old CD backups

[Bill Park]

Over the past couple of weeks I have taken the data CDs that I have and converted them to DVD. Though I make it a habit not to warehouse data, I still had about 250/300 CDs which I got down to just a handful of DVDs. Pretty nice.

Of all of the disks, I only had three failures.. but 2 were Mitsumi Golds... one from 1994 and one from 1997.

So I thought that I would just toss out this warning.... unscientific, and it only amounts to about a 1% failure rate, but I thought that you might like to know. Don't wait ten years to back up, and when you do, make at least 2 copies.

Bill

[TotalSonic]

Yeah - lots of redundancy, and a willingness to migrate everything to a new format once every 10 years (or less as you note) is really the only way to keep a digital archive going into the future with any decent amount of confidence.

I actually have about 6 or so albums worth of stuff I tracked to the original SAW & SAWPlus that I have archived to .ark files (for those of you who came late to SAW before the advent of cheap hard drives or CD-R burners it allowed you to send to DAT tape all the individual regions with a timing spike - and send to a floppy disc or other back up the edl's & .ark file which would allow you to restore all the regions wav files to your hard drive from the DAT) - so I actually really need to get to transferring some 12 to 9 year old floppies and DAT's if I could find the time! Crossing my fingers that all of this stuff is still in working order - I have a feeling the floppies will be a lot more problematic than the DAT's. And come to think of it - it would indeed be nice if I found the time to do a remix with the much better tools I have available now on some of this stuff too.

Best regards,
Steve Berson

[Mark Stebbeds]

I actually have about 6 or so albums worth of stuff I tracked to the original SAW & SAWPlus that I have archived to .ark files (for those of you who came late to SAW before the advent of cheap hard drives or CD-R burners it allowed you to send to DAT tape all the individual regions with a timing spike - and send to a floppy disc or other back up the edl's & .ark file which would allow you to restore all the regions wav files to your hard drive from the DAT)

I wouldn't wait too long on those DAT tapes Steve..or the floppies as you said.

Mark

[Bill Park]

yeah, some of the files are .SND.

DAT shelf life is 5 years. I did a stack of them about a year and a half ago, I've got about 2 boxes left.

I dumped all the RTR back when I got rid of the RTRs.

I just stare at the cassettes, though.

Bill

[TotalSonic]

I wouldn't wait too long on those DAT tapes Steve..or the floppies as you said.

Mark

Yeah - I know - I've been way too much procrastinating on it - since the albums have no real commercial potential (mainly some old bands I was in and solo projects), and that the original mixes are archived already, and I've been busy with current projects (some of them that actually pay bills!) it's been easy to delay - especially since I was always wanting to actually take the time do a good job with it if I bothered to remix or remaster.

A couple weeks ago I found a couple days to remaster from DAT a direct to 2-track recording I did of pianist/vocalist from 12 years ago and the improvement from my original master (which was done with a couple Yamaha DMP-7's, an SPX90 for some additional reverb, and Digidesign's Sound Designer II) was really substantial. It's nice to finally have the facility for this myself.

Anyway - listening through a bunch of the DAT's fairly recently I only found one dropout so far (which I can patch in from another similar mix) - so while not a great archive system at least it seems most of the stuff is still there.

I actually found the box of floppies only recently at it had been in a pile of other stuff that I just had stored in a closet and kind of forgot about - come to think of it - I might as well transfer all of these today. Not massively optimistic about my success rate of transferring these though! - but guess we shall see.

Best regards,
Steve Berson

[TotalSonic]

yeah, some of the files are .SND.

Yeah - I'm not sure whether I need to reinstall SAWPlus or SAW32 to actually do the .ark transfers and then resave the edl so that I can open it in SAWStudio - but I know SAWPro no longer had support for .ark.

Best regards,
Steve Berson

[Dave Labrecque]

I wouldn't wait too long on those DAT tapes Steve..or the floppies as you said.

Mark

You can always bake 'em. ;)

[Mark Stebbeds]

You can always bake 'em. ;)

I know you're kidding but even if it were a binder issue....plastic case.

Mark

[canipus]

You can always bake 'em. ;)

the digital SNR of DAT is less than 2dB. Once that signal has lost 2dB there is nothing you can do to recover it, not even baking. In fact the baking will cause the signal to fall into the noise and you will lose the digits.

[Bill Park]

I know you're kidding but even if it were a binder issue....plastic case.

Mark

Yes, but with little potatoes and a good sauce....

Bill

[Dave Labrecque]

the digital SNR of DAT is less than 2dB. Once that signal has lost 2dB there is nothing you can do to recover it, not even baking. In fact the baking will cause the signal to fall into the noise and you will lose the digits.

You say that like it's a bad thing. :p

[Dave Labrecque]

I know you're kidding but even if it were a binder issue....plastic case.

Mark

Have I still not converted you to the wonders of microwave oven technology?