claim to be good for 100-300 years, but I think it will be a few weeks before we can be sure about that.

For DVDs, he suggested some Verbatim disks for archive purposes (almost never touched, except to restore) and some cheaper Taiyo Yudens for client one-offs and other short-term use. YMMV.

I also learned that some CDRs (maybe DVDs, too) have a little ridge near the center that keeps the data and label surfaces apart when stored on a spindle. Those disks without the ridges should be kept in their own jewel cases or shells.

Here is their FAQ. I have had excellent service from this company, but I don't know how reliable their info is.
http://www.mediasupply.com/cd-dvd-media.html

[Neal Starrett]

and some cheaper Taiyo Yudens for client one-offs and other short-term use.
I was under the impression that the Taiyo Yudens were the better of the DVD's. At least from what I've read at cdfreaks.com

niles

[Tree Leopard]

The second link doesn't appear to go where you intended, FYI.The info re: "details view" now has its very own link (http://sonictypewriter.blogspot.com/2006/03/its-all-in-details.html). :) . Kind of insane that these features were never included in the first place - but not suprising, either. :rolleyes:

Andre

[Tree Leopard]

Great link! I'll be installing it today. Now I'll know at a glance if a whole folder will fit on a CD for backup.Well, the RLG link is pretty good too. I'd remembered you'd posted this before. What about DVD-RAM? It seems to be the most robust form of DVD media.

These archiving issues become a bit complex when you think about what actually constitutes a "master recording" these days. Not an easy one to answer ...

Andre

[Angie]

For DVDs, he suggested some Verbatim disks for archive purposes (almost never touched, except to restore) and some cheaper Taiyo Yudens for client one-offs and other short-term use.

Verbatim DVDs seem to be favored among archivists also. Though you won't find too many of them using DVD without redundant backups to something else right now.

What bothered me most about the report is that the dye formulations are not consistant from batch to batch among a manufacturer. This is something we've grown to trust about CDs. We know the trusted manufacturers and stick with them. Doesn't work with DVDs.

[Dave Labrecque]

It's the future I am concerned with. I can't begin to tell you how much stuff I have archived on 3.5 and 5.25 floppy, 100mb zip drives, and a few 500mb Jaz drives. IDE drives were still the mainstay back then, and still survive.

FWIW, N.A.R.A.S. is still recommending SCSI or FW HDD, and are required by many major labels as delivery formats.

http://www.grammy.com/PDFs/Recording_Academy/Producers_And_Engineers/DeliveryRecs.pdf

Mark
Is there any actual real-world data (no pun intended) on CD-R and/or DVD-R deterioration with time? I find myself feeling like they'll last a good long time. In my expert scientific opinion. :rolleyes: I mean, there's no moving parts, there's no mechanical wear and tear (if handled nicely). I guess it would come down to chemical aging processes.

I remember you bringing up the hard drive archive spec a while back. That just sounds nuts to me. It's volatile AND mechanical (as in, moving parts). Yikes. :eek:

Oh, wait... you're saying they're (HDDs) required for audio delivery. Isn't that a different discussion than archiving?

[Pedro Itriago]

If memory serves me well, verbatim uses azo coating. Unles I've read your link the wrong way (no surprises there), azo did not rank too well, did it?

[Pedro Itriago]

I remember having a thread some time ago with either Perry or Frank (there goes my memory) precisely about how unreliable HD's become if you keep them stored and unpowered. I've lost both scsi & ide drives that way. Luckily no data lost.

[UpTilDawn]

That's so strange to me.
Why would a hard drive go sour on you just for shelving it?
Isn't that what they do before you buy 'em?..... or do we buy drives so fast they only have time to set on the shelf for a month or two?

DanT

[Tim Miskimon]

Knock on wood - knock on wood - Knock on wood
but the only thing that's went bad sitting on the shelve around here has been DAT tapes.
So far I haven't had the hard drive issue - some of them are up to 9 years old so I hope that maybe there's just a little touch of bad luck going on there...:(
How & where are they being stored?
I guess we can't really trust anything cause nothing last forever.
Maybe the best thing to do is to have copies on several different drives/formats and cross our fingers.
How about anyone else? Has anybody had the problem of drives going bad by just sitting on the shelve?
Kind of scarey isn't it?
Maybe that's why some record companies are backing up important sessions to 2 inch tape.

[Bill Park]

That's so strange to me.
Why would a hard drive go sour on you just for shelving it?
Isn't that what they do before you buy 'em?..... or do we buy drives so fast they only have time to set on the shelf for a month or two?

