JuanLittleDevil

One of the things I hate the most about backups is not having one when you need it! When it comes to my studio setup, I need to make sure that it is somewhat fault protected, and that I have some kind of archival process. What do I mean by that you say? Well… Let me explain… Imagine the following scenario, you’ve had the great idea floating in your head for the last who knows when but you finally get some time in the studio you loose your main drive. If this is the only hard drive on your computer then, you my friend, “is fucked!” Not only do you not have copies of your “data” but you also need to re-install not just your OS but ALL of your applications, plugins, etc. I recently upgraded from a G5 to an intel based system and trust me I’m still re-installing my software. It is a real pain in the behind to do this!!!

OK so let’s think about this. How do I keep my “data” protected and by data I mean all the audio projects and it’s associated files, and how do I recover from a disaster as quickly as possible so I don’t compromise inspiration? I know some of you are already thinking “what about time machine?” I have one answer for you IO!!! Have you tried scheduling time machine? That’s right it has no schedule, you cannot control when it runs! and when it does it SLOWS DOWN EVERYTHING! Thus not a good solution. I personally want to run my backups when I tell it to! So. Let me show you guys how I solve this problem, keep in mind that there are many solutions and you might know best what yours is. The key point is make sure your data is protected!

I have a dedicated studio machine, it is really kind of a one trick pony. Thus, it only gets turned on when I’m actually making music. This is great for me because that means that everything on that disk is music related and relatively clean. I also make sure to split up OS from the rest of my data. This means that if my OS dies or I upgrade my OS, my data is still on a separate drive so all I have to do is reinstall apps and attach my data drive. But what if my data drive then dies? Well I have a REALLY large drive which I backup to when I startup my system. I use a freeware backup software from LaCie called SilverKeeper. You can get it here: http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=10097

My OS drive is protected by creating a “clone” of the drive on a regular basis. This can be done with “rsync” or even better SilverKeeper which basically does the rsync but gives you a nice user interface. The drive is copied entirely on boot. This means that if my drive dies, all I have to do is pull it out and restart from the ‘cloned copy’. Additionally I can use this to try out OS upgrades without committing to it simply by stopping the backups while I test so to have a way to rollback. My data drive is backed up to an external disk which I use for archival. That disk is then detached and kept with me outside of the studio.

The cost for doing this is  a couple of hundred dollars if but totally worth it. I should also point out that keeping your data on a separate drive from your OS will help you in terms of IO as your media files won’t have to compete with the OS for scheduling read and writes to the disk.

Moral of the story is… Backup your shit! Keep it handy so you don’t have to re-install and end up wasting time and loosing out on those moments of inspiration.