Got Backup?

[SoundInMotionDJ]

Over the weekend, I was doing some maintenance of my music collection on an external hard drive. The power cord got wrapped around the chair base, and the hard drive was unplugged in the middle of a big copy operation.

When I plugged everything back in, nothing on the drive was readable!!!

I did a check disc, and allowed the repair tools to run. Nothing. The entire drive is still unreadable. I took the drive out of the external enclosure and plugged it into a standard PC case, and used some windows and then some linux tools to see if I could mount the drive and recover anything. Nada.

So, my whole music collection is unreadable. All of the "obvious" fixes have not worked. I have events on Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday.

Am I in a panic? Not really.

Why? I have a second hard drive that is a full backup of my music collection. Aside from a couple of hours of minor tag fixes, and a few edits of songs (e.g. trim intros), I have not lost a thing!

So, I will go buy another hard drive, and spend one night making a copy of everything. With about 20 minutes of effort, and a good night sleep, I will be back up and running.

Can you say the same thing?

--Stan Graves

[Lawrence]

Different story, same moral. While editing tags and removing music from my laptop that I would never play, my software somehow inadvertently highlighted something like 80% of my songs, and deleted them all instead of just deleting the . (I think I used CRTL-right-click to select a bunch of songs to delete, but instead of clicking the first without CRTL to clear the selection, I clicked the first song to delete with CRTL pressed, which did not "unselect" the incorrectly selected songs). I only figured it out when the software prompted me whether it should also delete 30 empty folders! (Empty folders? WTF?!?!)

I thought I had my music stored on another computer, from which I had transferred them to my laptop, but it turns out I had decided to keep some of my dance music on my laptop, exclusively. Fortunately, I caught it in time before I inadvertently overwrote the mistakenly-deleted files; I stopped everything on my computer and successfully ran an "Undelete" program to get most of them back, but they still did not all come back, and I had to manually select and restore each file, which took three days.

Yes, back-up would have been a good thing. I also edit tags a lot on the fly while DJing (ratings, genre, BPM, etc.) and backing them up regularly would save the edited tags, as well.

[SoundInMotionDJ]

Yes, back-up would have been a good thing. I also edit tags a lot on the fly while DJing (ratings, genre, BPM, etc.) and backing them up regularly would save the edited tags, as well.

I use robocopy (search on microsoft.com) to handle things like that. I edit tags whenever I see something wrong. I can run robocopy to just copy the "newer" files from one place to another.

My main backup is a drive enclosure that can be mounted as a windows drive. When I get back from a gig, or whenever I add new music, update tags, etc - i just run a script to copy all the newer files to the drive enclosure. It would work the same with an external hard drive. A "full" backup would take several hours, a backup of 100 songs that I'd updated would take a few minutes.

The only situation that robocopy does not do well is when you move a song from one location to another. The tool does support a "mirror" option that will handle a move - but it's a relatively dangerous option to the command.

Update on my bad drive. The drive will not even spin up at this point. So, it's a paperweight. I bought a replacement hard drive yesterday, and I'm already back to where I left off - including the edits that I made. I might have missed a few tag changes...but given what could have been....this is almost like nothing ever happened.

--Stan Graves

[Surreal]

I bought an external hard drive last year exclusively to keep a backup of my music. That robocopy tool looks useful though; I'll have to give it a try. Thus far I've just been recopying my entire library every month or so.

Hmm, I suppose if I actually had one of those fancy schmancy ipods that would serve as a backup as well.

[SoundInMotionDJ]

I bought an external hard drive last year exclusively to keep a backup of my music. That robocopy tool looks useful though; I'll have to give it a try. Thus far I've just been recopying my entire library every month or so.

Recopying your entire music collection is not a bad plan, it's just way more time consuming than it needs to be. Clicking the "Yes to all" button also occasionally makes me nervous - you never know if you will overwrite a newer version with an older version. [If only there was a "No to all" button...]

robocopy allows files that are older (or the same) on the source than the destination to be excluded. This is a HUGE timesaver.

Hmm, I suppose if I actually had one of those fancy schmancy ipods that would serve as a backup as well.

Anything that leaves the house is not a backup.