DanT

Dan,

You can take the experience of those of us who have lost the gamble.... my own experience was with Seagate Baracudas, WDs, Micropolis, Maxtor... or you can learn for yourself. Either way, your choice. It is no fun to try to explain ti to your clients, though. I simply know what so many others here have said, CD so far seems to be the safest archival medium for digital storage. So far (four or five years, I guess...) my DVDs seem to be okay. My CDs from as far back as 93/94 still play. I always knew that DAT had a 5 year shelf life, and I warned my clients ahead of time.

You want to challenge us with logic, I can only counter your logic with my personal empircal observation and experience.

Bill

[Bill Park]

FWIW, N.A.R.A.S. is still recommending SCSI or FW HDD, and are required by many major labels as delivery formats.


Mark

Delivery. Soon to be transfered to other media.

Bill

[Tim Miskimon]

Dan,

You can take the experience of those of us who have lost the gamble.... my own experience was with Seagate Baracudas, WDs, Micropolis, Maxtor... or you can learn for yourself. Either way, your choice. It is no fun to try to explain ti to your clients, though. I simply know what so many others here have said, CD so far seems to be the safest archival medium for digital storage. So far (four or five years, I guess...) my DVDs seem to be okay. My CDs from as far back as 93/94 still play. I always knew that DAT had a 5 year shelf life, and I warned my clients ahead of time.

You want to challenge us with logic, I can only counter your logic with my personal empircal observation and experience.

Bill

Bill,
I don't think Dan or I are challenging you - personally I'm just wondering if this is a wide spread problem or just something that happens every now and then.
Like Mark stated many record labels request hard drive copies of the sessions. I've also read that many labels are backing up to 2 inch tape & 1/2 inch tape.
I think we need more information and I guess only time will tell.
For me - one failure is too much no matter what format we are talking about.
It was the same in the analog tape days when you had to explain to a client that their tape broke or won't play.
With digital I think the verdict is still out - I don't trust any of it that's why I do triple backups.

[Mark Stebbeds]

Is there any actual real-world data (no pun intended) on CD-R and/or DVD-R deterioration with time? I find myself feeling like they'll last a good long time. In my expert scientific opinion. :rolleyes: I mean, there's no moving parts, there's no mechanical wear and tear (if handled nicely). I guess it would come down to chemical aging processes.

Angie and Ian posted docs with some interesting info on calculating the life expectancy of CD and DVD. I found Angie's link interesting that a CD can last as little as two years under adverse heat conditions. (like Arizona), depending on the type of dye that is used. The jury seems to be out on DVD life expectancy.


I remember you bringing up the hard drive archive spec a while back. That just sounds nuts to me. It's volatile AND mechanical (as in, moving parts). Yikes. :eek:

Oh, wait... you're saying they're (HDDs) required for audio delivery. Isn't that a different discussion than archiving?

I understand delivery to the record company as archiving of the masters for eternity. Upon reading the article further, they also recommened delivery in an alternate temporary format, such as CD-R or DVD-R. Others have told that they have been required by certain labels to archive DAW sessions to multitrack analog tape, as we know that format survives the decades and sticky tape shed is temporarily fixable, but not in all cases. And that practice seems to be losing favor, probably due to storage space.

This archiving business has piqued my interest as I have burned several "failed" DVDs in the last few days, way too high of a percentage. I didn't notice this failure rate during my usual routine of occasional back up, but a huge archiving project of songs spread out over several hard drives and computers is exposing how fragile the format really is.

My gut feeling is that hard drives with moving parts should be avoided, but the fact that IDE hard drives have been around much longer than CD-R and DVD-R is noteworthy, and still thirive today. And I have never had two or three writing failures per day on a hard drive, as I have been having with DVD in the last several days. I have probaby lost three or four HDD over 18 years of computer work, and have learned to back up to another HD. So yeah, moving parts are scary, but personal history tells me otherwise.

I found the Weibetech FW/USB to IDE apapters and they look interesting to me as a way to conveniently back up to HDD (or multiple HDD) in a less cumbersome fashion than having a bunch of FW drives in case with Walwarts everywhere.

Mark

[Bill Park]

Mark,

You might consider the difference between a failed write and a properly written disc. There could be any number of reasons for a disc to fail to write properly, could even be a bad disc (and there has been an ongoing discussion on another board about a recent batch of bad DVDs..).

So far, -none- of my DVDs that wrote have subsequently failed. This is out of the ones that I have had occasion to revisit, and the ones that I wrote for DVD projects and have watched frequently.

But where I have had a problem is with discs sent to me from other burners. I have several players here, and I have gotten discs that would not play in any of my players, yet I have taken them to other locations and been able to retieve that data. This makes me concerned. But on the other hand, they mostly tend to be from guys doing wedding video setups, so who knows?

