No Recovery Without Backup!

[junkmale]

currently trying to fix the other half's lappy after the SSD decided to go on sick leave
proving to be a bit more involved/time-consuming than it might have been had they had an up-to-date backup regime in place.
(yes yes I know, my fault - I should have made sure they did...mea culpa )

anyway, just thought it worth reminding everyone, doesn't matter what device you're using - phone/tablet/laptop/pc - or what O/S it's running, make sure you have a valid backup strategy!!

(even analogue - a friend recently lost a shedload of master tapes in a flood )

[OneWorld]

currently trying to fix the other half's lappy after the SSD decided to go on sick leave
proving to be a bit more involved/time-consuming than it might have been had they had an up-to-date backup regime in place.
(yes yes I know, my fault - I should have made sure they did...mea culpa )

anyway, just thought it worth reminding everyone, doesn't matter what device you're using - phone/tablet/laptop/pc - or what O/S it's running, make sure you have a valid backup strategy!!

(even analogue - a friend recently lost a shedload of master tapes in a flood )

I started using SSDs a long time ago under the impression that because of no moving parts, they were immune to faults, until one just packed in, the day before working fine, following day, dead. Luckily I’d kept the old hard drive which the SSD replaced and I was able to recover most of what was lost.

Since then I established a routine backup which has come to my rescue on a few occasions, it’s human nature, we seem to learn most from our mistakes! Well in theory at least.

[junkmale]

I started using SSDs a long time ago under the impression that because of no moving parts, they were immune to faults....

sadly, no, SSD's can and do fail, and when they do they can be a lot harder and a lot more expensive than spinning-disc HDU's to recover.
with the latter, in a worst case scenario, a specialist with a clean-room can disassemble the drive, and install the platters in another physical assembly to try and read the data off, which is not an option with an SSD.

I'm still a big fan of SSD's though, as they vastly out-perform HDU.
HDU = approx 40MB/s transfer rates, SSD 300-600MB/s depending on the drive and system's SATA bus.

shame the prices of them (and other memory) is going through the roof on account of all the 'AI' bollix hoovering up chip manufacturing, grrrr

[Drew Stephenson]

The only drive I've ever had fail was an SSD. Fortunately it was my back-up drive.
I now run two back-up drives...

[RichardT]

currently trying to fix the other half's lappy after the SSD decided to go on sick leave
proving to be a bit more involved/time-consuming than it might have been had they had an up-to-date backup regime in place.
(yes yes I know, my fault - I should have made sure they did...mea culpa )

anyway, just thought it worth reminding everyone, doesn't matter what device you're using - phone/tablet/laptop/pc - or what O/S it's running, make sure you have a valid backup strategy!!

(even analogue - a friend recently lost a shedload of master tapes in a flood )

Yes, very true. With at least 2 independent copies of everything!

[The Elf]

I've had the conversation many, many times. "When did you last back up?". The answer is usually silence. And most often we've had the same conversation more than once.

I'm always prepared to help anyone, but unfortunately the majority of people do not help themselves.

[OneWorld]

I've had the conversation many, many times. "When did you last back up?". The answer is usually silence. And most often we've had the same conversation more than once.

I'm always prepared to help anyone, but unfortunately the majority of people do not help themselves.

"I've had the conversation many, many times. "When did you last back up?". The answer is usually silence"

LOL - Spot On, and I was one of those once rendered silent in response to that question, not any more though, I'm older, wiser(jury is out on that) and backed-up

[OneWorld]

I started using SSDs a long time ago under the impression that because of no moving parts, they were immune to faults....

..................

shame the prices of them (and other memory) is going through the roof on account of all the 'AI' bollix hoovering up chip manufacturing, grrrr

I am staggered at the cost of memory, used to be cheap as chips, not anymore. I had hoped to build myself a machine for doing video editing where the software I use (KdenLive - open source, it's a fabulous bit of software) but at least 64 gig of ram is advised as well as a top video card with at least 8gig of ram and I priced up memory, and now cheap memory is but a fond memory, I'm selling off the family silver, gold that's stashed under the bed and splurging on RAM, there's 'gold' in them thar memory mines

[Watchmaker]

Thanks for the reminder! My PC totally borked last week and I had to completely reinstall Windows 10. A corrupted system file led to a stack overflow in the settings.exe and nothing was working. After three tries to get it to install properly, I finally got a stable base load. I've never had Windows install cleanly on the first try since XP. Generally, it takes me about two days of removing bloatware and editing GPO/registry/firewall settings to control the ungodly data hoovering Microsoft does and make sure the damn thing is stable again. Only then I will I connect data. I loathe MS with a passion but my need for certain PC only software is overriding.

fwiw, I store nothing of value on the local drive. Everything, both on my PC and my Mac, is stored on external Samsung portable drives (I recommend T7, not that anyone should care), each of which is backed up weekly at a minimum, and additionally after each session is completed. I do full not incremental backups.