--Stan Graves

[Surreal]

Hmm, I suppose if I actually had one of those fancy schmancy ipods that would serve as a backup as well.

Anything that leaves the house is not a backup.

--Stan Graves

True enough. Those pesky things are way more expensive than a hard drive anyways.

You know, I think the solution here is to simply buy another laptop.

[Toon Town Dave]

Nathan, I think you're missing Stan's point. Backups are about protecting digital assets, in our case, our music collection and the effort required to collect and digitize it for DJ purposes. In general, the backup is something you should have but should hopefully never need to use.

It's not about the device. If a laptop (or iPod or CD player) dies, you can go to the local computer/electronics store and buy a new one off the shelf at any time. If the hard drive (or iPod or laptop) goes up in smoke, gets stolen, goes swimming, or whatever, your music is gone.

The duplicate hard drive is a great, cost effective means of backup on a budget. I don't think it's the best but it's better than nothing and simple. I usually recommend keeping two "backup" drives, alternating them always with one safely/securely stored off-line. If you get struck by lightning or electrical fault, flooded basement or similar disaster, you could lose primary and connected backup. With the second, off-line, secure backup, you still have the data.

DVD's are also good for smaller sets of data, especially if there is lots of data that seldom changes. I use DVD-RW's for much of my stuff. The down side is they require a lot of human intervention to create.

The primary storage for my music is an external drive on my desktop computer. I treat my laptop as a "working copy" and backups are off-line on DVD-RW. I have CDs for all of my music except for a few tracks purchased on-line. That mitigates the risk of multiple device failures. The weak link is everything is stored in one location except my laptop which travels with me.

[SoundInMotionDJ]

Dave nailed it.

Nathan, I think you're missing Stan's point. Backups are about protecting digital assets, in our case, our music collection and the effort required to collect and digitize it for DJ purposes. In general, the backup is something you should have but should hopefully never need to use.

Exactly. It's not that I couldn't re-rip my entire music collection into the computer. BUT...that would take months of time just to re-rip, and more months to organize and tag all the songs according to dance, etc, etc, etc. My backup is guarding against that effort.

Would it be worth $100 to avoid having to re-rip your whole music collection again? It's worth many times that amount for me.

It's not about the device. If a laptop (or iPod or CD player) dies, you can go to the local computer/electronics store and buy a new one off the shelf at any time. If the hard drive (or iPod or laptop) goes up in smoke, gets stolen, goes swimming, or whatever, your music is gone.

Having a second laptop is something I recommend if you are planning to make your living as a DJ. There is no worse feeling that showing up to an event, and finding out that your computer won't boot up, and that this will be a "CD based" event. But, that's the same reason you have 2 amps, and a backup mic, and more than one mixer, etc, etc.

BUT, if this is a hobby - then hold off on the second computer. One night using your "emergency CD's" won't kill you. In the mean time, that new laptop will cost 1/2 of the one that needs replacing, or the new one will be twice as capable.

The duplicate hard drive is a great, cost effective means of backup on a budget. I don't think it's the best but it's better than nothing and simple.

Out of curiosity, what do you think is best?

DVD's are also good for smaller sets of data, especially if there is lots of data that seldom changes. I use DVD-RW's for much of my stuff. The down side is they require a lot of human intervention to create.

I used DVD's as a backup until I had about 20GB of music. After that, the hard drive approach was easier for me to manage.

--Stan Graves

[Toon Town Dave]

If I was a pro DJ, I'd probably start on the laptop front with a ruggedized device, these are built to take more in-transit abuse than a typical home or business laptop augmented by a sufficient collection of CD's a and portable CD player for (lowered probability) emergencies.

I'm a fan of old fashioned tapes for backup. They are compact, lightweight and don't have any fussy electronics or intricate mechanical components that are easily damaged in transit ... on the way to off-site storage. Tapes are quick to write, and for large sets of data (eg 3TB) are nice because there are tape libraries that reduce human intervention. The downside is they are a pain to recover random individual files, for that, intermediate near-line storage (a backup server) can be handy.

DDS72 (36GB 4mm tapes) are about $15 and drives about $600.
LTO-3 (400GB tapes) are about $50, LTO-4 (800GB tapes) are about $120, not bad but drives cost several $K so it's only worthwhile for large sets of data.