Bill

[Mark Stebbeds]

You might consider the difference between a failed write and a properly written disc. There could be any number of reasons for a disc to fail to write properly, could even be a bad disc (and there has been an ongoing discussion on another board about a recent batch of bad DVDs..).

Yes, of course. But the fact that so many failed to write properly concerns me. Perhaps I got a bad batch, although it is a reputable manufacturer.


But where I have had a problem is with discs sent to me from other burners. I have several players here, and I have gotten discs that would not play in any of my players, yet I have taken them to other locations and been able to retieve that data. This makes me concerned.


Yeah, my point exactly. I'm not going to have the same player in ten years, or maybe even two years from now. Just last week I burned a DVD from my PC that would not read properly on my Mac, although I'm told something wacky may have happened to the Mac files while on the PC. The fact that other DVDs did not have the same problem with the Mac files is reason for futher concern.

Man, it's been a wacky week.

Mark

[Pedro Itriago]

Bill has made a very good point.

Mark, I think you should really consider have you or somebody take a good look at the dvd writer & its enviroment. At the begining of ny DVD writting experience, I was having coaster after coaster, something that never ever happened to my with cd's. I cursed at the drive, the media I was using, etc. One day, I woke up with a different point of view (I have my days...) and decided to ditch the IDE cable, which I had taken from a previous computer and buy one of those nice looking round ide cables...problem solved. Today, if I want to have a dvd coaster, I have to dress up and make an indian dance while kicking the tower around.

Just a few days ago I burned several dvd's, a whole 25 dvd spindle, with media from different types (+ & -), different speeds & different manufacturers in a matter of only 3 days, no coaster.

The only bad experience I had with this kind of optical media was a long time ago with a defective batch of Sony cdr's that started to oxidize just a couple of weeks after I bought them, both burnt & unburnt.

Optical media has come a long way & there's a lot ef experience already achieved towards making them reliable and long lasting. A lot was learnt with the laserdisc on how to avoid things like roting & coating sealing. I have a LD that's has a sidelong crack on it's surface; it hasn't rotted and still plays fine.

[Mark Stebbeds]

Mark, I think you should really consider have you or somebody take a good look at the dvd writer & its enviroment.

Good point, but I don't think it's the system. I'll take heed however, and check things out. Mine is a Plextor PX-708UF external FW, using Nero.

I've been hearing similar reports from several others who are engaged in DVD back up marathons lie I am. It's something we don't notice when we burn two or three a week.

Mark

[Bill Park]

Good point, but I don't think it's the system. I'll take heed however, and check things out. Mine is a Plextor PX-708UF external FW, using Nero.

I've been hearing similar reports from several others who are engaged in DVD back up marathons lie I am. It's something we don't notice when we burn two or three a week.

Mark

I have the same unit. Love it, though it is slow by todays standards. The ability to drag it around has been really convenient. I also have a sony and whatever came built into my new laptop. We lucked out... we didn't buy the 712. (or was it the 716 that was all the trouble?)

I'm not doing so many now that I'm laid up, but I was doing 14 discs a day at times as recently as December. Dumping from both the studio computer and from a rented Alesis Masterlink. What a PITA -that- was. (the MasterLink)

Bill

[Bob L]

Contrary to any information concerning harddrives going bad so easily sitting on a shelf... I have never had this problem...

I now have even recovered probably 30 or more drives that went thru the fire and the entire fire fighters hosing process... then sat in the open air in standing water for almost 2 weeks before being recovered from the rubble...

I'd say that the simplicity of backing up to any harddrive usb or firewire or drive in a drive bay... putting it on the shelf... and if its critical... bringing it out and transferring it to a new drive every year or two would be a pretty safe bet for most any data archiving situation...

The ease and the cheap drive prices pretty much make this a very realistic solution.

Bob L

[Bill Park]

The ease and the cheap drive prices pretty much make this a very realistic solution.

Bob L

Unfortunately, that is just the sort of housekeeping that does not get done. Know what I mean? Next thing you know, five years have gone by.

I think that it is worth mentioning that I don't archive the majority of the work here for totally selfish reasons... first, I don't have the space. Second, I refuse to accept the liability. (I do keep some, and that is what I have been refering to in the earlier part of this conversation...) But I'm happy to dump the files to DVD or CD for anyone who wants them. No one has asked for hard drive archival storage so far.

Bill

[DominicPerry]

I've been involved in some big IT archiving projects in the past. There are a heap of problems, not just around media. Most of these projects fail to get off the ground because no-one can agree (a) what format to save files in and (b) what hardware and applications to preserve to support files/data when it is restored. Those problems exist in audio archiving, although they are quite 'answerable'. The solutions to the archive medium are many and varied, but usually they rely on a multi-tiered system.
A) Online disk for current/recent data - upto 2 years old, backed up to tape. B) Nearline storage - slower disk, or tape.
C) Offline storage - tape and WORM.