All because I once lost ~170 pages of a book I was writing.

[hz37]

So what is everyone's strategy?

I work on my OWC Envoy Ultra SSD drive (Pro Tools projects for clients). I run a daily python script that does an rsync, where all the new and changed files are copied to their respective folders on my Synology drive.

For super critical things, I copy the entire project also to my iCloud drive. If things go awry with the Mac Studio, I can then continue working on the Macbook Pro.

Once a week I rclone certain projects and personal files to glacier storage at Scaleway.

[junkmale]

With at least 2 independent copies of everything!

sage advice

[shufflebeat]

So what is everyone's strategy?

Following with interest, having recently put two flash drives through a complete wash/spin cycle.

[Folderol]

What I consider most important is duplicated over at least two out of three completely different machines, and sum of all the machines is copied to a pair of USB drives.

P.S.
All the Yoshimi stuff is on all three machines and also independently stored on both github and sourceforge repositories.

[RichardT]

So what is everyone's strategy?

I work on my OWC Envoy Ultra SSD drive (Pro Tools projects for clients). I run a daily python script that does an rsync, where all the new and changed files are copied to their respective folders on my Synology drive.

For super critical things, I copy the entire project also to my iCloud drive. If things go awry with the Mac Studio, I can then continue working on the Macbook Pro.

Once a week I rclone certain projects and personal files to glacier storage at Scaleway.

On Mac…

I have a Time Machine external drive and let Time Machine do its thing. That backs up absolutely everything in near real-time.

Then I mirror my music file system in real time to Google Drive so I have a remote copy of my own data.

Finally, when I have finished a project, I export audio for all the individual tracks with and without inserts, export all the midi, take screenshots of all the tracks, VSTs and the mixer in the DAW and upload to Amazon Glacier Storage.

Vulnerabilities: If the computer and Time Machine are both destroyed, I don’t have an offsite backup of the entire machine state. That is a bit of a weakness actually!

[MOF]

make sure you have a valid backup strategy!! :idea::geek:

(even analogue - a friend recently lost a shedload of master tapes in a flood )

I would have thought that tapes could be washed with denatured water then isopropyl alcohol and maybe baked to restore them.

[junkmale]

make sure you have a valid backup strategy!! :idea::geek:

(even analogue - a friend recently lost a shedload of master tapes in a flood )

I would have thought that tapes could be washed with denatured water then isopropyl alcohol and maybe baked to restore them.

the studio space was in a barn, and I'm not certain but I suspect the flood waters will have been pretty grubby

[MOF]

That’s why I suggested water as a first step.

[junkmale]

So what is everyone's strategy?

Following with interest, having recently put two flash drives through a complete wash/spin cycle.

as others have said, try and maintain multiple copies of data** across different locations.
this could be from machine A to machine B, if you have more than one computer in the house.
having multiple external hard disks to back up to.
(HDD are possibly better for this than SSD - they're cheaper to buy initially, could be argued more resilient, certainly cheaper to recover in worst case scenario)
a strategy I've used is to have two high-capacity external disks, and rotate them on a weekly basis, with the one not active stored at a family members house.)

some form of offsite backup is worth considering in case of the worst kind of disaster - fire, flood, lightning strike, theft. no good having backups if they go the same way as the live data. fortunately major disasters are rare, but that doesn't mean they don't happen!

online storage services can be useful, e.g. OneDrive, DropBox, iCloud etc etc.
but don't rely on them as your only form of backup.
all of the major cloud providers have had outages and lost customer data, and you also need to keep in mind that there is no expectation of privacy with them. if you're planning on uploading sensitive data, I'd suggest archiving and encrypting it first.

**
data isn't only DAW projects, sample libraries etc. remember to include software installation packages and relevant serial numbers/keys, logins etc

[junkmale]

That’s why I suggested water as a first step.

thanks for the suggestion, I'll certainly mention it to them

out of interest, are there specialist tape recovery people?

[Murray B]

I had an External SSD fail, it was about 18 months old attached to my son's PC and still in the warranty period.

Seagate customer services were amazing and recovered all of the data from the drive, sent me a separate drive with the recovered data on and a brand new SSD.

So my advice (other than the obvious) would be to reach out to the manufacturer before considering that all is lost.

[James Perrett]

out of interest, are there specialist tape recovery people?

There are certainly a few people who would attempt it. These people are one example...

https://thegreatbear.co.uk/audio-tape/c ... servation/

I note that they recommend transferring the tapes as soon as possible after the flood so that mould doesn't have time to grow. I've found that mould can make DAT tapes unplayable although I've not had too many problems with audio reels.

[junkmale]

thanks James, I'll pass the link on