Back up your hard drive

[gurnemanz]

... o the simple joy of having CDs on the shelves. When - so often, nowadays - Radio 3 is intolerable, and I want some music - to the shelves, select CD, pop in machine, listen....

I feel the same. With so many CDs, I can't face the job of digitizing them all and then worrying about backup strategy to ensure the work is not wasted if one day the data is lost. I have even put some downloaded music onto CD to go on the shelf. Downloaded music files get backed up on a USB stick and on a portable hard drive with photos and documents.

[Ant]

Hello all,

I suspect that the fridge may not be cold enough to effect a remedy, temporary or otherwise. Based on the thought of the freezer aerosols one can get for maintenance work, I made some extension leads for my defunct drive then wrapped it well in sandwich film to be sure to keep out any condensation. It spent a week in the freezer before being wrapped in towels to keep it cold and joy, it worked while I retrieved my files. Needless to say, backups are made more frequently now...

I opened it up, the platters make beautiful bird-scarers and the magnets are very useful generally.

Regards Ant

[MrGongGong]

Hello all,

I suspect that the fridge may not be cold enough to effect a remedy, temporary or otherwise. Based on the thought of the freezer aerosols one can get for maintenance work, I made some extension leads for my defunct drive then wrapped it well in sandwich film to be sure to keep out any condensation. It spent a week in the freezer before being wrapped in towels to keep it cold and joy, it worked while I retrieved my files. Needless to say, backups are made more frequently now...

I opened it up, the platters make beautiful bird-scarers and the magnets are very useful generally.

Regards Ant

That's good news
I tried this once with a dead drive with alas no success

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I feel the same. With so many CDs, I can't face the job of digitizing them all ...

No need to bother. They all digital already - every single one of them, whether DDD, ADD, AAD or even DAD.

[gurnemanz]

No need to bother. They all digital already - every single one of them, whether DDD, ADD, AAD or even DAD.

Good point. It's moving all those digits to another place that I can't face.

DAD?? I don't think I've got any of those (except the ones I inherited from my father a couple of years ago.)

[Bryn]

Good point. It's moving all those digits to another place that I can't face.

DAD?? I don't think I've got any of those (except the ones I inherited from my father a couple of years ago.)

I have a Messiaen organ DAD (Erik Bostrom, on the Proprius label). Recorded on DAT it was then ADCed for editing on a Studer analogue machine, then digitised to Red Book.

[Dave2002]

I have a Messiaen organ DAD (Erik Bostrom, on the Proprius label). Recorded on DAT it was then ADCed for editing on a Studer analogue machine, then digitised to Red Book.

DACed surely?

[richardfinegold]

You are probably right
but surely if there are 4 drives they should be backups of each other ?
I've had dodgy LaCie drives before , they look pretty but aren't as stable as one would like
you could work out how many hours you think it will take and get a teenage geekwizard to do it ?

Yikes!

I'm using a 3 TB Lacie drive now as my backup HD. So far I've only been burned perhaps 150 CDs to the main HD and then back it up weekly to the LaCie.
It sounds like I should perhaps start using another brand. What do you recommend for reliability?

[hedgehog]

I've had dodgy La Cie's too and also difficulty with one WD. For a portable back-up I use a WD Passport with no problems to date, but at home I use G-RAID - on Macs. They have been been very reliable to date with a lot of heavy use. If anyone has had trouble with them, please let me know !

[BBMmk2]

Will I be able to back-up my music scores, the same way?

[Pegleg]

The RAID word has been mentioned a couple times in this thread. Take this as a timely reminder, or stating the bleeding obvious, but however popular those home NAS/RAID boxes are, RAID is not a backup solution.

Explanation, with some advice and refs to in depth articles:

http://www.overclock.net/t/1254683/why-raid-is-not-a-backup-solution

[johnb]

Most of my storage is on a HP Microserver which I use as a glorified NAS (I don't employ RAID or any disc-spanning).

I periodically mirror the individual HDDs in the Microserver to separate external HDDs.

As far as external HDDs are concerned, ever since I had a WD "My Book" fail on me I have been using enclosures which have USB and eSata connections together with "green" HDDs in order to minimise the heat generated (usually WD Green HDDs).

[Pegleg]

The Gen7 HP Microservers make excellent home NAS boxes, although their energy consumption is higher than the typical QNAP/Synology NAS offering. There were some real bargains to had this year, but they are not plug n play and need a bit of setting up. The software is free if you use Linux.

WD Green HDDs are not without their problems, v.high load cycles can cause premature failure.

http://www.storagereview.com/how_to_stop_excessive_load_cycles_on_the_western_digital_2tb_caviar_green_wd20ears_with_wdidle3

This may be a bit alarmist, but it's worth checking the smart data of your drives.

[Dave2002]

Apple users with spare cash might fancy these Airport Time Capsule devices - http://www.apple.com/uk/airport-time-capsule/

Would clearly work better with the latest computers with the newest wireless standards. There are certainly drives which are a lot cheaper (say £100 versus around £350) but for multiple users and laptops, providing the total storage to be saved is somewhat less than 3 Tbytes, these could be convenient and would work with Time Machine in OS X. I haven't tried this as a solution to a backup problem - the cost is a bit of a deterrent.

[amateur51]

... o the simple joy of having CDs on the shelves. When - so often, nowadays - Radio 3 is intolerable, and I want some music - to the shelves, select CD, pop in machine, listen....

Long may this option be possible