It is notable that there are always multiple copies of data, and that copies of the data are stored in temperature and humidity controlled environments and there are disparate geographical locations for at least 2 copies of the data.

I'm not sure where this leaves audio archiving for project/hobbyist engineers, small studios or big studios. It does show that archiving is a substantial undertaking with a large cost implication.

Dominic

[Mark Stebbeds]

Unfortunately, that is just the sort of housekeeping that does not get done. Know what I mean? Next thing you know, five years have gone by.


That can be said about any backup system. Hard drives are certainly faster, and therefore less time consuming and daunting.

After I finished this DVD archiving project I'm on now, I think I'm moving to dual raw IDE with a Wiebetech adapter for conveniece, especially after hearing Bob's testimonial. I'll archive everything to two drives in far less time than it takes to make one DVD. I'll keep DVDs as a medium for handing off stuff to clients.

mark

[Dave Labrecque]

I found Angie's link interesting that a CD can last as little as two years under adverse heat conditions. (like Arizona), depending on the type of dye that is used.

Well, I guess it doesn't hurt to run the AC. :) BTW, I have CD archives here in Arizona that I burned in 1997 that still work. Maybe I'll set 'em out by the Chollas and Sahuaros and see how they do. ;)


I understand delivery to the record company as archiving of the masters for eternity. Upon reading the article further, they also recommened delivery in an alternate temporary format, such as CD-R or DVD-R. Others have told that they have been required by certain labels to archive DAW sessions to multitrack analog tape, as we know that format survives the decades and sticky tape shed is temporarily fixable, but not in all cases. And that practice seems to be losing favor, probably due to storage space.

I'll say it again. I think it's nuts to expect a hard drive sitting on a shelf to last longer than a CD or a DVD. Nuts. And it's so much cheaper to just re-burn your archive disks every five years if you're nervous about 'em.


This archiving business has piqued my interest as I have burned several "failed" DVDs in the last few days, way too high of a percentage. I didn't notice this failure rate during my usual routine of occasional back up, but a huge archiving project of songs spread out over several hard drives and computers is exposing how fragile the format really is.

Two comments, here:

1) You might want to try different brands. On my burner, some brands don't work at all, some brands work part of the time, and some brands work nearly all of the time. My burner's manufacturer (Sony) has a list of recommended brands in the support section of their web site. Compatibility can be an important factor.

2) I think burn failures and long-term survivability are two completely different topics. I don't know that a high rate of burn failure is related at all to how long the succesfully-burned disc will last. Though, a failed-burn disc does, admittedly, have a rather limited lifetime. :p


My gut feeling is that hard drives with moving parts should be avoided, but the fact that IDE hard drives have been around much longer than CD-R and DVD-R is noteworthy...

I don't think the life of a technology and the life of a single unit are the same thing, unless you're talking about the life of the technology as an archiving choice, and I don't think IDE HDDs have been used very long for that. Maybe I'm wrong. But haven't CDs been used for intentional achiving longer than hard drives have?

[Tim Miskimon]

I think how a hard drive is handled as it's being moved from the storage closet to the computer could be more of a cause of drive failure than the drive's time sitting on the shelf.
Static electricity can and will kill the electronics on the drive.
The drive should be kept in a static proof bag like the one it came in when new.
Also hard drives do not take shock very well - even a little bump can cause the platters to shift enough to cause failure.

[UpTilDawn]

I've got a stack of cd-r's from five or six years back that I burned data backups of my Roland VS1680 projects at the time. Roland only had one or two burners that would read and write the "archive" discs, so there wasn't much choice in the matter.

Even using the burn verify function (which took FOREVER) to check the burn when I was finished, a year to two years later I found about 25-30 cds that the Roland wouldn't recover work off of... Same brand, even batch of cdr's that I'd been using for a long time.... Never have figured out what went wrong.

That left me with a real sour taste about our current state of choices for digital backup and archive... I didn't even trust dvd's enough to bother with them for a couple of years, especially after reading the horror stories on the web about failed writes, etc.

I'm still not sure what's best... tape is no more reliable than any other medium as far as I'm concerned. There's far too many things that can affect what's on that delicate media.

So far, dvd's have become my backup of choice, but I'm intrigued by the notion of using small (20 gig or less) HDs for individual client backups and archives. Potentially, very quick, convenient and orderly way to store.

DanT

[DominicPerry]

Good digital tape mechanisms are still what the IT industry uses, along with expensive Magneto Optical WORM. Digital tape mechanisms have plenty of error correction built in.

[Pedro Itriago]

I think that we can draw a conclusion here: use both. Archive on both HD and cd/dvd. I don't think any pocket will get hurt doing this. Storage is another story.