[SoundInMotionDJ]

If I was a pro DJ, I'd probably start on the laptop front with a ruggedized device, these are built to take more in-transit abuse than a typical home or business laptop

Panasonic is the only manufacturer making a laptop that could really claim to be "ruggedized" - the Toughbook series. Everyone else is more marketing than reality. Toughbooks are awesomely rugged. They are also very expensive (mine was $4800), underpowered (~500MHz CPU, 256MB RAM, 20GB hard drive), and heavy. If you really need a laptop that can survive a "hostile" environment, then you need to pay the price (in $$$, lack of power, and weight)...if you don't...then don't.

Commercial laptops from a "major" vendor are very reliable. If you can take even minimal care of a laptop (don't drop it while it's on, avoid spilling beer on it, etc), then you will be OK with just about any "major" vendor laptop.

If you are concerned about reliability, then a rack mounted "server" class machine with extra cooling, and gel mounted hard drives is still cheaper, higher powered, easier to expand, and only a little less convenient than a ruggedized laptop.

--Stan Graves

[Lawrence]

If I was a pro DJ, I'd probably start on the laptop front with a ruggedized device, these are built to take more in-transit abuse than a typical home or business laptop

Panasonic is the only manufacturer making a laptop that could really claim to be "ruggedized" - the Toughbook series. Everyone else is more marketing than reality. Toughbooks are awesomely rugged. They are also very expensive (mine was $4800), underpowered (~500MHz CPU, 256MB RAM, 20GB hard drive), and heavy. If you really need a laptop that can survive a "hostile" environment, then you need to pay the price (in $$$, lack of power, and weight)...if you don't...then don't.

Commercial laptops from a "major" vendor are very reliable. If you can take even minimal care of a laptop (don't drop it while it's on, avoid spilling beer on it, etc), then you will be OK with just about any "major" vendor laptop.

If you are concerned about reliability, then a rack mounted "server" class machine with extra cooling, and gel mounted hard drives is still cheaper, higher powered, easier to expand, and only a little less convenient than a ruggedized laptop.

Gotta agree with Stan. The Roughbooks are a good idea, and definitely should be the focus of new developments in the future so that the expense goes down over time; but they are not worth the premium right now for our use. They are more for people in construction, auto-mechanic, or other similar industries, where rough handling and dirt is unavoidable. For Swing DJs, a gel-mounted hard drive and a neoprene cover on a decent-quality laptop should suffice.

And, to be sure, travelling business laptops get quite a bit more intensive bump-and-tumble use than merely travelling to and from Swing dances.

I also took my Sony Z505 notebook on a two-month cycling trip through England and France. It rode in my pannier bag on the side of my rear wheel for two months, and I had no problems with it, at all. Even the poorly-designed plastic hinge-pressure door for the modem plug didn't break off until a couple of years after the trip. The notebook lasted for years afterwards and only gave out well after it was already technologically obsolete. I eventually had to replace the stock hard drive with a gel-mounted drive, but again, that happened about four years after the trip. (Fortunately, I had CD-R backups of all documents at the time, as well.)

[julius]

There is also the option of renting storage space online and uploading all your music to an off-site server. elephantdrive.com has unlimited storage space but you can only upload 100 gigs per month, or about 200 cds if you rip to flac format. Might be quite a long term project to upload some of our collections...but on the other hand everything is stored offsite, unlike most backup solutions.

$100 a year, looks like.

[Toon Town Dave]

That's a great option. For security, you can always encrypt the data you upload so there would be little worry about the backup provider doing stuff with your data.

The downside for most home users on cable or DSL is the bandwidth to the Internet is usually not much better than a dial-up modem so the solution becomes impractical for regularly backing up large data. Maybe not so bad for music if you aren't tweaking ID3 tags and such since every file should only need to be uploaded once.

[Wexie]

For the Mac folks, Chronosynch is great tool to run synchronized backup. IT's $30, and you get upgrades for life!

I run a separate backup for my Itunes library. It copies everything over and replaces the library xml folder because it has been modified. You can schedule, do it manually, or both.

See: http://www.econtechnologies.com

[falty411]

or for mac users:

buy leopard and set up time machine. totally sweet