... along with expensive Magneto Optical WORM.

Can't begin to tell you how much i hate those units & media, talk about unreliable

[UpTilDawn]

Storage is another story.


:rolleyes:

[Mark Stebbeds]

I don't think the life of a technology and the life of a single unit are the same thing, unless you're talking about the life of the technology as an archiving choice, and I don't think IDE HDDs have been used very long for that. Maybe I'm wrong. But haven't CDs been used for intentional achiving longer than hard drives have?

I'm talking about the life of the technology, regardless of what function it's used for, not it's popularity as an archiving choice. IDE HDD have been used for storage internally for, so why not sitting on a shelf?

I just found an old drive with about a 1/4" of dust on it manufactured in 1993, when floppies where the popular archiving choice. I must have kept it for a reason. When I find the time to open up a machine(s) and rearange some cables, I'll report back if I can read it or not. (This may have been a "dead" drive that I kept with hopes of recovering data someday, so no guarantees) I seem to remember some business about type 4 or type 5, which I've forgotten, so we'll see how it goes.

Mark

[Mark Stebbeds]

Contrary to any information concerning harddrives going bad so easily sitting on a shelf... I have never had this problem...

I now have even recovered probably 30 or more drives that went thru the fire and the entire fire fighters hosing process... then sat in the open air in standing water for almost 2 weeks before being recovered from the rubble...



Another consideration is recovery of data off of a hard drive. If an HDD goes down, you can send it off and have data recovered, although it's a bit expensive. You're out of luck with a bad DVD.

mark

[Bill Park]

For waht it is worth, I just got the new PC World yesterday. They also recommend DVD over hard drives. (shrug...)

Bill

[Mark Stebbeds]

For waht it is worth, I just got the new PC World yesterday. They also recommend DVD over hard drives. (shrug...)


Why?

[Naturally Digital]

George Massenburg was in TO last week for an AES presentation and he mentioned that he has faith in HD's for backup.

I'm sure the opinions on this run far and wide but I still have a hard time with the concept of HD's 'locking up' or not spinning up just from sitting in storage. Assuming they are stored correctly and are kept away from magnets I would think they'd take years to 'dry up'.

Backup and Archiving are two different things and have typically called for different media/systems. 'Backup' media has typically been too expensive and cumbersome to use for 'archiving'.

At least with a hard drive its fairly quick and easy to check the data (copy) but with optical media like DVD, it takes a little longer to verify the copy... Often the only way I'll trust it is to copy everything back off the DVD to HD before erasing the original.

[Bob L]

For waht it is worth, I just got the new PC World yesterday. They also recommend DVD over hard drives. (shrug...)



Yup... and the industry also recommends floating point over integer math for audio... so much for industry and magazine recommendations. :D

Bob L

[Bill Park]

..I still have a hard time with the concept of HD's 'locking up' or not spinning up just from sitting in storage. ...

Well, I think that I'm done with the topic. Having had several drives fail to spin up after sitting in storage... top of the line drives, by the way... I'll continue to store data on non-erasable (or hard to erase, anyway) discs that don't contain motors, using non-proprietary file formats. Once bitten, twice sahy.

Bill

[DominicPerry]

I'll be boring one last time. The IT industry, who get prosecuted for losing data by companies who get prosecuted for losing data (e.g. Financial institutions) backup to tape and Magneto Optical WORM. No-one who cares about data in the IT industry trusts hard drives or CD/DVD.

I realise that individuals have personal experiences of failure of all 4 mediums, but hard drives are not trustworthy and neither is CD/DVD.

I don't know much about audio engineering but I do know about backup and archiving. I always recommend tape drives to my friends who want to backup their PCs. No-one has ever taken me up on the suggestion, and everyone has lost data. I know tape drives are expensive, but they work.

Dominic

[Mark Stebbeds]

George Massenburg was in TO last week for an AES presentation and he mentioned that he has faith in HD's for backup.



He is one of the authors of the Recording Academy spec calling for HDD as archival backup.

[Naturally Digital]

I don't know much about audio engineering but I do know about backup and archiving. I always recommend tape drives to my friends who want to backup their PCs. No-one has ever taken me up on the suggestion, and everyone has lost data. I know tape drives are expensive, but they work.Dominic, do you have any recommendations for cost-effective tape (and/or MO) setups? If it's going to be used for archiving, the media needs to be cheap and if it's going to be used for backup, it needs to be easy and quick.

[Pedro Itriago]

Well, then MO is nothing but cheap, hang on to your wallet

[DominicPerry]

There are USB2 connectable DAT (DDS4) drives at around ***163;350 ($500). I know this is expensive, but I did say it was. Media prices are high for single tapes ($8-$10) but less if purchased in bulk. Backup speeds are good (20-30GB per hour). It's helpful to have some software too, to control what tapes are used for incremental and end-of-month type backups, and to cycle incremental tapes. Also to allow quick and easy archival of specific directories. One of the good things about a tape drive is that you can get so much on it. So you can leave it to do a scheduled backup overnight and get 20-80 GB on a single tape, no media changing neccessary. Likewise for archiving. Just kick the thing off and go to bed.

Recent tapedrives include:
Freecom External 36-72GB DDS-GEN5 USB DAT-72e, (72GB)
HP DAT40 Ext USB Tape Drive (40GB)
HP DAT72 Ext USB Tape Drive (72GB)

I'm not sure how much audio can be compressed - most of these drives perform compression at a 2:1 ratio for 'normal' files. The size spec 72GB is the best you can expect. Uncompressable files will reduce the capacity to half. This is, of course, lossless and parity/CRC checked.

MO WORMs are really expensive and tend to have low per-disk capacities and therfore need autochangers. About $2000 for a single drive using 9GB disks. Disks are about $20-$30 each.

I appreciate that these are not practically priced for most people's expectations. Do I use one? No, but I don't back up anything. I'm not a real engineer and I'm not doing work for anyone else. If I was putting together a commercial studio, I'd budget for a tape drive for daily backups and a single MO drive for archiving. Really, I would.

If, after reading all this you are still genuinely interested, let me know and I will consult the guys who do backup and archive hardware builds in my organisation (one of the Big 5 IT Consultancy/Outsourcers) and let you know what the latest low-down is.

Dominic

[studio-c]

Had a client that wanted to resurrect an old project from the mid 90s. It was burned to CD and wouldn' play on any of my systems. Luckily I had the old system in storage. Plugged it in and it read just fine. Sheesh. Pays to be a packrat I guess.

Similar experiences with DATs. We have 3 DAT machines in the various rooms, and some client-supplied DAT tapes will only play on one of the three, so it's always a hunting expedition, looking for the machine with the fewest dropouts. Have I mentioned that I really hate DATs? :-)

I don't know what the calibration situation is for CD burners, but there seems to be some variance in the real world. Happy happy!

[studio-c]

Oh, on the solution side...
I have several external Firewire/USB combo drives, and bought an extra enclosure that I just keep the top off of. It cost about sixty bucks. And you can just pop a drive in and archive to it, and pop it out. Kind of like what Mark mentioned at the head of this thread. Seemed pretty cost effective.

I'd also be tempted to put it in a ziplock baggie with one of those silica gel packs to keep moisture out. If I knew where to get them.

[Bill Park]

Dom,

I had tape backup on ALL of my PCs from 1987 on (QIC for years, then DDS) and what discouraged and concerned me was the proprietary formats.

Bill

[Bob L]

I must say... after seeing how well my drives did coming thru the fire and the incredible water-logged experience they sat in for weeks, I am not too concerned about the moisture issue with harddrives... every drive I cleaned up and restored are still working 1 year after the event. All I did was to bake the drive in the oven at a very low temp to dry out the circuit boards that were soaked with moisture... after that... no problems at all.

Kind of makes me wonder what all the fuss is about really... although perhaps I was just lucky... if you can call loosing 2 business offices and your production studio all within an hour lucky. :)

Bob L

[Sam C]

Kind of makes me wonder what all the fuss is about really... although perhaps I was just lucky... if you can call loosing 2 business offices and your production studio all within an hour lucky.


Sorry Bob, lucky ain't the right word! ;)

[DominicPerry]

Dom,

I had tape backup on ALL of my PCs from 1987 on (QIC for years, then DDS) and what discouraged and concerned me was the proprietary formats.

Bill

I've been thinking carefully about this whole subject. I don't want to give bum advice, but at the same time, I know what the IT industry does and it's for a good reason. I also know that 'end-users', which is us lot, almost never use tape or MO. Why? Cost or convention? Probably both. The direct answer to the QIC and DDS question is that you need to restore the QIC tapes to disk and then re-archive them on a modern format. QIC didn't live long, if I recall the drives weren't too good. DDS has been around for about 10 years and I believe the modern DDS4 drives are backward compatible - they'll do DDS(1) through to DDS4. So DDS has proved itself. But I guess the point is that if you have to restore from your old medium to a new one, as part of a tedious but necessary housekeeping regime, why not stick to DVD anyway? I don't know the answer yet, but I'm still thinking about it. It's reassuring that you can restore all your old floppy disks and put 3,286,000 of them on a single DVD. So re-archiving is a chore but modern media always copes easily with the old volumes.
The fact is that the old media and the old hardware to read it will always go out of date, whether it's CD, DVD, tape or MO. So it's still a question of risk versus reward. What lasts longest for the smallest outlay? I don't know the answer to that either, but I may be able to find out - stay tuned if you can stay awake.
I still think one unassailable advantage of tape is that it holds so much that you can do a full backup with no fiddling around on a regular basis. If the tape from last Wednesday doesn't work, well the one from Tuesday probably will. If your archive MO disk from 15th Mar 2003 doesn't work, dig out your end-of-month tape from Mar 2003. Providing you have a good process for backup and archiving, it'll be on that instead. I'll keep thinking about it.

Dominic

[Bob L]

I haven't looked recently at tapes... but do they have 120 gb tapes or 200 gb tapes... it sure seems easier to backup straight to a harddrive and put it away. :)

Bob L

[DominicPerry]

Bob, It's true, HDD is faster and easier. But you don't backup the same stuff to multiple HDDs, it's too expensive. If you backup the whole drive to tape, night after night, week after week, month after month, you're gonna get your data back. You were lucky to get your HDD's working after fire and water, and tapes would have been destroyed. But you could have sent a $10 tape to another location every month and been certain. I'd put my money on a $10 tape 50 miles away over a hard drive in a fire. The MTBF of HDDs is fantastic these days, but they still fail, and if that's the only place you have your data, you've lost it.
I always get a bit aggitated by people who want computers to 'just work' and never read any manual. Same as I think Bob, you get perhaps a little annoyed by people who can't be bothered to read the manual for 1 hour for a product which you have spent probably thousands of hours writing. By the same token, data backup is a chore. It costs money for hardware, media and software. It requires a process. It requires discipline. But it depends how important the data is. If you want to keep it, you have to work to preserve it.

I hope I don't sound like I'm preaching, I'm just trying to reflect the amount of time, money and effort that goes into data backup and archiving in the IT industry - it's a big proportion of the spend, not the few percent that most 'end-users' spend.

Dominic

[Ian Alexander]

I was under the impression that the Taiyo Yudens were the better of the DVD's. At least from what I've read at cdfreaks.com

niles
Hi Niles,

I've been using Taiyo Yuden CDRs happily for years. Now and then, I scratch the top of one a bit, but I've never had one fail to write or read. I use them for backing up every night.

I think part of the guy's point was that you can't assume that if a company makes good CDRs, they'll make good DVDs.

I visited cdfreaks.com and found it difficult to navigate and search. Any hints?

[MMP]

I have about three terabytes of data on my studio computers.

How do I reasonably back it all up?

80 gig tape drives aren't going to cut it.

Right now, some stuff is backed to DVD, some to CD, some on redundant drives, but a lot is at risk.

Someone needs to invent something useable for a reasonable price and fast, before we are all buried by data.

Regards,

MM

[DominicPerry]

Michael,

You need a 600GB DLT tape backup. The only problem is that it's SCSI attached. PCI SCSI card is about $150-250.

FREECOM SDLT-600 300/600GB external Kit. ($3500).

Even if you only get 300GB (uncompressed) on a tape, that's 10 tapes @ $40 a tape. If you're generating that much data, you need a budget to back it up.

I'm working on a DataCentre move with 1.3 Petabytes of data. Now that's scary.

Dominic

[Mark Stebbeds]

Someone needs to invent something useable for a reasonable price and fast, before we are all buried by data.


I didn't invent anything, but here's my new plan, reinforced by Bob's fire and water experience.

For archiving, buy a few 250Gb (or larger) raw IDE drives, and one of the adapters from Wiebetech for easy connect via FW or USB. Back everything up twice, on different drives. If one fails, you have another. Everything exists in two places. Figure out a way to find stuff again. I recommend different drives for different clients.

For temp/daily back up while projects stay active, back up as usual to an onboard or temp FW drive.

Where I get into organizational trouble, is backing stuff up to various drives that have space on them, but not archiving off the computers. Before you know it, it is an organizational nightmare with multiple folders with the same or similar names.

Good Luck.

mark

[Bill Park]

Hi Niles,

I've been using Taiyo Yuden CDRs happily for years. ....you can't assume that if a company makes good CDRs, they'll make good DVDs.



Exactly. My CDs are all TY, none of my DVD are, and this is based upon other people having trouble with TY DVDs.

Bill

[Dave Labrecque]

Depending on your backup regimen, those tapes can be quite a bit more costly than their harddrive equivalents. Plus the tape drive. :eek:

[studio-c]

an organizational nightmare with multiple folders with the same or similar names.
mark
Makes me crazy too. I often date the folders starting with the year
/cbsradio20060430/ for April 30. I gave up on calling a folder "final", cuz we ended up with "final", "final really", "really really final"

Any library science people out there?

[Marvin]

Makes me crazy too. I often date the folders starting with the year
/cbsradio20060430/ for April 30. I gave up on calling a folder "final", cuz we ended up with "final", "final really", "really really final"

Any library science people out there?

:D :D :D
been there... "no no this is the truly final", "forget the others this is it final for sure".... nowadays I label folders with the date...

[Bill Park]

:D :D :D
been there... "no no this is the truly final", "forget the others this is it final for sure".... nowadays I label folders with the date...

I throw lots of things away. This helps immensely. Date the folders.

Bill

[musicmanwolf]

This is a very interesting thread to me. For years I used two Fostex HD recorders for 16 tracks. They had removable hard drives that you used like tapes. I still have all of those hard drives about 15 or so from 1gb to 160gb and none of them has ever went bad. I just tried one of the older drives at least 10 years old and it worked fine. By the way the method to back up these drives was to use multiple 250mb zip disk. I never had any data lost with them either. Has anyone tried the large 1gb zip drives for back up. I think that if it's not cost prohibitive maybe the best solution is some of these companies that specialize in data storage and recovery. I know of one www.datachambers.com (http://www.datachambers.com) you just upload or mail them the files and they garantee them for as long as they have them.

Tim

[Carl G.]

Exactly. My CDs are all TY, none of my DVD are, and this is based upon other people having trouble with TY DVDs.

Bill
Exactly the same here too.
However... I found following exactly what Plextor has certified (for my plextor) has better chances of less failures.

A KEY important point with Plextor: There is a flaw in their software that allows you to burn 'uncertified' DVD's at way faster than they can be burned when selecting the 'burn at optimal' rate. The remedy is to simply HAND PICK the burn speed to match the rated burn of the DVD.

[Carl G.]

Makes me crazy too. I often date the folders starting with the year
/cbsradio20060430/ for April 30. I gave up on calling a folder "final", cuz we ended up with "final", "final really", "really really final"

Any library science people out there?
Wow...almost seems like you've been looking on my older harddrives! :)

A newer way I differentiate 'best, better, bestest' is not only by date but also by code (so when the final file is used anywhere - you can see at a glance it's the one you want). I code as follows (adding space and dashes) so that any net upload version forces the IE browsers of end users to refresh their FTP viewing to the upgraded spot while using the same project numbers!
For instance:
AWMR0603 = Mixed Final
AWMR 0603 = One Better Final
AWMR-0603 = The Best Final
AWMR--0604 = The Absolute Pinnacle of Creativity, (until I up it again) :)

That way the client/agency keeps the same number...
and I see the different versions...
while the end user sees basically the same numbers that the client originally sent them.

[Carl G.]

Has anyone tried the large 1gb zip drives for back up.
Tim
Woah... struck a cord there.
I have a perfectly (almost new in the box) 2Gig JAZ Drive and several Jaz disks for immediate sale (come get it while it's hot!... in my best used car salesman's voice). But I close the doors at 6pm tonight...that's it... final... It's gone... forever ... this is a once in a lifetime chance to get that final archive medium you've all treasured for years... at JUST under what I actually paid for it (reverbed trails throughout the halls of platesville)!!
- Just $300 plus $100 per disk (read a 5x speed in rapid fire disclosure)
... that's a whopping sale of just $400 for 2 WHOLE GIG! What a Deal, I tellya!

Couldn't resist.

Jaz Drives were a 'clickish' sort of thing to have :)
'nuff said.

I do have the like new archive (which I forgot to sell on ebay...when I could) ..still in the box!

[Pedro Itriago]

I have the 1 gb jazz, don't know what to do with it.

[Dave Labrecque]

Any library science people out there?
Just me.

Librarily,

Dewey D.







(okay, it's really...)

[UpTilDawn]

I once had a girlfriend who was a Library science people.....



She was very good at reading my moods.:D

[Bud Johnson]

Hello all!
Could someone tell me what the reported problems are with TY DVD-Rs?

As for short term backup, I drop it over the network to 2 different 120 GB IDE drives on different machines. For longer term storage, they go from there to a pair of USB 250GB drives. Then, when I get to it, to DVDs. One stored here, One in the bank across the street.
I have been having problems with failed burns, but I was attributing it to the burner. Thus my 1st Q.
Thanks

[DominicPerry]

Version numbers - that's what you need. 'Final' is, as you've pointed out, useless.

myProjectV1
myProjectV1.1
myProjectV2
myProjectV3
myProjectV4

There are programs to handle this stuff for you.

I can't contribute much to the audio side of this forum, but I can probably help with all this hardware and backup and archiving stuff. Give me a few weeks and I'll write up a few ideas and suggestions in a document which might be useful. I'll put it on my (lousy) web site and post a link.


Dominic